Free Trade

"My opponent believes that free trade is bad because of competition between countries and businesses. However, why would they have to cut wages or fire workers? There is a better way for businesses and countries to make a quick profit; lowering prices. This also benefits consumers because with lower prices they can buy things cheaper. A businessman would likely not cut his workforce when he can simply lower prices to gain a greater profit than his competator. Also, cutting regulations benefits the market more. Cutting them is not a bad thing because it helps businesses more easily to gain profit and help the people. Cutting regulations =/= cutting jobs and wages. As I said a small amount of regulations should be in place. Minimum wage and laws against child labor would be a perfect example. However, too much regulation destroys wealth for the entire society, not just what you consider to be wealthy. " we can all agree unnecessary regulations should be cut. if the regulations are "necessary" then cutting them will be problematic. i tend to think most of our regulations are there for a reason, though. what reason do you have to think otherwise other than your mere assertions? we cut environmental regulations, people die, things get ruined... we cut safety regulations, people die, get seriously hurt etc, we cut financial regualtions, people abuse the process... we cut labor regulations, people get abused, like children or whatever. on and on. perhaps we can agree that there might be a side effect that is good with free trade that unnecessary reglations being cut could be a good thing. also, the employers might not have to cut labor with free trade, but they do. they put plants in mexico instead of the US, or even reestablish them there. the rust belt is an example... instead of hiring the masses of unemployed there, they hire out and off source jobs. as to the price argument.. i'm not sure how you're tying this to free trade. a person cannot just "lower prices", they have to have the ability to. infering what you might meant... free trade might cause lower prices... but that only benefits some people, while hurting others. i mean, the guy who lost his job or had his wages cut might benefit when the tires he used to make or makes for a lot less are now cheaper... but that doesn't mean he's better for it. there's only a set pool of money and resources, at elast as an initial supposition. eg, bob makes ten dollars an hour, 120 per day. his boss cuts his job to five dollars an hour, 60 per day. his boss pockets twenty of that savings, and passes on the rest to everyone else. in this case boss got richer, and everyone else saved some,but bob lost out. but then what happens when 'everyone else' also eventually gets knocked down? all their jobs get cut or reduced or not starting out as high, whatever. eventually everyone will be working for nothing while the boss makes beans. i didn't say the free trade act caused inflation... i said it caused our wages to decline. look the rust belt, it collapsed. loook at shoes or all the products that were once made here now being made there. as that site from heritage you quoted said, manufacturing jobs are lost. it didn't say how that's good. sure it might mean some lower prices, but as is with Bob, it's not all around victory. even if the poor get richer at a faster rate than the rich... that only means there's upward mohility. that means you can go from nothing to something significant realtively quick. but, that doesn't mean much as far as free trade. instead of getting to something more significant, you get to less when you're poor. i don't know how you can make such a blanket assertion that technology makes everything okay. it may be true that GM starts to use robots instead of workers to comepete with others... but that only means GM made more money. some might be passed on to the general population... but when they ahve to take a cut of the profit, the balance means more goes to teh rich and the supply side, less to the demand side, the side that stimulates the economy and is more important. sometimes technology helps... but i'm not convinced it's signficantly more ebcause of competing with other countries asit is just people innovating and making a buck on it. windows the operating system and compuaters woudl have been madea nd sold regardless of if we had free trade. as to the point that countries that are more free trade oriented grow more... this is what i see http://www.heritage.org... it lists "improvement in economic freedom" as the x axis. that's so blatantly bias as to be meaningless. which countries grew and which didn't? the ones that have the most development going on, per developing nation or not will have the most growth. manufacturing is cut so others can benefit.