On April 11, 2012 at 18:00, 39 Cent Stamp said...
US citizens didn't just decide one day to take the term American for themselves as if no one else in the 2 continents matter. It sure would be great for our haters if we did because then they could point their finger and say "its not fair!".
"The Americas" is what the continents were called before states and countries were carved out. Forgive those of us in the United States for being proud of the fact that we turned a piece of North America into the land of opportunity, a great nation made up of people from every corner of the earth.
When we call ourselves American it literally means "we are proud of being part of North America" not "we own it all".
And for the record... NAFTA is very far from whats going on with China. American consumer dollars buy products that were built by Chinese. The money doesnt return to our economy the same way it would if the products we buy were built by Americans. Instead a portion goes into the companies pocket and the Chinese economy via manufacturing and working class consumerism.
Free trade between countries that share our border and continent make a lot more sense than funneling wealth into the pockets of a nation that has nuclear weapons pointed at us.
Well yes and no. Its the good old Clinton era gov who put the rubber stamp on the documents that approved not only NAFTA but also the WTO's link in all of this. republican / Democrat I am not distinguishing here but they all created a business pipeline to the east and excessive business taxation as an incentive so manufacturing fled this country like rats leaving a ship on fire. Microsoft at one point even threatened to relocate everything to Canada if the Clinton administration didn't back off.
We all know we should be paying about $225.00 retail for a cheep bluray player that should have been built in the USA. but as you know that price is now around $60.00 retail for an Asian built unit. Everyone is now addicted to super cheep stuff which means there is absolutely no hope of getting target / walmart / best buy type product manufacturing back into this country unless something extraordinarily dramatic happens like war breaks out in China. That coupled with the US Gov offering some serious long term incentives to all of these jump ship company's to come back to the states.
