The Myth of the NAFTA Superhighway

[Niflmir]

Or, that the proclivity of humans to believe in conspiracy theories is quite large, and this myth has taken a life of its own on the Internet, which is now effecting the purpose of the SPP.

Of course, if they hadn't refuted the myths, the conspiracists would view the lack of denial as proof the group was up to something nefarious. It reminds of a scene in the Life of Brian where Brians followers insist that "Only the true messiah would deny he's the messiah." When Brian responds "Okay, I'm your messiah," the crowd erupts "Messiah! Messiah!" People will believe what they want to believe.

Yeah, I can definitely see how that scene is reminiscent here.

But with the presidential advance manual in the light of day, we must begin to question how large the government propaganda machine is, since we have evidence of its existence. Now, the story you posted has none of the signs of a classic conspiracy theory. Generally one finds the conspiracy theory and has to refute it, but here before we are even aware of the conspiracy theory, there is someone refuting it. Normally with a conspiracy theory, the author, so proud of uncovering such astounding corruption loudly proclaims that they discovered it. We don't get that here.

Look at the amazing amount of time I have to spend to say: ignore this tripe. The real opponents of SPP, of which I am one, don't believe this garbage. I have no idea who believes this garbage and have never met anyone who believes it. I have on the other hand met many people who know that SPP isn't this garbage, but don't really know what SPP entails. To me that screams propaganda, not conspiracy.

SPP is not about a brighter future for our democracy. It is a collection of CEO's that got together and answered the question, "How do we make doing business easier for ourselves?" Their answer: tighter government regulations. The regulations are motivated based on an abstract concept of security of society over security of individuals, this will make it harder for labour to move around to get jobs. Read their prosperity annex, it is quite clear what these things are about. They want to create a North American steel monopoly, and automotive monopoly. They want to homogenize safety regulations and limit the power of governments to impose alternate safety regulations:

Work towards greater North American convergence on regulatory practices through the use of Global Harmonization Task Force (GHTF) guidances: by March 2008.

And that is labeled as an initiative to ensure sectoral or regional competitiveness: by eliminating the power of regional governments to regulate.

To ease movement accross borders? New red tape, apparently hypothetical new tape cuts faster than old red tape? But make it easier for shipment transports to cross. They want a commuter-crossing from the US to Mexico, but feel they must use secure as an adjective.

There are pages and pages of initiatives to make the borders more transparent to corporations and really nothing to make it transparent to citizens. Their environmental intiatives have nothing to do with reducing our impact and are superficial at best, reduce sulphur content of fuels? That's great, but we really need to reduce our consumption, carbon dioxide is the biggest problem.

I am all for globalization, but it must be done by putting people first. You want to harmonize regulations, its easy. Force everyone to accept the most stringent current regulations and allow a nation to unilaterally make it stricter. This will ensure the safest environment for workers and the safest products on the market. Negotiating towards the lowest common denominator is a good way to set up sweat shops, that is what NAFTA accomplished.

The regulations proposed are enormous. The governments give up nearly all power to enforce stricter standards in worker safety, product safety, and pollution. These powers are trusted to an international task force whose members will be appointed and thus not accountable to the people.

That is why I oppose the initiatives of the SPP. It puts the rights of abstract entities with limited liabilities (corporations) above the rights of individuals who will feel real harm from these proposed regulations.

If you know that this NAFTA superhighway stuff is garbage, then ignore it and talk about the reality of the SPP, because it is coming and it will cause some very real problems. Even if you are a professional whose labour market will be protected, you should fear the stagnation of the real wages of labour employment. Low wages and high unemployment are highly correlated with crime, unless you can afford your own security guard, in which case you probably aren't worried.

 

[TenPenny]

I like the 'professional whose labour market is protected' nonsense, because it is precisely those with degrees and qualifications that NAFTA opened up the borders to.

 

[MikeyDB]

You gentlemen seem to have a far greater knowledge of the pulse of international and domestic economics than I enjoy... If we compared the amount of money re-directed from the American domestic experience of Consumption Capital of the World...and devoted instead into the coffers of Raytheon and a lengthy list of corporate profiteers to say nothing of the lofty climes of "friends of the Administration" that have put integrity and intellect as concepts...on the run.

