- Joined
- Mar 9, 2017
- Messages
- 22,102
- Reaction score
- 13,500
- Location
- Ontario, Canada
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Progressive
I'd like some bright soul to come up with a list of changes made to NAFTA because they were disadvantaging the USA. I won't hold my breath.
Because of our leadership's relationship with the "swamp" and an inability to make difficult decisions that won't get you "likes", you accept cheating and hope no one notices until you are gone. Every wrench turner, hammer swinger, and keyboard banger knew we were being taken for a ride by our trade agreements. The only people who benefited are investors who's assets increased in value, while wage earners buying power shrunk to zero when they got laid off.
People were forced to train their replacements in exchange for severance pay. What did our leadership say? A lot. What did they do? Nothing.
But, you got cheaper goods to buy...same up here. We lost jobs too. People learned to do different things. That will happen. The rate of that change is something trade agreements can do better, but streamlining economies is one of the benefits of trade agreements...at least, in theory. When you add corporate greed and lobbying, you of course change the game. Sadly we only have votes to offer, and there are only so many directions we can offer them in. Corporations have huge budgets for buying policy and politicians, and until certain segments of our society stop demanding corporate deregulation, which will never be nearly as beneficial to them as to the corporations who have them convinced it's in their best interest, we won't be able to change things.
Trade agreements, like guns, are not to blame, but rather the people that use them. It's always back to people. The good news is, with different people we can have different outcomes. It's just a matter of how many people we have to swap out.