North American Union: Fact or fiction?

[Ludovic]

@BrainGlutton

Haven’t encountered the phrase “Red China” in years.

In Red China, constitutions violate YOU!

[msmith537]

Wait…someone explain to me why a highway connecting Mexico City, Kansas City and Toronto is bad?

And I’m pretty sure we have to problem shipping cheap goods from “Red China” directly to the US now.

Who are this right-wing lunatics? Are these the same type of crazy people I used see out in Union Square on Saturday mornings?

[RickJay]

@msmith537

Wait…someone explain to me why a highway connecting Mexico City, Kansas City and Toronto is bad?

For one thing, it’s impossible.

1. Exactly how would you pave a new highway all the way from KC to Toronto? Take it across Lake Ontario? All the available bridge crossings are already taken by other highways.

2. Since you can already drive from KC to Toronto on interstates and 400-series freeways (take I-70 east to Indianapolis, I-465 around Indy, then I-69 all the way north to the Blue Water Bridge, then Highway 402 east, to Highway 401 to Toronto, and you can get downtown by taking the 427 to the Gardiner Expressway - you’re on freeways the entire way) what would the point of this be, anyway?

[Lemur866]

@RickJay

Since you can already drive from KC to Toronto on interstates and 400-series freeways (take I-70 east to Indianapolis, I-465 around Indy, then I-69 all the way north to the Blue Water Bridge, then Highway 402 east, to Highway 401 to Toronto, and you can get downtown by taking the 427 to the Gardiner Expressway - you’re on freeways the entire way) what would the point of this be, anyway?

The point would be to:

++ wipe out our borders and immigration controls
++ bypass American commerce laws (including the Constitution) and replace them with a series of vague trade agreements
++ replace high income American union truck drivers with cheap Mexican and foreign labor
++ enrich Red China and multinational corporations who do business with Beijing by making it easier for the PRC to flood America with cheap goods made by slave labor

[Sam_Stone]

I’m beginning to think that the biggest threat to the economy in the next 10 years isn’t the debt, or inflation, or Medicare - it’s the resurgence of protectionism. Trade tariffs and regulations that have the effect of closing off trade are the quickest way to derail an economy.

And the Democrats and Republicans are now both singing protectionist songs. Even Hillary is starting to sound like a protectionist, and her husband was one of the architects of NAFTA.

A North American trade union would ba a great idea. A coordinated security program that puts security at entry points to the continent and relaxes them internally would be a great idea. Increased trade freedom between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico would be a great idea. Bring it on.

[BrainGlutton]

@Sam Stone

Increased trade freedom between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico would be a great idea.

But, we already tried that. It didn’t work out so good.

[Lemur866]

Yes it did.

[RickJay]

@BrainGlutton

But, we already tried that. It didn’t work out so good.

What do you mean “Tried”? And how is it not working out?

[msmith537]

@RickJay

For one thing, it’s impossible.

1. Exactly how would you pave a new highway all the way from KC to Toronto? Take it across Lake Ontario? All the available bridge crossings are already taken by other highways.

2. Since you can already drive from KC to Toronto on interstates and 400-series freeways (take I-70 east to Indianapolis, I-465 around Indy, then I-69 all the way north to the Blue Water Bridge, then Highway 402 east, to Highway 401 to Toronto, and you can get downtown by taking the 427 to the Gardiner Expressway - you’re on freeways the entire way) what would the point of this be, anyway?

1. Why is it impossible? Why can’t a highway cross near Buffalo or Detroit?

2. My understanding is these super-highways would originate in the major ports in Texas where a huge amount of shipping comes in and then provide a direct link to inland “Smartports” in places like Kansas City. The combined highway/rail/pipelines would circumvent major cities and link directly to these Smartports. I don’t really see what’s wrong with that as it should relieve local highways of a lot of interstate traffic and speed up shipping times.

There appears to be some environmental and eminent domain concerns, but I’m not sure how it’s any different from any other major Interstate highway.

Mostly, it seems like some right-wing nut jobs have glommed onto these superhighways as a symbol. They are trying to paint a picture of the US Government carving paths through the nation so Mexicans, terrorists and Commie-Nazis can stream into the American Heartland.

[Lemur866]

But don’t we already have dedicated transportation links designed for transporting cargo, that wouldn’t interfere with regular interstate road traffic? The name escapes me, it was something “-ain”? Chain? Brain? Quain?

Something like that, I’m sure of it…

[BrainGlutton]

@RickJay

What do you mean “Tried”? And how is it not working out?

From 2004:

The business-backed politicians who pushed the agreement through the three legislatures promised that NAFTA would generate prosperity that would more than compensate “ordinary” people for its lack of social protections. Foreign investors would make Mexico an economic tiger, turning its poor workers into middle-class consumers who would then buy US and Canadian goods, creating more jobs in the high-wage countries.

But as soon as the ink was dry on NAFTA, US factories began to shift production to maquiladora factories along the border, where the Mexican government assures a docile labor force and virtually no environmental restrictions. The US trade surplus with Mexico quickly turned into a deficit, and since then at least a half-million jobs have been lost, many of them in small towns and rural areas where there are no job alternatives.

