Scott in re: Henwood on job losses.
mbs
Here's one basic argument that needs to be made. Its foolish to look at mfg. employment changes since 1993 or 1994. That was the bottom of a recession. The US has lost more than 1.1 million mfg. jobs since the last cyclical peak in 1989, as shown in the attached table from the BLS.
Another point: we got lucky with NAFTA, which was put into effect just as we were coming out of the recession. Output and employment growth from domestic sources (C+I) more than offset losses on trade (X-M). See the facts about Trade and Job Creation (my recent IB, attached also, and Roll-Call ad). China PNTR will have perverse business cycle impacts. Clinton proposed to complete this deal just as Greenspan and fully fucking over the domestic economy. By next year, job losses for both higher interest rates and expanded china trade deficits will be hitting the economy at the same time...bad planning???
-- Rob Scott