http://www.cnn.com/2009/OPINION/11/27/n ... index.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
This type of thinking is why the mainstream media sucks. The idea that it's the U.S. workers fault for the current state of the country is absurd.
Competition. A simple concept and a beneficial one. It makes us better by forcing us to work harder. Sadly, it's also an idea that is going out of style in a society where students expect to get good grades just for showing up, where everyone gets a ribbon no matter where they finish, and where parents scheme to get their kids into college by lobbying state legislatures to create set-asides for in-state residents at public universities.
Geez, Ruben where was your competition mantra say last year? Or five years ago or 20 years ago? I guess big business doesn't have to compete???
When we're not hiding from domestic competition, we're trying to shield ourselves from the foreign variety. High-skilled workers don't want to compete with those from China, India or Pakistan. Low-skilled workers are just as afraid of those from Mexico, Guatemala or El Salvador.
Who wouldn't want to compete with countries that pay their workers under living wages?
Explain to me how workers frame U.S. policies that let these conditions exist?
In last year's Democratic presidential primary, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton tried to give displaced workers in Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania a convenient villain to blame -- the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Another oversimplification. Could you maybe explain the benefits of the NAFTA, please, becasue a lot of people object to it. Like people with advanced degrees. Not just some idiotic statement that protectionism leads to laziness. Dear Lord.
Why should U.S. citizens get a benefit not from education or hard work but from something they had nothing to do with -- where they were born?
Okay, we agree.
If a job is available, U.S. workers should be free to compete for it, but not have it handed to them on a silver platter.
Clearly, when unemployment is at 10% that is what is happening.
Of course, protectionists claim that the playing field isn't level since foreign workers will often accept less money to do the same job, thus putting American workers at a disadvantage.
Really, becasue that isn't what most say.
Tough. President John Kennedy had it right. At a press conference in March 1962, while fielding a question about military reservists who were upset at being mobilized and deployed to Europe and Southeast Asia, Kennedy made the point that there is no level playing field -- not ever."There is always inequity in life," he said. "Some men are killed in a war, and some men are wounded, and some men never leave the country, and some men are stationed in the Antarctic, and some are stationed in San Francisco. It's very hard in military or in personal life to assure complete equality. Life is unfair."
Oh, while that's great reasoning. Life is unfair so we do nothing and continue to make it unfair. Yet, it was JFK that started New Frontier programs. You would have thought he would have tossed his hands in the air and said "oh boy life sucks".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Frontier#Medical" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
That way, they don't have to go into the private sector and compete for jobs with the rest of us. You see, our aversion to competition starts at the top.
Right about that one. Our corporate owners never compete.
Here are some facts. Americans work longer hours then most countries in the world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_ti ... ent_trends" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
"Hard work" is a subjective statement. I would assume longer working hours means harder work but who knows. This article gives good insight into how the mainstream media thinks. The refusal to ever question the people that were directly responsible for the current economic and political problems with the country.( Corporate America and government) . Instead this writer and more like him make some idiotic comparison to competition and the working's class, yet, the lack of competition and hard work is what directly led to the current problems by the elites that own this country. The corporate medias refusal to ever question authority is disgusting and a down right failure. These people get paid tons of money to "inform" us but we get articles blaming workers of the U.S. problems.
So who are these mythical conservatives that are "pure" to Conservatism?