Paying The Piper, Part One-"NAFTA"

I'm going to be doing a number of articles relevant to the middle class in America. For those who may have missed it, this is a VERY important article, and it will give you a basis to see what's been happening to this country:

http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2010/07/down-goes-middle-class.html

First, as the statistics in the linked article relate, our middle class is in serious trouble. Folks, voting is important, VERY IMPORTANT! The politicians who have caused so much damage didn't do it out of any conspiracy, and I'm sure they meant no harm. On the contrary, they meant well, and if you voted for any of them, it doesn't make you a bad person, BUT seeing the mistakes that have been made, you do need to reassess your voting patterns, in my opinion, or then you DO become part of the problem. Again, this isn't a conspiracy, unless perceived self-interest is a conspiracy. The businesses and high income people who pushed for the kinds of things I'm going to be writing about didn't conspire, I'm pretty certain, to divert the attention of Americans, but they benefit when Americans' minds are elsewhere. Wars, abortion, race, you name it, when we focus on these things, they benefit, because we aren't focused on what THEY'RE doing. I'm certain, if a decade ago, you had asked Americans how important they thought Wall Street was to the overall American economy, a solid majority would have answered that it was not that big of a deal, although their own retirement money may have been invested in stocks and bonds (often in a 401 K). Well, we didn't pay attention to all of the shenanigans, and now do you see where we are?

I know I beat up on Republicans a lot, and that's because they deserve it, but I also have problems with Democrats, and I have stated such many times here, and on occasion, I agree with the Republicans. The problem I have with Republicans is, their basic philosophy took over the country three decades ago. They became the majority party, in sentiment, if not always in numbers. They can't now step back and act as if they didn't have anything to do with America's decline, or with the overall terrible economic mess we're in, not to mention the endless wars which have cost us so many of our brave military people, and also billions and billions of bucks. Democrats aren't blameless, but they have somewhat less blame, although NOT ALWAYS! When I see these congressional votes in the last year and a half, so often with NO Republicans supporting Democratic-sponsored legislation, this tells me that the rightwing fanaticism that has taken over the Republican Party will do anything to bring down this president, including leaving the country go to hell. It is especially troubling to hear Republicans say they want something put into a bill, and then it is inserted, and still they vote "NO." Something wrong here folks! Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell told the Republican senators from the very start that he wanted them to vote "NO" on just about everything. Folks, this isn't a party trying to help govern the country. We have a basic two-party system, and I don't expect, nor do I want, everybody in both parties to always support the same things, but this situation is just not good. If you're a Republican, take back your party!!! As it stands now, Ronald Reagan was too liberal for some of these nutcases.

The North American Free Trade Agreement, better known to most Americans as "NAFTA," created essentially a free trade bloc between the United States, Canada, and Mexico. I'm not quite sure how important NAFTA really is now, compared to the first decade or so of its being in effect, as China and even India, as well as other countries, pose a far greater threat to the U.S. now (and to Mexico, too), and I'll be dealing with that in a future article. I'm not anti-Mexican, in fact, far from it, but the whole problem with the agreement centered around Mexico's involvement. Why? Well, Canada and the United States have similar societies, and I don't mean ethnically or linguistically, which is totally unimportant to me, and I hope is unimportant to you, too. What I mean is, both countries had government regulations to protect workers and their wages and their benefits, and to protect the public from from potentially dangerous products. Mexico has been a relatively poor country, without many of these same regulations, and certainly with much, much lower wages and worker benefits. This wasn't a tough one folks. If you're a business person who could open a plant in Mexico for far, far less money, where would you go? For Americans, in my opinion, this began to put the hurt on many workers without more developed skills. We all can't be Einsteins, or rocket scientists, or search for a cure for cancer. Many American workers who had joined the middle class, or who had been born into the middle class because of their parents working in manufacturing, became vulnerable. During the build-up to the vote, all living former presidents expressed public support for NAFTA; they were: Nixon (Republican), Ford (Republican), Carter (Democrat), Reagan (Republican), Bush, Sr. (Republican). Here is the vote on implementing "NAFTA":

November 17, 1993, House of Representatives: 234 YES (102 Democrats-132 Republicans)
200 NO (156 Democrats-43 Republicans-1 Independent)

November 20, 1993, U.S. Senate: 61 YES (27 Democrats-34 Republicans) 38 NO (28 Democrats-10 Republicans-1 Democrat not voting)

Signed by President Bill Clinton, Democrat, December 8, 1993.

WORD HISTORY:
Trade-I was unable to establish a link to an Indo European root, although that doesn't necessarily mean there isn't one, but sources mention that forms of the word are only found in the Germanic languages. "Trade" started as a noun, and it goes back to the Old Germanic base "tred/trad," which had the idea of "path, course, track, way" (it is closely related to "tread," and its past form, "trod," by the way). In times of old, getting around wasn't as easy as today. "The well-trod path" worn by people exchanging goods came to give Low German the noun "trade," which meant just that, "a well-trod, or trodden, path, or track." This suggests that the word is of West Germanic origin (English is West Germanic, as are German, Dutch and Frisian). The term came to English in the 1300s, undoubtedly due to...ah...trade with the Germans of northwestern Europe. Further, since a person who worked at a particular profession followed their same or regular path for work, it came to be associated with "trade," usually in the sense of skilled workers (in the 1800s, English developed the term "trade unions" from this idea), and then also even in business, as those who exchanged goods or goods for money, was their "trade."