The simple solution

A response to someone's comment:

First of all, it bothers me when people who come here illegally are referred to as "illegal". The person's actions are illegal, not their existence. By your logic we should refer to anyone who commits a crime as an illegal.

I respect the rule of law, but the real solution for both of these issues is a simple one. Get rid of NAFTA and all of our other free trade agreements. Taxation is not a significant reason why these companies ship their jobs out of the country. You speak against people purchasing products from nations with no labor laws, yet in the same post you decry regulation. If we didn't have regulation, our wage and labor laws wouldn't exist and we would be no better than China. If we restructured our trade agreements to refuse to do business with nations that do not hold our wage and labor standards, then we would see an end to the job drain, and probably a significant return of the ones that have already left. If all trading partners had the same standards, companies would then favor the savings of not having to ship the products back to the US, and would prefer to relocate back here.

This would also help the immigration problem because it would force Mexico to treat their workers with respect, removing the need to flee over our border. Border control and deportation are just really poor band-aids for a greater problem, and until we restructure our trade agreements, I would rather see amnesty for the people here so they can pay more taxes and not have to split up families. The rule of law should be respected, but the higher law of love and compassion should trump it in light of the flawed system we currently have, which by the way, is thanks to the greed of our corporate overlords and their democratic and republican puppets. That is why it angers me to see so much energy focused on our fellow victims to the south, and not enough focused on the greedy corporations that steal by hoarding the wealth and making the poor poorer.

Suing is no where near the problem that conservatives like to make it out to be, especially when it comes to our healthcare system. The fact that it is not a single payer non-profit system is the biggest culprit. Japan spends about $2600 per capita on its healthcare system, which covers about 81% of their nations healthcare costs. We, on the other hand, spend $6700 per capita, yet only cover about 46% of our healthcare costs. For people who proclaim fiscal responsibility as a top priority, ignoring these numbers for the sake of preserving a free-market in all things is pathetic. Just because communism was a failure, doesn't mean that socialization in moderation is evil. It is this hang up that is a remnant emotion from the cold war that is preventing a reasonable discussion by both sides of the isle. Healthcare, like education is an investment in our nations future, and if we continue to lag behind the rest of the civilized world in this regard, not to mention spending a trillion a year on our military (another conservative paradox), we will continue to diminish as world power until we crumble like the Roman empire.

Economic Survival of the Fittest is Barbaric Too

‎"If we have been able to create social environments that free us from living a life of survival of the fittest, why is it such a problem for so many people to accept the need to create economic environments that allow us to do the same regarding our financial well-being?"

-Me

Don't get me wrong. I do not advocate communism, nor do I trust our government in its current incarnation to enact legislation that will accomplish anything of significance for the good of the nation. We obviously need major electoral reform, but that doesn't change the need to protect our citizens from the greed of others.

An objectivist once told me the reason that we don't need regulation is because if we don't like what companies are doing, we can vote with our money and and put them out of business. This is an oversimplification of the issue. If the majority of companies that employ our citizens decide to pay their employees wages that are far below the cost of living, yet produce things that are too important not to buy and have cornered the market, how will enough people decide to stop buying their products to the point where it actually makes a difference, especially when they have attacked the worker's ability to stand up to them by eliminating unions and threatening to take their jobs if they strike or stand up for their rights in any way? For all the company cares, the employee can take a hike because there are thousands more desperate people out there begging for work.

What is to stop a company from destroying our environment? They often chose to forgo safety or pollution controls for the sake of profit. Even with the minimal fines and regulations that are currently in place, it is still more profitable to operate this way. Just look at BP. What about the companies that have exported their manufacturing and even technical and customer support jobs? Had we done away with all regulations, maybe they would have kept the jobs here, but would have treated their employees far worse than they already do!

Without regulations, there potentially could be one company that owned every industry. It probably would treat it's employees worse than slaves, and our environment would likely end up obliterated. Sounds great, eh?