Old Democrats - New Socialists - Rust Belt Politics

Thomas Sowell always has the right hammer for the task of hitting the nail - look past the rhetoric and use common sense to decide what is reality - Obama, with 'Barack Shock', has turned real people into sobbing children - I know because I have a woman friend that demonstrated this before my very eyes as she related her encounter when Barack came to town. She didn't faint as far as I know, but was visibly shaking with excitement as she related her experience.

All this doesn't bode well for the majority of us that doesn't see the halo and are scratching are collective heads wonder just what did he say to make such a difference in so many people. As far as I can tell, he hasn't said anything of any substance since he declared he was running for president. It's just saying what ever it takes to win - politics Bill Clinton style.

Whether it's Clinton or Obama giving the speech, the message is the same: we have to take away your freedom to chose your own destiny and give it to those that know what is best for you. People that are much smarter than you and will take good care of your every need. A government that can and will control every aspect of your life.

These smart people will take from those that succeed and give to those that don't - Income redistribution - that's fair, isn't it? Why should you have all of the nice things in life when so many don't - besides, who do you think you are anyway?

Sowell nails the New Socialist Progressives, the old liberal party Democrats, here in his discussion of how they 'destructed' the "rust belt". The unions and old Democrats, nationally and locally, used income redistribution back then as they are trying to do now again. This is reality.

Remember, think about what you want out of your life before you pull the lever in November.
Also keep the faith, the battle is joined!

*Rescuing the Rust Belt?*
Policies that promise a free lunch leave you hungry in the long run.

By Thomas Sowell

It is fascinating to watch politicians say how they are going to rescue the “rust belt” regions where jobs are disappearing and companies are either shutting down or moving elsewhere.The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is being blamed for the jobs going elsewhere.

Barack Obama blames the Clinton administration for NAFTA, and that includes Hillary Clinton. Senator Obama says that he is for free trade, provided it is “fair trade.” That is election-year rhetoric at its cleverest.

Since “fair” is one of those words that can mean virtually anything to anybody, what this amounts to is that politicians can pile on whatever restrictions they want, in the name of fairness, and still claim to be for “free trade.” Clever.

We will all have to pay a cost for political restrictions and political cleverness, since there is no free lunch. In fact, free lunches are a big part of the reason for once-prosperous regions declining into rust belts.

When the American automobile industry was the world’s leader in its field, many people seemed to think that labor unions could transfer a bigger chunk of that prosperity to its members without causing economic repercussions. Toyota, Honda, and others who took away more and more of the Big Three automakers’ market share — leading to huge job losses in Detroit — proved once again the old trite saying that there is no free lunch.

Like the United Automobile Workers union in its heyday, unions in the steel industry and other industries piled on costs, not only in wage rates having little relationship to supply and demand, but in all sorts of red-tape work rules that added costs. State and local governments in what later became the rust belt also thought that they too could treat the industries under their jurisdiction as prey rather than assets, and siphon off more of the wealth created by those industries into state and local treasuries with ever higher taxes — again, without considering repercussions.

In the short run, you can get away with all sorts of things. But, in the long run, the chickens come home to roost. The rust belt is where those rising costs have come home to roost. While American automakers are laying off workers by the thousands, Japanese auto makers like Toyota and Honda are hiring thousands of American workers. But they are not hiring them in the rust belt. They are avoiding the rust belt, just as domestic businesses are avoiding the high costs that have been piled on over the years by both unions and governments in rust belt regions.

In short, the rust belts have been killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. That is a viable political strategy, so long as the goose doesn’t die before the next election and politicians can avoid leaving their fingerprints on the weapon. But the people who lose their jobs, and who live in communities that decline, need to look beyond the political rhetoric to the grim reality that there is no free lunch.

Many workers in the new plants being built by Toyota and others apparently already understand that. They have repeatedly voted against being represented by labor unions. They want to keep their jobs. Where does NAFTA come into the picture?

International trade is just one of the many ways in which the competition of lower-cost producers can cause higher-cost producers to lose customers and jobs. Technological improvements or better management practices by domestic competitors can have the same result. Jobs are always disappearing. The big question is why they are not being replaced by new jobs.

Rust belt policies that drove out old jobs also keep out new jobs. NAFTA makes it easier for politicians to blame the problem on foreigners. In fact, foreigners make ideal scapegoats for politicians. After all, people in Japan or India can’t vote in American elections.

Americans who can vote would do well to start spending more time thinking about economic realities, instead of being swept away by political rhetoric.