North American Union - reality or crazy conspiracy theory?

Great Debates
41

Maybe I’m being nitpicky, but I just want to address this:

[QUOTE=Balduran]
Well, ask Hillary Clinton about that. She was the latest American politician I heard complaining about Americans losing auto jobs to Canada because our solialized health care gives us a competitive advanage because the companies don’t have to pay for health insurance here.
[/QUOTE]
Not quite accurate. Companies in Ontario, where most Canadian car plants are located, do pay an Employer Health Tax (EHT) to the provincial health insurance plan if their payroll is over a certain amount. From this site, about two-thirds of the way down the page:

It’s probably safe to assume that auto plants in Ontario have payrolls in excess of $400,000, so they would be subject to paying the EHT. It is also likely that such EHT payments would be less than an American auto plant with an equivalent payroll would be paying in health insurance premiums to a private insurer, and auto jobs may well be lost to Ontario for this reason. But still, given the EHT, it is inaccurate to make a blanket statement that “companies don’t have to pay for health insurance” in Ontario. With all the research such an initiative would require, I’m surprised Hilary Clinton didn’t know this.

42

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
If the rich all dropped dead we’d survive just fine; if everyone but the rich dropped dead, the rich survivors would be utterly screwed.
[/QUOTE]
I have to agree, what with all those jobs poor people provide for us and everything.

43

[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
I’m a Canadian who’s not freaked out and I have no objection to using the a slightly modified U.S. Dollar as the currency, though it’d have to be greatly improved with new anti-counterfeiting measures, such as the Canadian dollar currently has. I’d hate to see bonehead inertia fail to address serious problems.
[/QUOTE]

The problem with this is that tying ourselves to the US dollar robs us of the ability to conduct our own monetary policy. The Bank of Canada has played a large part in our economic stability in the past 15 years. To throw all that away to prop up our increasingly irrelevant manufacturing sector would be lunacy.

44

[QUOTE=Spoons]
I’m surprised Hilary Clinton didn’t know this.
[/QUOTE]

I suppose I overstated her case: Breaking News - Headlines & Top Stories | The Star .
As well, she is using it as an argument to reduce American health-care costs, not to raise ours. However, if were to be more integrated with the US, I wouldn’t be suprised if somebody were to argue that we should be raising ours.

Serves me right for not finding a link before posting.

45

[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
From what I understand, we’re talking about a political union between the three North American countries Canada, Mexico, and the United States that would function in a similar manner to the European Union.

The European Union is first and foremost an economic union. It functions as one market that shares an overarching trade policy. Aside from existing as a common market, it has a common agriculture/fisheries policy. The EU has some cooperation on policing and law enforcement as well as some cooperation on military defense.
[/QUOTE]
As a Canadian, I wouldn’t want to have a EU-like-union with the US.

I’m disregarding the health care issue, as I’m assuming member nations would keep their own health care systems. Aside from this, what about social political issues - Canada is considerably to the left of the states on this. For example, would same-sex marriages from Canada be recognized in the US?

Also, Martin Hyde states that it would primarily be an economic union and trade policy, giving the examples of agriculture and fisheries. Gee, I can’t imagine :rolleyes: how that would suck for Canada. Softwood lumber dispute anyone? Not to mention other natural resources like fishing, freshwater, agriculture subsidies, etc, etc, etc…

Regardless, I can’t see the US being willing to enter such a union in the foreseeable future that includes Mexico, because of immigration issues.

46

Bush Administration Quietly Plans NAFTA Superhighway

This is a big issue for my in-laws and their community in Southwest Texas.

47

[QUOTE=Musicat]
Hey, it’s not a bad idea. It would solve most of the immigration “problem”. Who worries about immigration between the several states?
[/QUOTE]

I dunno… we don’t even like in when people from Marin cross the Bridge.

48

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
Why ? From a moral perspective the rich are often scum.
[/QUOTE]

Yeah. And the poor are just paragons of moral rectitude. Which is why it’s so much safer to walk the streets of Compton than Beverly Hills at night. :rolleyes:

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
From a practical perspective the non-rich contribute far more to society.
[/QUOTE]

Again, :rolleyes:

The top 25% of earners pay 84% of income taxes. Cite The bottom 25% pay - oh nothing? And let’s hear it for all those jobs that the poor create. There aren’t enough :rolleyes: in the world for this.

49

[QUOTE=Smitty]
The bottom 25% pay - oh nothing? And let’s hear it for all those jobs that the poor create. There aren’t enough :rolleyes: in the world for this.
[/QUOTE]

No, keep in mind all the jobs that the bottom 25% fill in order to make the rich richer. :rolleyes: indeed.