Factoring in lost production and consumption what do those figures mean for Americans and Iraqis?

What's contained in various chapters of the North America Free Trade Agreement will have direct influence on the political complexion in Canada, because these many and various "trade agreements" and legal bafflegab mean at the end of the day that Canada has both knowingly and intentionally invested in selling Canadian resources and geography to the highest bidder. Arctic sovereignty and "Trade Agreements" have proven to be fluid and malleable concepts depending on whether the interpretation applied is Canadian or American... A mystery crafted by people heavily invested in achieving their personal "end" regardless of the "means" taken.

 

[Niflmir]

I like the 'professional whose labour market is protected' nonsense, because it is precisely those with degrees and qualifications that NAFTA opened up the borders to.

Really? A Mexican educated doctor can waltz on up to Canada and set up practice the minute his visa is stamped? Sure, the government made it easier to for professionals to come to Canada, but that was unrelated to NAFTA; they did it because they noticed the astoundingly low wages amongst new immigrants and thought that giving precedence to professionals would fix that.

Once a professional arrives in Canada they generally must to go through an Accreditation procedure which is exceptionally expensive for a newly immigrated family. Universities normally are forced to adopt a Canadians first hiring policy to accept public funds.

Unifying the accreditation across the borders would be freeing up the market a little. They didn't touch it at all. Foreign nationals still need an American escort at all times in the JPL, so no NAFTA didn't free up the professional market. Our government tried to for other reasons, but that was completely unilateral.

 

[Niflmir]

You gentlemen seem to have a far greater knowledge of the pulse of international and domestic economics than I enjoy... If we compared the amount of money re-directed from the American domestic experience of Consumption Capital of the World...and devoted instead into the coffers of Raytheon and a lengthy list of corporate profiteers to say nothing of the lofty climes of "friends of the Administration" that have put integrity and intellect as concepts...on the run.

Factoring in lost production and consumption what do those figures mean for Americans and Iraqis?

What's contained in various chapters of the North America Free Trade Agreement will have direct influence on the political complexion in Canada, because these many and various "trade agreements" and legal bafflegab mean at the end of the day that Canada has both knowingly and intentionally invested in selling Canadian resources and geography to the highest bidder. Arctic sovereignty and "Trade Agreements" have proven to be fluid and malleable concepts depending on whether the interpretation applied is Canadian or American... A mystery crafted by people heavily invested in achieving their personal "end" regardless of the "means" taken.

Don't forget that by "free trade" they mean doublespeak and really mean "stronger government enforcement of monopoly regulations."

 

[Toro]

But with the presidential advance manual in the light of day, we must begin to question how large the government propaganda machine is, since we have evidence of its existence. Now, the story you posted has none of the signs of a classic conspiracy theory. Generally one finds the conspiracy theory and has to refute it, but here before we are even aware of the conspiracy theory, there is someone refuting it. Normally with a conspiracy theory, the author, so proud of uncovering such astounding corruption loudly proclaims that they discovered it. We don't get that here.

Not being particularly attuned to what "classic" conspiracy theory is - is there a "neoclassical" and/or a "modernist" conspiracy theory as well? - this sure seems evidence of classic conspiracy stuff to me. From the OP

"Construction of the NAFTA highway from Laredo, Texas to Canada is now underway," read a letter in the February 13 San Gabriel Valley Tribune. "Spain will own most of the toll roads that connect to the superhighway. Mexico will own and operate the Kansas City Smart Port. And NAFTA tribunal, not the U.S. Supreme Court, will have the final word in trade disputes. Will the last person please take down the flag?" There are many more where that came from. "The superhighway has the potential to cripple the West Coast economy, as well as posing an enormous security breach at our border," read a letter from the January 7 San Francisco Chronicle. "So far, there has been no public participation or debate on this important issue. Public participation and debate must begin now."

The conspiracy is that a secretive group of shadowy CEOs and their government puppets are planning a stealth legislative agenda that will be passed without debate and usurp the sovereignty of independent nations so nefarious and foreign business interests (the "foreign" is important as it plays to xenophobia) can reap enormous profits, subjugate democracy and exploit the powerless masses. Seems pretty "classic" to me.

