Jobs and Free Trade Agreements

Jobs and Free Trade: Renegotiate WTO Free Trade Agreements and Provide Tax Incentives to Protect American Workers.

WTO free trade agreements currently prohibit discriminating against imports on the basis of the manufacturer’s labor or environmental practices. This puts the US at a disadvantage and has resulted in the export of millions of US jobs. We need to renegotiate these agreements to require countries to implement fair and humane working conditions and livable wages as well as environmental protection. The US should transition a system of sanctions against products that are not making satisfactory progress in eliminating abuse of labor and polluting practices. It makes no sense for this country to have made all the progress it has in improving the status of workers and protecting the environment only to have our own corporations exporting these jobs and then importing the products back into the US, while our own workers are out of work.

Provide tax incentives for corporations that create jobs in the US or bring jobs back to the US, and disincentives to those that employ foreign labor and export US jobs.

Deadly Innocent Fraud #5:
The trade deficit is an unsustainable imbalance
that takes away jobs and output.
Facts:
Imports are real benefits and exports are real
costs. Trade deficits directly improve our standard of
living. Jobs are lost because taxes are too high for a
given level of government spending, not because of
imports.

The mainstream has it all backwards, including the trade issue. To get on track with the trade issue, always remember this: In economics, it’s better to receive than to give. Therefore: Imports are real benefits. Exports are real costs.

PDF page 34, book page 59: http://moslereconomics.com/wp-content/powerpoints/7DIF.pdf

If your job has been exported and you do not have a job you will not be able to buy imports. Jobs have been exported in favor of cheap foreign labor and the absence of environmental standards. This resulted from the WTO free trade agreements. Imports are fine and desirable if you have a job generating income to buy them. We don't just have a trade deficit, we have high unemployment due to the export of US jobs. Taxes are at historic lows and have no bearing on the present job situation.

The answer is right there in the fact part:

"Jobs are lost because taxes are too high for a
given level of government spending, not because of
imports."

Said another way, "we are taxed too much for the size government we have and our current level of savings desires (we are in a household balance sheet recession - the private sector is paying down debt)."

Net government spending - net imports = net private sector savings

For the economy to continue to grow and add jobs, Gov. deficits must cover the trade deficit and our current savings (paying down debt) desires. So our current problem is the deficit is too small.

MMT (Modern Monetary Theory) is an explanation of our modern monetary reality (just a description of the operations and math) and is completely apolitical. The theory part comes in what things one might choose to do to balance the equations.

I personally support a FICA tax suspension, since it is the most regressive tax we have, and the lower income citizens will more likely spend that additional money and are less likely to save it (increasing aggregate demand and resulting in "trickle up economics!", but others politics might include more govt. spending.

I agree with you on the removal of low end FICA tax. I'd like to take it further-and do what nader advocated-complete removal of all taxes up to $100K/year--and substituting a tax on assets above $5 Million/family(where the big capital gains the last 30 years have been).