50

[QUOTE=Smitty]
Yeah. And the poor are just paragons of moral rectitude. Which is why it’s so much safer to walk the streets of Compton than Beverly Hills at night. :rolleyes:
[/quote]
Try walking the streets of Baghdad, which we invaded in part for the oil companies. The rich oil companies. And the rich are in a position to screw people over without hitting them on the head, they don’t need to mug people. And if they want to use force, they use armies and police.

And I never said a word about the poor being moral, or immoral for that matter, so it doesn’t matter.

[QUOTE=Smitty]
The top 25% of earners pay 84% of income taxes.
[/quote]
Because they already have most of the money, so even the smaller percentage they pay amounts to a lot. And you leave out all the other taxes and fees that hit the common people harder.

[QUOTE=Smitty]
And let’s hear it for all those jobs that the poor create. There aren’t enough :rolleyes: in the world for this.
[/QUOTE]
Do you understand the term “consumer driven economy” ? No market, no jobs. The rich are largely parasitic.

[QUOTE=Liberal]
I have to agree, what with all those jobs poor people provide for us and everything.
[/QUOTE]
Poor and middle class people are the people who both consume and make most of what this country has. The rich mostly shuffle money around, grind people down and take the credit for what the rest of the population accomplishes; parasites. How many jobs are there that involve only the rich ? And how many of those would have any relevance if everyone but the rich vanished ?

This “the rich are all that matter” attitude is sickening, and stupid. Most people, including most of the people who idolize the rich will never, ever be rich, or even close. The rich, again and again have shown that they are at best indifferent and as a rule outright enemies of the common people, not to mention the country they reside in ( why care about America when you have offshore accounts and walled mansions with guards ? ) The rich are out to benefit the rich, and no one else. That’s the way it’s always been, that’s probably the way it’s always going to be.

51

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
Poor and middle class people are the people who both consume and make most of what this country has.
[/QUOTE]
Wow. I wasn’t aware that your grasp of how industry works is so meager. You can’t make anything if you can’t finance the wherewithall to get it made. I mean, if you’re advocating an arts and crafts society where people make and exchange trinkets, that’s fine. But technological advancement depends on capitalism. Profit provides the motivation for entrepreneurship.

52

The health care issue is a red herring. No one would force Canada to do anything. We’re already seeing individual states in the US develop their own strategies to address universal health care, and I don’t see the feds stepping in to quash those efforts.

An EU type union (economic only) might be good goal to work towards long term. Very long term. It would be fairly easy to do this between the US and Canada today, including open borders for immigration. But Mexico is just too far behind, economically.

53

[QUOTE=Liberal]
Wow. I wasn’t aware that your grasp of how industry works is so meager. You can’t make anything if you can’t finance the wherewithall to get it made. I mean, if you’re advocating an arts and crafts society where people make and exchange trinkets, that’s fine. But technological advancement depends on capitalism. Profit provides the motivation for entrepreneurship.
[/QUOTE]
And where do you think those rich people get the capital ? Who do you think buys most of those products, or makes them for that matter ?

And technological advancement has little to do with capitalism; if it did, there wouldn’t be much. The people who do the actual research aren’t the ones who make the profits from those advancements, most of the time.

54

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
And where do you think those rich people get the capital ? Who do you think buys most of those products, or makes them for that matter ?

And technological advancement has little to do with capitalism; if it did, there wouldn’t be much. The people who do the actual research aren’t the ones who make the profits from those advancements, most of the time.
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That’s beside the point. Those who do the research get their funding from those with the capital, and those with the capital get the profits.

Having an open market is kind of a given in a capitalist system… it’s what creates demand for products, which is what drives everything else.

It’s a sort of symbiosis- the researcher yearns to study something, but can’t afford it. Some capitalist wants to make money. They get together, the capitalist funds the researcher, and the researcher gets to do his research (and gets paid in the process) and the capitalist gets the profits.

It absolutely has everything to do with technological advancement; ideas that are potentially profitable get funded, and continue to be developed, because there is profit potential perceived in them.

Granted, this isn’t perfect; there are lines of research that would be useful, but not necessarily profitable, but you can point to numerous modern-day technologies that are in part or in whole attributable to capitalist investment.

The automobile
Most computing technology
Most telecommunications technology
Most military technology

Hell, most technology in general was either developed or significantly improved by someone trying to make a buck, usually both by someone who was doing the research, and by someone who wanted to make money from the application of the research.

