Goodbye, Free Trade; Hello, Mercantilism

SOME people and jobs lose to competition?!?

No US worker has any chance of competing with an Indian or Chinese worker who gets 1/6th or less of the US workewr's salary, and little or no benefits (while working under no safety or environmental regulations). To call this "competition" is false ... the US worker has no chance to compete, even if he/she was willing to accept compensation falling way below any poverty line the US has set.

Worse, in our arrogance, we tell ourselves "they'll only ship the low-end jobs oversees, saving the best and best-paying for us." Are the people who tell us this lying or actually deluded enough to believe this? Look at our graduate and PhD programs HERE IN THE US, right now! In all of the technical fields -- engineering, biochemistry, math, science -- what nationalities do you see represented the most? Asian! Now, I don't begrudge them this at all, but I want to smack the lairs and/or idiots who are arrogant enough to think that "natural US superiority will always save a privileged position for us."

The combination of hemorrhaging American jobs offshore, over-extended basement budget rates on Prime Rate to cover the fact we never really recovered from the last recession (except in the most technical sense), and vast tax deferments that masquerade as tax cuts has the US economy heading off a cliff and the Middle Class about to become seriously truncated.

We have, as predicted, sold them the rope by which to hang us.

Quick and brief, but factual and open for further reporting and information.
There is a balance between Free Trade and Protectionism, by any name. The trick being everyone has to recognize the advantages of finding and maintaining that balance.