This is nonsense. As I stated in a previous post, I strongly believe that the 3 stakeholders in any company are (in order of importance): 1.) Employees, 2.) Customers, and 3.) Shareholders. I don’t see how executive management–which is becoming a sort of “royalty cast” within this country–can justify increasing their own wealth at the expense of turning out their own countrymen to the streets because they are unwilling to work for 1/3 pay.

However, I concede that for global companies that actually have global competition (I mean, for goodness sake, what company really competes with Microsoft?) then a global economy does indeed help level the playing field for them and I agree in theory that it makes sense to move in the direction of global free trade.

But at what cost? The unbelievably rapid global economic changes caused by the various AFTAs have resulted in a zero sum game. The ultimate end is countries like ours that have built wealth over the past couple centuries have to lose it for poor countries like India to gain it. This is just global redistribution of wealth.

I just suggest that we move more slowly in the global trade game, and try to pay attention to just how much damage our unbelievably huge trade deficit is going to cause to the US economy in the intermediate term.

If we believe in leaving our children with a better world–an argument used by environmentalists for pushing Kyoto, etc.–then we should be careful not to bankrupt our own country with unbridled and dangerous policy that is just too much too soon.

Well, there you have another musing…

Thanks, Craig!

Erik