55

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
The people who do the actual research aren’t the ones who make the profits from those advancements, most of the time.
[/QUOTE]

Where do you live in CA-- out in the Mojave desert or something?

You might want to make a trip to Silicon Valley sometime. You’d see just how wrong you are.

56

Sorry dude, but this is just insane. I can see how if you’re an economic Darwinist of some stripe, you might maintain a position like “Because rich people on average are more productive (or more successful, or higher-achieving, or something) than the non-rich, therefore rich people on average are morally entitled to more privileges than the non-rich, including better healthcare.”

Or if you’re an economic libertarian, I can see how you might maintain a position like “Access to healthcare is an economic good like any other, therefore the rich are entitled to purchase more and better healthcare than the non-rich can afford”.

I may not agree with either of those positions, but I can see how a principled person with different views from mine might logically support either or both of them. In the context of this thread, I don’t really care whether they’re true or not (which is why I’m not participating in Liberal’s and Der Trihs’s spat about which socioeconomic class is a more important contributor to the economy).

But an unqualified, blanket assertion that the mere fact of being rich automatically makes one morally deserving of better medical care? What kind of crap is that?

Your statement as you phrased it is sheer craven ass-kissing plutolatry implying that wealth is automatically equivalent to moral worth, and I can’t believe that you actually meant it that way.

All right, back to the actual topic of the thread:

How ya figure, John? I mean, it’s not like the EU hasn’t adjusted over economic disparities of similar size. According to 2004 World Bank statistics, new EU member Poland (#52 on the linked list) had a per-capita GDP of only about $6272, much lower than EU rich-bitches like Ireland (#4 at $45,707) and Denmark (#5 at $44,743).

But you think that a hypothetical North American Union couldn’t handle a comparable economic disparity between the US (#7 at $39,453) and Mexico (#51 at $6370)? Why not? Just because the poorer country in this case is proportionately much bigger, or what?

57

[QUOTE=drachillix]
Adding the provinces of canada and the various states within mexico would seem to be childs play as fas as integrating them into the US governmental systems. Sure we might need a few extra chairs in congress, no biggie. The balance of power although US centric could still be seriously influenced by canada or mexico focused representation. Our senate/house often operate very close to the edge on many issues, opening up to additional representatives could seriously shift some of the more precarious issues to outcomes more friendly to the newly incorporated areas.
[/QUOTE]

But, a North American Union as described in the OP, i.e., one modeled on the EU, would not involve the Canadian provinces or the Mexican states becoming states of the U.S. Canada, Mexico and the U.S. would remain separate under their own constitutions, yielding some part of their sovereignty to a North American Parliament or something with a limited range of powers. The U.S. certainly would predominate in that body, so Mexico and Canada probably would insist on the Union government having very limited powers indeed.

58

[QUOTE=E-Sabbath]
I’m mostly concerned that, if it were to be done, the opportunity would come up to rewrite the Constitution.

And remove those nasty and annoying bits like freedom of speech, right to petition, and so on.
[/QUOTE]

Not necessary. The North American Union would have its own constitution – a treaty, really, or series of treaties, as in the EU – but the U.S. Constitution would remain in force within the U.S.

59

[QUOTE=Kimstu]
How ya figure, John? I mean, it’s not like the EU hasn’t adjusted over economic disparities of similar size. According to 2004 World Bank statistics, new EU member Poland (#52 on the linked list) had a per-capita GDP of only about $6272, much lower than EU rich-bitches like Ireland (#4 at $45,707) and Denmark (#5 at $44,743).

But you think that a hypothetical North American Union couldn’t handle a comparable economic disparity between the US (#7 at $39,453) and Mexico (#51 at $6370)? Why not? Just because the poorer country in this case is proportionately much bigger, or what?
[/QUOTE]

I knew someone would bring that up… :slight_smile:

A few things:

  1. The EU has been willing to do some significant wealth transfer from the richer to the poorer states. I don’t see that happening here.

  2. Average Income isn’t the issue-- it’s how many people are living in poverty, and how functional the economy is. Mexico has millions of abjectly poor people. The country, as a whole, is not poor, but many of the people are.

  3. We’ve not see mass immigrations from one European Country to another, but even with the current situation we have something like 12M illegal immigrants in this country now, most from Mexico. Further, opinion polls have shown that something like 40% of all Mexicans would immigrate to the US if they could-- and that’s independent of economic class.

We simply couldn’t handle the influx.

60

[QUOTE=John Mace]

  1. The EU has been willing to do some significant wealth transfer from the richer to the poorer states.
    [/QUOTE]

How? The EU government has no power to tax, has it?