Free Trade: Fight It, or Embrace It

[dmek25]

saden, you are right on the money. these other countries have NO rules to follow as far as emissions, work safety, and child labor laws. it needs to be established by someone, to keep the playing field level. and gtripp, i respectfully disagree with your statement that outsourcing jobs creates unemployment is a myth. i have seen this first hand in Pennsylvania. Armstrong flooring was a mainstay here in my hometown. it employed over 6500 people. now, that production facility is on the verge of being torn down. fewer then 200 people work there. both of my grandfathers, my wife's grandfathers worked there for over 40 years. these guys earned good enough money to raise their families, and live part of the American dream. i work at Alcoa. when i started, 15 years ago, there were about 1300 employed. now we are under 700. they always talk about how cheap everything we do, can be done in china. Hershey foods shipped 100's of jobs to Mexico. with probably thousands more in the future. our economy isn't able to sustain this drop in employment, with new jobs behind it. the production jobs leaving are all fairly good paying jobs. the jobs replacing those jobs are all 10.00 jobs. going from 50,000.00 a year, or better, to under 40,000.00 a year, or less, is a helluva change in life style