The NAFTA Superhighway is merely a part of this grand conspiracy. There are other aspects as well, such as the creation of the "Amero" which will supposedly replace the national currencies, which, in and of itself, should invalidate pretty much everything else the conspiracists purport. This is perhaps the most clueless conspiracy theory I have ever heard - outside the 9/11 conspiracies. As an active participant in capital markets, and employed at an institution that can trade up to billions of dollars in the money markets every day, I have never heard once - not once! - the impending swap of the dollar for the Amero, something that perhaps would be of interest in the $2 trillion a day currency market of which the lynchpin is the American dollar. Yet, this theory is promoted by the conspiracists as assuredly as the "NAFTA Superhighway," all part some grand design to create a "North American Union." You can take an ACE inhibitor to lower your blood pressure or you can use leeches. Its your choice.

Look at the amazing amount of time I have to spend to say: ignore this tripe. The real opponents of SPP, of which I am one, don't believe this garbage. I have no idea who believes this garbage and have never met anyone who believes it. I have on the other hand met many people who know that SPP isn't this garbage, but don't really know what SPP entails. To me that screams propaganda, not conspiracy.

Do you think Logic7 is part of the CIA then? I take Logic at his/her word, and believe that he/she truly believes in the NAU conspiracy theory I outlined above.

SPP is not about a brighter future for our democracy. It is a collection of CEO's that got together and answered the question, "How do we make doing business easier for ourselves?" Their answer: tighter government regulations. The regulations are motivated based on an abstract concept of security of society over security of individuals, this will make it harder for labour to move around to get jobs. Read their prosperity annex, it is quite clear what these things are about. They want to create a North American steel monopoly, and automotive monopoly. They want to homogenize safety regulations and limit the power of governments to impose alternate safety regulations:

And that is labeled as an initiative to ensure sectoral or regional competitiveness: by eliminating the power of regional governments to regulate.

To ease movement accross borders? New red tape, apparently hypothetical new tape cuts faster than old red tape? But make it easier for shipment transports to cross. They want a commuter-crossing from the US to Mexico, but feel they must use secure as an adjective.

There are pages and pages of initiatives to make the borders more transparent to corporations and really nothing to make it transparent to citizens. Their environmental intiatives have nothing to do with reducing our impact and are superficial at best, reduce sulphur content of fuels? That's great, but we really need to reduce our consumption, carbon dioxide is the biggest problem.

I am all for globalization, but it must be done by putting people first. You want to harmonize regulations, its easy. Force everyone to accept the most stringent current regulations and allow a nation to unilaterally make it stricter. This will ensure the safest environment for workers and the safest products on the market. Negotiating towards the lowest common denominator is a good way to set up sweat shops, that is what NAFTA accomplished.

The regulations proposed are enormous. The governments give up nearly all power to enforce stricter standards in worker safety, product safety, and pollution. These powers are trusted to an international task force whose members will be appointed and thus not accountable to the people.

That is why I oppose the initiatives of the SPP. It puts the rights of abstract entities with limited liabilities (corporations) above the rights of individuals who will feel real harm from these proposed regulations.

I disagree with you, but I respect your opinion. I view that as reasoned opposition, not wild conspiracy-laden stuff.

The problem I have with the concept of a NAFTA Superhighway being built by the government - or anyone else for that matter - is that it doesn't seem to make a whole lot of economic sense. You can already travel very efficiently along the interstate system. Plus, putting the main thruway through the central US doesn't make much sense, let alone going to Winnipeg, since the population is primarily on the coasts of both countries. It is far more economical to land at the coast, then distribute from those points. The costs of unloading at a Mexican dock as opposed to an LA or NY dock isn't much of a differentiator when comparing total costs of transportation, especially when factoring the costs of transporting thousands of miles over a toll road.

If you know that this NAFTA superhighway stuff is garbage, then ignore it and talk about the reality of the SPP, because it is coming and it will cause some very real problems. Even if you are a professional whose labour market will be protected, you should fear the stagnation of the real wages of labour employment. Low wages and high unemployment are highly correlated with crime, unless you can afford your own security guard, in which case you probably aren't worried.

