A MORAL DILEMMA: TO BUY OR NOT TO BUY?

SHOPPERS OF CHEAP IMPORTS HAVE BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS: AIR POLLUTION KILLS 4,400 EVERY DAY IN CHINA

PARADOXIC FLIP SIDE OF FREE TRADE DEALS: SAVING AMERICAN LIVES BY EXPORTING DEADLY INDUSTRIES OVERSEAS

One of the most popular sports in American politics is hurling rocks at business leaders and politicians who have supported free trade agreements. Such as Barack Obama’s recent TPP deal. Or his earlier KORUS agreement with Korea. Or Bill Clinton’s NAFTA deal. Or George W. Bush’s ushering of China into WTO (World Trade Organization).

One can easily understand why that is so. All these trade deals have meant losses of millions of American jobs (see Free Trade Costs American Jobs, Newsweek, May 18, 2105 – an excerpt below).

And not only that. As this writer has pointed out in a number of his 1990s geopolitical columns, in a global economy, low wage competition from abroad, including rampant immigration, has meant lower wages for the remaining American jobs.

“The roots of the immigration lie in the liberal elite’s economic interests.

Namely, the lower-paid immigrants not just displace the indigenous workers; they help lower the overall wages of the local people by merely competing for jobs.

The winners, of course, are the business and government elites who own and run large corporations. The “Princes of the 20th Century” are the New World Order’s new aristocracy.” (An excerpt from PLUTOCRATS OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER, Washington Times, May 1997).

“Given that there are roughly 100 million non-college-educated workers in the U.S. economy (about 70 percent of the labor force), the scale of wage losses suffered by this group translates to roughly $180 billion,” the Newsweek estimated in May. Across the full American work force of 157 million, the income losses are even greater.

No wonder, therefore, that people across America rail at the business leaders and politicians who support free trade agreements that result in exports of American jobs abroad. And that’s something that’s been going on for a quarter century now. Remember Ross Perot’s sound byte from the 1992 presidential debate about the “giant sucking sound” of American jobs going overseas?”

PARADOXIC FLIP SIDE OF FREE TRADE DEALS: SAVING AMERICAN LIVES BY EXPORTING DEADLY INDUSTRIES OVERSEAS

But as with most things in life, there is a flip side to these arguments. And it’s something no politician wants to get caught dead talking about. Because there is a hidden high cost of free trade deals.

Tens of thousands of people around the world die every day so American shoppers can enjoy cheap imports. Air pollution is killing 4,400 people every day in China, a new research study has found, according to Aug 14 Huffington Post.

So knowing that, all of the mad shoppers and bargain hunters at Walmart, Target, Sears and other major retailers across the country should know that have blood on their hands, figuratively speaking. Every time they buy a cheap “made in China” or some other low-wage country.

Which is why they are now facing a moral dilemma:

Is saving a buck in America worth killing thousands of people overseas? Worse, is it worth killing our planet?

Because air and chemical pollution kills indiscriminately. It does not kill just the humans. The total environmental costs are, therefore, incalculable.

Occasionally, we are reminded of that by the Spirit realm when industrial disasters occur. Such as the Aug 12 explosion at the Tianjin chemical factory in China that killed at least 50 and injured over 700 people. The warehouse is reported to have contained large quantities of the highly toxic chemical sodium cyanide.

Above was the drone footage of the devastating explosion happened in Tianjin, China on Aug 12th. Thousands of containers were crushed, showing scale of destruction.

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The Tianjin explosions were so massive they could be seen from space, according to satellite photos released by the Japan meteorological agency. The force of the blast also prompted alarm at China’s National Earthquake Network.

Thousands of people have been left homeless, with 6,000 people expected to spend the night in emergency shelters. Witnesses described residents near the site fleeing their homes – some dressed only in their underwear.

The scene of devastation made the neighborhood around the plant look like Hiroshima or Nagasaki after the nuclear blast. Here are now also some photos of the Tianjin destruction from the ground level.

  

UPDATE Aug 16, 2015: The Tianjin death toll climbed to 112 on Sunday as teams scrambled to clear dangerous chemical contamination. In addition, about 1,000 firefighters responded to the disaster, and 85 of them remained unaccounted for on Sunday.

WHAT’S TO BE DONE?

A global solution to the pollution problem is not exporting death and disease from developed countries to the poorer ones, but eliminating the industries that pollute the environment from the face of the earth.

A tall order, I know, given that Greed is what drives the ruling elites who own and benefit from such industries. But what choice do we have if we want to preserve life on this planet?

Which means we must first remove or neutralize the New World Order elites, and then start to build a global society based not on Greed and Division, but on Compassion and Empathy for all sentient and inanimate beings on planet Earth.

Or else, we will all perish together. Yes, the elites, too.

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Free Trade Costs American Jobs

NEWSWEEK MAY 18, 2015 – BY ROBERT E. SCOTT

In 2011, President Obama claimed that the Korea-U.S. free trade agreement (KORUS) would “support 70,000 American jobs” because the agreement would “increase exports of American goods by $10 billion to $11 billion.

He failed to say anything about rising imports, which will put Americans out of work. Looking only at exports is like counting only the runs by the home team. It might make you feel good, but it doesn’t tell you the outcome of the game—it doesn’t tell you whether your team won or lost.

Since KORUS took effect in 2012, exports to Korea have increased by less than $1 billion. Meanwhile, U.S. imports have surged more than $12 billion, resulting in a net loss of 75,000 U.S. jobs.

