Clubbed Like Baby Seals

It took a long time. A generation of politicians, economists, think-tankers, all the powers-that-be, have been totally, wildly wrong, stupid in a very debilitating way. I, of course, will now take time to set them straight.

Trade between nations is not about money. It just isn't. Trade between nations is about jobs. Just jobs. We're losing jobs, very badly, to the point that the rest of the world is sitting back, hands in their plump laps, smiling seraphically. Or is it cherubically? Our clocks are getting cleaned, our lunches are being eaten, our faces pushed into the mud. Put your own metaphor here. My personal favorite: We are being clubbed like baby seals, and then skinned.

Yipes. China, Vietnam, Indonesia, India; they all have more people working. We have fewer people working. They have industrial development guided by groups of smart people. We have smarmy, big haired people, making sure that industrial development isn't guided by anything smart.

We love our delusions. We keep saying that we are more creative than all those Asians; they can only copy, not be creative. We are the smart, creative folks who will lead the world in everything intellectual. Race-baiting swill. Japan beat us in cars and electronics -- creatively. Europe is beating us in bio-tech -- creatively. China is beating us in gew-gaws, or tchotchkes, or whatever you call them -- goofy little things that we like to buy. Stuff. OK, not so creatively.

Our biggest export to China, our intellectual value-added American-made stuff, our grand product of the best-in-the-world educational system: junk. Junk metal, and junk paper and junk plastic, shipped to China and morphed into the stuff we buy back. Ack. Your Alert Blogger is stunned!! Wasn't supposed to work like that. We somehow got on the wrong end.

Ok. Lemme hear it. They are: Slave-mongers!! Environment polluters who work in dreadful factories for dreadful wages, spoiling it all for us.

Well, sure. They have discovered, though, that having a job is better than being a peasant. Just like the Irish, Italians, Jews, Germans, Poles, and all the other peasants who left their homes to come to American jobs. Jobs, jobs, jobs: all that matters. Jobs.

So, if I'm so smart, what do I think we should do? I hate to say it -- well, not so much : we need to put up our fists, jab, float like butterflies, sting like bees. No More Mister Nice Guy. How? Easy, really. We stop buying stuff we didn't make.

No more Toyotas -- 200% tariff No more Porsches -- 300% tariff. No more grapes in the winter -- 2% tariff; I like grapes. No more tchotchkes -- 10,000% tariff. Thank god -- no more tchotchkes. No more Columbian coffee. No more stuff we didn't make. We just stop. OK, I'll give up the winter grapes, in the interest of the majority -- 100% tariff.

Sure. Right. You can't do that. The last 50 years of economic theory show that mercantilism -- what we are talking about here -- is a dreadful failure. Except when it isn't. The last 50 years show that guided development and strategically aimed tariffs work very well, thank you. There are, I suppose, exceptions -- Cambodia comes to mind, but no matter what, Cambodia wouldn't work. India and China, though, the largest of the Asian nations, seem to be OK. Why? Lots of jobs to go around.

We have made a dreadful mistake. We have put wealth before jobs. Please note that all the folks pushing for this wonderful world of free trade are sitting back, burning money in their barbecues so the steaks will be nice and tender. Yet again: I've got mine, the rest of you just go away and die.

When will we finally notice that class warfare is class warfare, and the weapons are jobs? When will we finally notice that the big earners still are working, and we aren't?