Why address the Logic7's of the world? Because the conspiracists distort the debate. Look no further than 9/11. A sizable portion of the population firmly believe Bush and the US government was behind 9/11, a notion utterly bizarre and preposterous. Yet, that notion resonates throughout the world and effects the political debate. Without refutation, it grows. Its no different than this supposedly insidious NAU conspiracy.

If you believe that the conspiracy theorists are distorting your "side" of the argument, then you should be as equally insistent that what they are saying is false.

 

[Niflmir]

Not being particularly attuned to what "classic" conspiracy theory is - is there a "neoclassical" and/or a "modernist" conspiracy theory as well? - this sure seems evidence of classic conspiracy stuff to me. From the OP

The conspiracy is that a secretive group of shadowy CEOs and their government puppets are planning a stealth legislative agenda that will be passed without debate and usurp the sovereignty of independent nations so nefarious and foreign business interests (the "foreign" is important as it plays to xenophobia) can reap enormous profits, subjugate democracy and exploit the powerless masses. Seems pretty "classic" to me.

The NAFTA Superhighway is merely a part of this grand conspiracy. There are other aspects as well, such as the creation of the "Amero" which will supposedly replace the national currencies, which, in and of itself, should invalidate pretty much everything else the conspiracists purport. This is perhaps the most clueless conspiracy theory I have ever heard - outside the 9/11 conspiracies. As an active participant in capital markets, and employed at an institution that can trade up to billions of dollars in the money markets every day, I have never heard once - not once! - the impending swap of the dollar for the Amero, something that perhaps would be of interest in the $2 trillion a day currency market of which the lynchpin is the American dollar. Yet, this theory is promoted by the conspiracists as assuredly as the "NAFTA Superhighway," all part some grand design to create a "North American Union." You can take an ACE inhibitor to lower your blood pressure or you can use leeches. Its your choice.

Do you think Logic7 is part of the CIA then? I take Logic at his/her word, and believe that he/she truly believes in the NAU conspiracy theory I outlined above.

I disagree with you, but I respect your opinion. I view that as reasoned opposition, not wild conspiracy-laden stuff.

The problem I have with the concept of a NAFTA Superhighway being built by the government - or anyone else for that matter - is that it doesn't seem to make a whole lot of economic sense. You can already travel very efficiently along the interstate system. Plus, putting the main thruway through the central US doesn't make much sense, let alone going to Winnipeg, since the population is primarily on the coasts of both countries. It is far more economical to land at the coast, then distribute from those points. The costs of unloading at a Mexican dock as opposed to an LA or NY dock isn't much of a differentiator when comparing total costs of transportation, especially when factoring the costs of transporting thousands of miles over a toll road.

Why address the Logic7's of the world? Because the conspiracists distort the debate. Look no further than 9/11. A sizable portion of the population firmly believe Bush and the US government was behind 9/11, a notion utterly bizarre and preposterous. Yet, that notion resonates throughout the world and effects the political debate. Without refutation, it grows. Its no different than this supposedly insidious NAU conspiracy.

If you believe that the conspiracy theorists are distorting your "side" of the argument, then you should be as equally insistent that what they are saying is false.

Ok. Here is what you need to know:

[SIZE=-1]There are no plans to build a new NAFTA Superhighway - it exists today as I-35.[/SIZE]

That is NASCO, an affiliate of the SPP.

NAFTA was not good for the prosperity of the general population. Most people have seen their wages fall below inflation, loss of job security and the clawing back of benefits since 1994. I can go and read every word of normal legislation as it gets passed in Canada, but I can not see anything but the polished versions of discussions on SPP. I have no reason to believe that these CEO's are worried about unemployment, low real wages or loss of worker benefits as all of those things are good from a top down perspective. In short, I expect SPP to be the continuation of NAFTA that was predicted before NAFTA was even released: regulations converging to the lowest common denominator. All the documents I have read from their various branches provide more and more evidence of that. NASCO and ATLANTICA are two simple examples.

