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nizo (81281)
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I am me.
Here is a nifty link: See all your friends' recent journal entries [slashdot.org]
NAFTA and reedumcation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement
First I want to say I am woefully ignorant of NAFTA; the wikipedia article seems to be a good start though. I am still reading through it and looking things up. One thing that blew me out of the water though:
Although the U.S. total civilian employment rate may have grown by almost 15 million in between 1993 and 2001, manufacturing jobs only increased by 476,000 between January 1, 1994 and January 1, 2001. Furthermore from 1994 to 2007, net manufacturing employment has declined by 3,654,000, and during this period several other free trade agreements have been concluded or expanded
Whoa, did I read that right? 3.6 million manufacturing jobs went adios according to the BLS?? Probably due to a combination of factors, not necessarly just because of NAFTA (though possibly the main reason; still reading). Still, lets get back to all those people, without worrying about the cause so much. NOW what will these (and plenty of other people) do?
What I would like to see is someone with a strong "reedumcation" platform, geared to help unemployed (and even 9-5 employed) people learn new skills (college or whatever). It still blows me away how hard it is to get into any number of careers (pick any health career that pays worth a crap for example) without giving up your day job. Example: I was looking at Radiology at one point, but there is zip/zero/nada programs that are available for anyone who works 9-5. How insane is that??? Same for nursing: there must be twenty jobs in the paper here right now, and there isn't a single evening program. WTF?
I don't know what the solutions to this are, but there has to be some way to improve things. It looks like both Obama and Clinton have college tax credit ideas, which is a good start, but what else can be done?
Oh and back to NAFTA; I dunno how I feel about Clinton's support of NAFTA yet. Obama and others are ragging on her support of it, but as complicated as NAFTA appears, it probably wouldn't have even been possible to see the full extent of how it would change things in advance, so even if she did support it (in good conscience) initially, I can't necessarily hold that against her now.
a giant sucking sound (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you are right about education. Of course there are a lot of other things that get pulled in. You can't take a person who grew up in a poor area, that didn't get a good elementary/secondary education and throw them into a undergrad program and expect them to compete. Then there's the fact that a lot of people are below average in intelligence. What do you do with them? They can't get a factory job anymore. Maybe some kind of program where they work for skilled craftsmen. I don't know - just throwing out ideas off the top of my head.
Hold on to your hat ... (Score:2)
I was against it because of the policies on energy and water.
I'm still against it, btw, even though Canada has done well by it so far, because those 2 aforementioned issues are now coming to the fore.
The desertification of the US midwest is going to create LOTS of problems. I was talking today with someone who actually went to Lake Mead, and he was telling me how he could see how much the water level has gone down. Dry sometime in the next 20 years, with a 10% chance of dry within 10 years.
The people
Re: (Score:2)
Product manufacturing going overseas, foreign interests buying America (literally) [cnn.com] (please tell me I am only being a paranoid xenophobe here), $711.6 billion trade deficit in 2007 is seen as a good thing, housing market finally crapping out (any bets on how much foreclosed real estate won't be owned by Americans soon?), etc.
What scares me is the
Re: (Score:2)
Well, your new neighbours could be Canadian: Falling house prices lure snowbirds south [thestar.com].
Yaz
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
First, some practical advice - You don't see any places offering night courses - why not ask them if they'd consider tentatively scheduling one, and drop it if not enough people enroll? Thats what some colleges here do.
Now back onto the soap box.
Most Americans haven't "gotten" how badly the crooked deals were going on that generated the housing bubble have affected other nations' view of the basic honesty of US citizens.
Tens of millions of people engaged in outright fraud by lying on their loan appli
Jobs going south (and we're on top, not you). (Score:2)
NAFTA is a red herring. Really. Those manufacturing jobs didn't come to Canada -- when NAFTA came into effect, many large US companies which had manufacturing facilities in Canada pulled up roots to consolidate with their manufacturing facilities in the US. Where I was growing up, there was a major Caterpillar plant in town, but after the FTA (several years prior to NAFTA) they pulled up roots. Prior to the FTA it was cheaper for them to manufacture in Canada, but after the FTA it was cheaper to manufac
Re: (Score:2)
(insert reading here)
Ok so let me get this straight, we are making Canadian wood imports more expensive, so it continues to be cost effective for companies to chop down our trees? Oh wait I forgot, wood is "renewable" (cough). I mean crappy new growth timber is the same as all those old trees we already hacked down right? Ok ok I am talking ou
NAFTA probably saved manufacturing jobs (Score:1)
Manufacturing has been something most Western countries have been doing less and less of as it's become difficult to compete with third world sweatshops, so insofar as NAFTA has had an effect, it's probably been to improve the competitiveness of local manufacturers within North America.
I'm more of a free trade person than a tariffs person, I suspect NAFTA was generally a good thing, reducing barriers between economically similiar countries (well, compared to China anyway.) We need more free trade, but pa
I think NAFTA sucks worse than the FTAA (Score:2)
Not that you can't gut it and redesign it, like Obama wants to and Clinton pretends to.
(darn, too bad I wasted my 5 mod points on an earlier journal of yours
Truckers (Score:2)