Similarly, Bill Clinton claimed that NAFTA would create 200,000 jobs in its first two years and a million jobs in five years. Instead, between 1993 (before NAFTA) and 2013, the U.S. trade deficit with Mexico and Canada increased from $17 billion to $177.2 billion, displacing more than 850,000 U.S. jobs.

And then there’s Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China and China’s admission to the World Trade Organization (WTO), which led to an explosion of imports and the loss of more than 3 million jobs, mostly in manufacturing and mostly in occupations that paid more than the jobs created in exports industries, and much more than jobs in non-traded industries.

While trade and investment deals have eliminated millions of good jobs, that’s only the most visible part of their corrosive effect on working Americans. Growing trade with low-wage countries has also driven down the wages of most American workers, especially those without college degrees.

My colleague Josh Bivens has shown that expanded trade with low-wage countries has reduced the annual wages of a typical worker by $1,800 per year. Given that there are roughly 100 million non-college-educated workers in the U.S. economy (about 70 percent of the labor force), the scale of wage losses suffered by this group translates to roughly $180 billion.

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Also see…

PERILS OF LONG-TERM ECONOMIC FORECASTS: THEY ARE STATIC, UNABLE TO ANTICIPATE TRENDS THAT WILL DISRUPT THEM

Luckily for Economists, Nobody Remembers Long-term Trends after 20 Years… Well, Almost Nobody

Back in 1994, The Economist and the World Bank issued a 25-year forecast for the world’s leading economies. This led to a special report, “Indo-China” to Gain Power in Next Quarter Century?  Europeans to End Up Biggest Losers? Re-fusion of Arts & Sciences Should Help
(Nov 1994).

Who Will Be the Next China and India?

The report became a seminal milestones for some of the longest-lasting trends in the world and the IT industry. Perhaps its most important prediction was that there is going to be a re-fusion of arts and sciences, returning Man back to Da Vinci’s renaissance era.

That, of course, had nothing to do whatsoever with the Economist/World Bank 1994 forecast of winners and losers over the next 25 years. Except to point out the deficiencies and inadequacies of long-term predictions that do not take into account new trends that may shape and change the world.

So a dull and ultimately wrong forecast inspired an enlightened one.

The second problem with long-term forecasts is that nobody remembers them by the time they are supposed to come true. Lucky for those who were wrong. Rescued by the oblivion. Except we won’t let them, will we, get off so easy? Which is why I thought I’d start the analysis of the latest Economist long-term forecast by checking to see how they did with their 1994 effort.

Flawed Forecast 21 Years Ago

And I am afraid, perhaps unsurprisingly, not so good. Take a look at this chart. It was part of my Nov 1994 report “End of Western Dominance?”

The blue and yellow bars, which I added today, show what actually happened. The red bars, of course, represent the 1994 forecast. The U.S. economy, in the above chart, is depicted as a base/reference point, and thus shown as zero.

Generally, the 1994 forecasters tended to be too optimistic. Only India exceeded their expectations. China came close. But even China fell short of meeting their expected rate of growth.

Furthermore, China’s growth has slowed considerably in the last few years (right), while India’s is coming on strong (left).

Latest Economist’s Forecast Is Already Obsolete

China Has Already Surpassed the U.S. as World’s Largest Economy in Terms of Purchasing Power

Fast-forwarding now to the latest Economist long-term forecast, released today, China will supposedly surpass the U.S. as the world’s largest economy by 2026.

And India won’t be far behind. Indonesia and Mexico are expected to be two other rising stars if the current globalist world unfolds according to plan.

Alas, that never happens. There are always unforeseen disruptions… political as well as technological that end up being flies in the ointment of economists’ forecasts. So feel free to ignore the latest Economist forecast. Those who did likewise back in 1994 would have done better than those who followed them.

BRIC by BRIC

Perhaps the biggest new factor at the moment is BRICS – an economic and political alliance of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa which is already challenging the U.S. global political and economic domination.

If you take a look at the above chart, which depicts the world’s largest economies at the present time (2015), you will find that 3 of the top 8 countries are BRICS (left chart).

But when you consider the top countries by their purchasing power (right chart), you will see that 4 of the top 7 are BRICS.  In other words, the majority.

And you will also note that China has ALREADY SURPASSED the U.S. in this category as the world’s No. 1 economy, with India, another BRICS country, in the third place, right behind the U.S., but ahead of Japan and Germany.

In other words, the American global leadership is already crumbling.

So the world won’t have to wait till 2026 or beyond to see China and the BRICS countries overtake America and its western minions, as The Economist forecast would have us believe.

As for the real GDP growth, only India, China and the Philippines, are among the top 20 countries in the world. The rest are all smaller African or Asian economies (left chart). No western country is even among the top 30.

Nearly 21 years ago, my long-term forecast was titled “End of Western Dominance?” Now that that has come to pass, the question for the next two decades will be who will be the next China and India?

Guess that chart should give us an idea where the multinationals are now putting their money hoping for growth which is eluding them in the developed world, and the former developing stars.

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Long-term macroeconomic forecast: Key trends to 2050

A new report from The Economist Intelligence Unit examines some of the big economic issues that will shape global business around the world in the coming decades. Read the full report for more.

BRIC by BRIC

In the 1990s, when the term BRIC first became ubiquitous during the post-Cold War expansion of the West into places like China, India, Brazil, and to a lesser extent even into Russia, those nations were regarded by Wall Street investors as “developing countries.” No more. Now that they have built up financial muscle of their own, these countries are also seeking greater political influence in the world.