 

[Toro]

NAFTA was not good for the prosperity of the general population. Most people have seen their wages fall below inflation, loss of job security and the clawing back of benefits since 1994.

The evidence suggests otherwise.

First, the FTA had no long-run effect on the Canadian employment rate which was 62 percent both in April 1988 and April 2002. Second, Canadian manufacturing employment has been more robust than in most OECD countries. For example, between April 1988 and April 2002, manufacturing employment rose by 9.1 percent in Canada, but fell by 12.9 percent in the United States and by 9.7 percent in Japan. This suggests, albeit not conclusively, that the transition costs were short run in the sense that within 10 years the lost employment was made up for by employment gains in other parts of manufacturing.

... the Canadian tariff concessions raised labour productivity by 15 percent in the most-impacted, import-competing group of industries. This translates into an enormous compound annual growth rate of 1.9 percent. The fact that the effect is smaller and statistically insignificant at the plant level suggests that much of the productivity gain is coming from market share shifts favouring high productivity plants. Such share shifting would come about from the growth of high-productivity plants and the demise and/or exit of low-productivity plants.

... The plant-level numbers indicate that the FTA raised labour productivity in manufacturing by 7.4 percent or by an annual compound growth rate of 0.93 percent. The industry-level numbers are about the same. These numbers, along with the 14-15 percent effects for the most-impacted importers and exporters, are enormous. The idea that an international trade policy could raise labour productivity so dramatically is to my mind remarkable. ...

There is modest evidence ... that the FTA reduced import prices by 7 percent for the most-impacted import-competing products.

... Most commentators expected Canadian wages to fall in response to competition from lessunionized, less-educated workers in the southern United States. ...For all workers, the tariff concessions raised annual earnings. For example, the total FTA impact is a rise of 3 percent at both the industry level and the plant level. ... At the plant level, earnings rose for both production and non-production workers. At the industry level, earnings gains were concentrated among production workers. ... a 3 percent rise in earnings spread over 8 years will buy you more than a cup of coffee, but not at Starbucks. The important finding is not that earnings went up, but that earnings did not go down in response to competitive pressures from the U.S. South.

... unionization does not offer an explanation of modestly rising earnings.

... There is a presumption in the popular press that anything to do with globalization will worsen income inequality. It is thus reassuring that there is absolutely no evidence that the FTA worsened income inequality.

... Several strong conclusions emerged from the analysis. First, the FTA was associated with substantial employment losses: 12 percent for the most-impacted, import competing group of industries and 5 percent for manufacturing as a whole. These effects appear in both the industry- and plant-level analyses. Second, the FTA led to large labour productivity gains. For the most-impacted, export-oriented group of industries, labour productivity rose by 14 percent at the plant level. For the most-impacted, import-competing group of industries, labour productivity rose by 15 percent with at least half of this coming from the exit and/or contraction of low-productivity plants. For manufacturing as a whole, labour productivity rose by about 6 percent which is remarkable given that much of manufacturing was duty free before implementation of the FTA. Third, the FTA created more trade than it diverted and possibly lowered import prices. Thus, the FTA likely raised aggregate welfare.

http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~trefler/fta.pdf

 

[normbc9]

Well Mexicasn Presuident vcalderone had to leave tio tend to his cities decimated by hurricane dean but I'll bet he left his shopping list at the table. He needs more sources of money to pilfer and the northern tier countries present that opportunity. With his oil prodcution shut down temporarily the cash flow problems will surface right away. Look out motoring tourists. The governemnet thugs will be out sticking you up so they can get paid next week.

 

[TenPenny]

Really? A Mexican educated doctor can waltz on up to Canada and set up practice the minute his visa is stamped? Sure, the government made it easier to for professionals to come to Canada, but that was unrelated to NAFTA; they did it because they noticed the astoundingly low wages amongst new immigrants and thought that giving precedence to professionals would fix that.

Once a professional arrives in Canada they generally must to go through an Accreditation procedure which is exceptionally expensive for a newly immigrated family. Universities normally are forced to adopt a Canadians first hiring policy to accept public funds.