Meanwhile, Mexico’s overall growth rate has been half of what it needs to be just to generate enough jobs for its growing labor force. The NAFTA-inspired strategy of export-led growth undermined Mexican industries that sold to the domestic market as well as the sixty-year-old social bargain in which workers and peasant farmers shared the benefits of growth in exchange for their support for a privileged oligarchy. NAFTA provided the oligarchs with new partners–the multinational corporations–allowing them to abandon their obligations to their fellow Mexicans. Average real wages in Mexican manufacturing are actually lower than they were ten years ago. Two and a half million farmers and their families have been driven out of their local markets and off their land by heavily subsidized US and Canadian agribusiness. For most Mexicans, half of whom live in poverty, basic food has gotten even more expensive: Today the Mexican minimum wage buys less than half the tortillas it bought in 1994. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Mexicans continue to risk their lives crossing the border to get low-wage jobs in the United States.

Canada, which since 1989 has had a similar trade agreement with the United States, and which does much less business with Mexico, was less directly affected. But NAFTA strengthened Canadian corporations’ ability to threaten workers and governments with moving south, helping undermine the country’s traditionally strong labor and social standards.

In all three countries NAFTA has worsened the distribution of income and wealth. While ordinary people paid the costs, the benefits went to the continent’s “rich and powerful.” Canadian and US corporate investors got guaranteed access to Mexico’s cheap labor as well as its privatized public assets. Mexican elites brokered the deals. In one example, well-connected Mexicans bought the country’s second-largest commercial bank from the government for $3.3 billion and sold it to Citigroup for $12.5 billion.

Has anything changed for the better in the past three years?

[RickJay]

Do you have any evidence to back any of this up? From your own quote:

Canada, which since 1989 has had a similar trade agreement with the United States, and which does much less business with Mexico, was less directly affected. But NAFTA strengthened Canadian corporations’ ability to threaten workers and governments with moving south, helping undermine the country’s traditionally strong labor and social standards.

This is an assertion without any basis in fact; it doesn’t even claim anything factual. What standards have been “undermined?”

Your anti-NAFTA argument seems to be entirely based on other people’s opinions. You’re not offering facts and you’re not even constructing your own arguments, just quoting articles that are themselves lacking in cites.

[Fir_na_tine]

@Sam Stone

I’m beginning to think that the biggest threat to the economy in the next 10 years isn’t the debt, or inflation, or Medicare - it’s the resurgence of protectionism.

I disagree with you on this!!

The biggest threat to the economy and to our very way of life is the increase in the general level of appalling ignorance in this country. This whole scheme would have had the country rolling in the aisles with laughter years ago. Now, too many people are actually saying “Well, maybe.”. :smack:

We really should have a mandatory IQ test of some type at the voting booth. Fail the test and be subject to public ridicule and embarrassment. (See works of Heinlein for details)

[msmith537]

@Lemur866

But don’t we already have dedicated transportation links designed for transporting cargo, that wouldn’t interfere with regular interstate road traffic? The name escapes me, it was something “-ain”? Chain? Brain? Quain?

Something like that, I’m sure of it…

I guess you’ve never seen those things on the highway…I believe they call them “trucks”?

The whole point is that if there is a real infrastructure need for these supercorridor highways, then the decision should be based on on that need. It should not be based on the ramblings of a bunch of xenophobic, protectionist right wing nutcases.

[BrainGlutton]

@RickJay

Do you have any evidence to back any of this up? From your own quote:
This is an assertion without any basis in fact; it doesn’t even claim anything factual. What standards have been “undermined?”

Your anti-NAFTA argument seems to be entirely based on other people’s opinions. You’re not offering facts and you’re not even constructing your own arguments, just quoting articles that are themselves lacking in cites.

Try this. Plenty figures, plenty cites, plenty charts & graphs.

[RickJay]

Okay, we’re just randomly linking to secondary sources now?

http://www.agr.gc.ca/itpd-dpci/english/trade_agr/naftabenefits.htm
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=2489

BuyUSA

http://www.ncpa.org/pd/trade/pdtrade/pdtrade1.html
http://www.ustr.gov/Document_Library/Fact_Sheets/2004/NAFTA_A_Decade_of_Success.html
Canadian manufacturers, I can tell you firsthand, love NAFTA. Workers love it too; without it, their jobs are at risk.

What frightens them, what they can’t compete with fairly, is the PRC.

[Tuckerfan]

@Uzi

For the life of me I can’t think what a Mexican would want with a toque?

How are they supposed to keep their head warm after they’ve migrated to the US and stolen the job of someone in a place like Maine? Why won’t you heartless Canadians think of the poor helpless illegal aliens?

[Tim_T-Bonham.net]

@Rixlan

One of the most popular causes is preventing the “North American Union”. Supposedly this is the fusion of the U.S., Canada and Mexico into a single country.

If you’re ever talking to one, point out that Article XI of the first US constitution allows Canada to become part of the US at any time, just by asking. Any other territory has to petition Congress to be admitted, and Congress has to vote in favor. But not Canada – they can become part of the USA all on their own initiative!

Article XI. Canada acceding to this confederation, and adjoining in the measures of the United States, shall be admitted into, and entitled to all the advantages of this Union;

Watch 'em go wild!

(Of course, that’s in the Articles of Confederation, and was superseded by the Constitution, which doesn’t offer Canada such an open invitation. But right-wing nutcases probably won’t notice that.)

[BrainGlutton]

@RickJay

What frightens them, what they can’t compete with fairly, is the PRC.

Is this a good time to tell them about the Trans-Pacific Free Trade Agreement?

[RickJay]

I wouldn’t bother until such a thing is actually in place. As it is it’s simply not possible for Canada or the United States to have a real, NAFTA-type free trade agreement with China. It’s not implementable unless China does things like float their currency and grant actual freedoms and such.