Hold on a sec. Why is there such a disparity?
It's interesting because, for the most part, recent growths in income disparity have taken place during periods of favorable growth within America. High GDP, stable inflation, low unemployment. There are lots of theories as to why, but only one thing matters and that would be that it's happening because people are letting it happen. Yes, corporations are partially to blame, but by nature maximizing profit is their function. You can't expect them to just out of the blue sit there and offer more then they have to. If anything is going to change it'll have to be because they either have no choice or the alternatives aren't as beneficial as increasing profit across the board. You're totally right in that to them, labor is capital and I couldn't agree more that that is a problem which needs to be dealt with. The question is how to deal with it.
Brining up sacrifice, you're completely kidding yourself if you think that it can be dealt with without any sacrifice at all. Every possible solution has a major downside. Stronger labour unions demanding more pay = using foreign labour is all of a sudden more beneficial. Shut down trade agreements and institute tariffs to keep competition out of the domestic market = the global market shutting your products out = less product going out = fewer jobs = less combined purchasing power = fewer domestic market sales = fewer jobs. And so on and so forth.
That's not to say any of these options are a bad idea PERIOD, that's just to say that there are very pronounced downsides to any major national economic policy change. The trick to it is to weigh the negatives of drastic change against the negatives of staying on course and slowly restructuring with long term goals. And what does "long term" mean from an economic standpoint. Generally, it means decades. But honestly, where exactly do you thing NAFTA has taken you? I understand that you live in Ohio, which is notoriously anti-NAFTA and politicians try to exploit that, but the simple fact is that there is no real concrete answer of where it's taken you. Any employment statistic you've heard regarding NAFTA is either altered in some way, taken out of context, or widely disputed. The fact is it's nearly impossible to measure the short term effects of a comprehensive agreement the size of NAFTA. All anyone actually knows is that since the year of inception employment has gone up, GDP has increased, and the balance of trade has shifted. Any other marginally broad statistic is generally flawed and invalid. A key thing to remember when people with interests bring up statistics on employment is that job loss and job displacement aren't even close to the same thing, yet they're usually talking about the wrong one in order to stack the numbers without outright lying.
The problem with both of those terms is that they allow for continued abuse behind the unsubstantiated promise of a better future at some undefined time in the future
Pessimistically true, but what's the alternative really? There's uncertainty and the potential of economic strife and collapse around the corner in either case and the American public isn't willing to allow government intervention into their daily lives on the scale necessary to create 'absolute' stability. The true answer probably lies somewhere in between, but Americans have to get off their asses and decide what they want, and sadly 90% of them don't care about or understand basic economic theory.
I don't know what you're suggesting the actual path should be, and I'm probably missing something but it seems to me like what you're saying is :
Shut down FTAs, protect local industry. This makes jobs, and that solves the problem. The first part isn't entirely wrong and it's worked for places. China blew up under strict protectionist policies...but China is it's own breed and was developed to be self-sufficient in a global political environment which essentially treated it as the enemy. America is developmentally dependent on some level of global integration and is quickly losing (or it's arguably already lost it) the influence it once had to stack deals in it's favor. But what exactly do you see
the problem as being specifically. Just job loss? Declining value of the dollar? Mortgage foreclosures? The American economic situation as a whole? Because a lot of the problems going on with the economy in America is completely internal. I don't want to come off sounding like a dick here, but the political and consumeristic attitudes of Americans is basically just starting to come back and bite you in the ass.
You mentioned skid row, do you know why the GDP means nothing to skid row in America? Because Americans have never given a shit about skid row. Sure, many claim to and some probably sincerely do, but no one has ever wanted to
sacrifice anything when there was nothing in return for them. Look at the rest of the highly developed world with heavily subsidized or free post secondary eduction, working health care systems, subsidized prescriptions, well funded public education, developed welfare systems and public housing programs. People basically have to try to fall through the cracks in order to not be caught by the social safety net. And why do these far less wealthy countries with basically the same political and financial institutions have this much more developed safety net as well as a much higher standard of living? Sacrifice. Because the people in these countries all said "You know what, this is going to cost me money, but it helps someone out. It probably won't be me, but what do I care if I pay a few dollars more tax on every paycheque if it saves some lives or helps out those who can't help themselves? It's for the good of the whole." Americans, on the other hand, looked at the money they would have paid into it and thought "whitewall tires....fuck yeah".
And there's nothing wrong with that; it's a more free mentality and a more free economy. Yet, at the same time you can't look at it, play the victim card and pretend some mexican put all the people there, Americans put those people there whether it be because they wanted cheaper consumer products, wanted their stocks to go up, or just generally thought it wasn't an issue. And sure, the politicians, corporations, and the general 'elite' are partially to blame, but what do you expect when Americans make it very apparent that they're going to vote based on irrelevant shit like who did or did not show up to training camp in the 1960s?
You're right, the trick to maintaining a standard quality of living for America in the future might just very well be isolating yourselves from the rest of the world, centralizing your government, cutting back freedoms, removing energy dependency, and restructuring the economy to be wholly self-sufficient. There's a possibility of some middle ground there, but the strengths of the American economy are being replaced and chances are that no one is going to bend over backwards anymore when China and India are just as lucrative. But, you know there's going to have to be sacrifice to do that as well. As I said, any major change is going to require sacrifice somewhere or other. Accept it or don't, it doesn't matter. The reason I'm so against the idea is I don't think the American people have it in them. They'd rather buy a plasma then worry about how their kid is going to pay for college. They'd rather furnish their new condo with designer goods rather than put any savings away in order to cover any rainy days because they signed on to a mortgage with a variable interest rate and didn't double check the math themselves. They'd also rather continue to rack up debt and clamor for a low prime interest rate when they've been told time and time again that all they're doing is inflating a massive credit bubble which will eventually have to either collapse in on itself or burst (get ready for that bitch).
I'm not against the idea because it goes against the majority accepted economic theory, although that it a small part of it. What does that matter when it doesn't help the little guy as you said. I'm against the idea because I think any change towards traditional protectionist policy will be half assed, not directly benefit those who it should, cause suffering in others, and once again distract America from the real problems. Sure there still will be benefits, but will it be overall beneficial? Chances are that future American generations are going to have to start giving up stuff. The population is growing exponentially, resources certainly aren't, and now there's actually global competition. That's the problem, not NAFTA. NAFTA is trying to stay relevant in a world that no longer really gives all enough of a shit about a 300 million strong industrialized market in order to be raped by lowering their own tariffs while dealing with high American ones because there was little alternative. Whether NAFTA is beneficial or not isn't that big of an issue, accepting that the American industrial advantage has already been lost and planning for the future is. That doesn't necessarily mean free trade, that just means accepting that no matter what option you decide to take, there will be sacrifice involved. It's up to you whether or not you want to listen to the academics. Don't want to accept that there's going to have to be sacrifice and try to apply an outdated economic model to a system it doesn't really fit without implementing the changes necessary for said model? That's also fine, you don't have to accept it: either it will all work out or your decedents will do it for you....no one really knows.