Unifying the accreditation across the borders would be freeing up the market a little. They didn't touch it at all. Foreign nationals still need an American escort at all times in the JPL, so no NAFTA didn't free up the professional market. Our government tried to for other reasons, but that was completely unilateral.

Well, apparently you know more about my profession than I do. I defer to your incredible knowledge. I guess all of those times that I've sat on a board and interviewed immigrants from China and Chile and Romania didn't happen.

My apologies.

 

[Niflmir]

The evidence suggests otherwise.

http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~trefler/fta.pdf

So, I was not talking about the employment rate at all, it is not a good economic indicator because you must normalize to job security, which is incredibly difficult to quantify. Many jobs in Canada are now temporary or contractual, whereas they were once permanent, with benefits that is not reflected by the employment rate, and is well known to our parliament. What I said is that wages have fallen behind inflation, that is that if you compare the increase in wages to the increase in CPI, you will see that wages are stagnant. If you compare wage increases to increases in the GDP you will see that the wages are falling compared to the national gdp. If you have full access to CHASS, you can compute these things yourself from CANSIM data. The relevent vectors of the time series are V15856257, V498918 and V735319. They represent the average wage, the nominal GDP and the CPI respectively. You will have to renormalize the data, since some of them are normalised to different dates. But take a look, you will see that I am right: wages are stagnant with relation to the CPI and are falling in relation to the GDP. Which is in no way refuted by the quote you posted, since they are talking about different economic indicators. He points out that wages have increased, but he does not normalise that to the rising cost of living. When you do that the evidence becomes clear.

So as you can see, if you look at what I was talking about, as opposed to something else, you will see that I have done my homework. How well you believe the economy is doing depends on your arbitrary choice of indicator. If you look at our GDP and normalize it to the CPI, we are doing fantastic. But if you look at the average wages of workers and normalize that to the CPI, nothing has changed. Thus our people are on average getting much poorer in the current economic environment then if the GDP was being distributed more homogeneously over the population.

Well, apparently you know more about my profession than I do. I defer to your incredible knowledge. I guess all of those times that I've sat on a board and interviewed immigrants from China and Chile and Romania didn't happen.

My apologies.

I have absolutely no idea what your profession is TenPenny. But you seem to be suggesting that a Chilean medical degree will get you a job at a Canadian hospital without being certified by the Canadian authorities, which is untrue. Not true for nurses either. Lawyers have to pass the bar. There has been some effort to alleviate problem of accrediting immigrants in regulated professions, to that end the government set up Foreign Recognition Program. Which is not meant to recognize foreign credentials but rather to streamline the certification process. There is in fact a website dedicated to trashing Canada because of our refusal to accept foreign credentials.

Maybe you happen to be in a non-regulated profession, one that requires experience but not national certification. Then obviously what I am saying is irrelevent for your profession, but I am certainly not talking about plumbers and carpenters here. As I said, I have no idea what you do, and so what I am saying is not necessarily applicable to your profession.

One way or another, NAFTA had no impact on the recognition of international qualifications, especially to Chile, Romania and China (being outside of North America).

 

[TenPenny]

I have absolutely no idea what your profession is TenPenny. But you seem to be suggesting that a Chilean medical degree will get you a job at a Canadian hospital without being certified by the Canadian authorities, which is untrue. Not true for nurses either. Lawyers have to pass the bar. There has been some effort to alleviate problem of accrediting immigrants in regulated professions, to that end the government set up Foreign Recognition Program. Which is not meant to recognize foreign credentials but rather to streamline the certification process. There is in fact a website dedicated to trashing Canada because of our refusal to accept foreign credentials.

I never suggested that a Chilean medical degree gets you a job at a hospital. You need to stop ranting, and start thinking.

You seem to have difficulty thinking, so I'm dropping this. Feel free to rant on with your illinformed distortions, as long as you can piss in the wind.

 

[Toro]

So, I was not talking about the employment rate at all, it is not a good economic indicator because you must normalize to job security, which is incredibly difficult to quantify. Many jobs in Canada are now temporary or contractual, whereas they were once permanent, with benefits that is not reflected by the employment rate, and is well known to our parliament. What I said is that wages have fallen behind inflation, that is that if you compare the increase in wages to the increase in CPI, you will see that wages are stagnant. If you compare wage increases to increases in the GDP you will see that the wages are falling compared to the national gdp. If you have full access to CHASS, you can compute these things yourself from CANSIM data. The relevent vectors of the time series are V15856257, V498918 and V735319. They represent the average wage, the nominal GDP and the CPI respectively. You will have to renormalize the data, since some of them are normalised to different dates. But take a look, you will see that I am right: wages are stagnant with relation to the CPI and are falling in relation to the GDP. Which is in no way refuted by the quote you posted, since they are talking about different economic indicators. He points out that wages have increased, but he does not normalise that to the rising cost of living. When you do that the evidence becomes clear.

I am not denying that wages have been stagnant. Nor did the author of the report. But you were blaming that on NAFTA, and there is no evidence of this, as the professor concludes. In fact, as the author points out, the economy in aggregate is better because of NAFTA, because, as I'm sure you're aware, wages are not the only component of income nor the economy.

Besides, wages in aggregate have been stagnant in many industrialized countries, not just Canada. Do you blame that on NAFTA too?

And did you assert wages are stagnant for professionals? That would be very incorrect.

Temporary jobs in Canada, have I believe, been in the decline relative to total employment since the early to mid-90s. I would guess that with unemployment at a 30-year low, this trend has accelerated over the past few years. But whether they have or not, there is no evidence this has occurred because of NAFTA.

 

[normbc9]

Here is a website I was reffered to this morning by the local office staff of our US. Senator Dianne Feinstein. It is interesting to say the least about this topic in detail.
http://naftasuperhighway.info/ There are other topics but the write up on this subject is pretty much in line with what I have read on this site. I do know the NAFTA toll highway in the Denver area is now being opened and a Spanish firm is the operator without any formal bid process.

 

[Unforgiven]

What happens when we run out of people to buy junk and there is no more places to expand to and develop?

 

[karrie]

What happens when we run out of people to buy junk and there is no more places to expand to and develop?

Then we fester and die.

 

[Toro]

What happens when we run out of people to buy junk and there is no more places to expand to and develop?

You should read about Thomas Malthus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Malthus

 

[silky]

Vincent Fox is having Freudian slips

President Fox interview with Larry King hints about a North American Union

Vicente Fox tells Jon Stewart he hopes for North American Union

Steve Previns on CNBC speaks of the Amero.

 

[Toro]

Previns says, when asked for evidence, says "There are some sites on the Internet."

lol

It takes all kinds.

And in the interview with Larry King, Fox states

KING: E-mail from Mrs. Gonzalez in Elizabeth, New Jersey. "Mr. Fox, I would like to know how you feel about the possibility of having a Latin America united with one currency?"

FOX: Long term, very long term. What we propose together, President Bush and myself, it's ALCA, which is a trade union for all of the Americas. And everything was running fluently until Hugo Chavez came. He decided to isolate himself. He decided to combat the idea and destroy the idea...

KING: It's going to be like the euro dollar, you mean?

FOX: Well, that would be long, long term. I think the processes to go, first step into is trading agreement. And then further on, a new vision, like we are trying to do with NAFTA.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0710/08/lkl.01.html

 

[silky]

The steps are small at this point, however, it is the direction they are going in and the momentum that is building that is concerning. Just last month in Canada at the SPP meeting decisions were made to turn containment control over to the United Nations in case a pandemic of Avian Influenza in the future.

All of these decisions were made outside of Congressional approval or disapproval. It has been stated many times that SPP was a trade agreement in nature only. It now appear to be morphing into other operations which I strongly suspected it would when we first discovered the creation of SPP. The following link is a good resource for further information on the military components of the management of any pandemic: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6670

Another document for research on SPP is from: The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), an additional working arm "think tank" type of organization of the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR).

http://www.canadians.org/water/documents/NA_Future_2025.pdf
(This PDF document takes about 2 minutes to download even with cable speed, don't know why, because it is only about 25 pages).

These comments made are off thread specifically to NAFTA Super Highway, nevertheless, all related.