Let Medicare take over catastrophic insurance for everyone, and let HSAs cover 95% of health care bills. Then provide a subsidy to low income workers’ HSAs. Voila, no private insurance companies.

* Factories closing and factory jobs lost: “As lead times [expire] on orders placed before the agreement [came to an end], factories are laying off workers and we are seeing an explosion in the numbers of unemployed,” said the director pf the Association of Free Trade Business in Antanarivo.
* Increased competition among street traders now that former factory workers are pushed out to sell goods in overly crowded street markets (and lower wages now for both): “‘I used to be able to earn 20,000 ariary ($9.30) a day,’ said Soloniaina Rasoarimanana, who has been selling clothes from a pavement stall for 10 years. ‘Now, with the political crisis and more competition, I earn around 5,000 ariary ($2.30) a day.’”
* Knock-on effects in neighboring countries (Mauritius, Swaziland, Lesotho, South Africa) which made inputs like zippers to Madagascar’s factories.

Ineffective sanctions, effective job destruction. An unaccountable branch of the US government hurts poor people far away who have no voice in US politics.

• The first is through the annual “green card diversity lottery,” held each year by the Department of Homeland Security, for citizens of countries that have “low rates of immigration” to the United States. Millions of people from specified countries around the world apply to take part in the lottery, but only 50,000 green cards are made available through the process. Each participant in the lottery is issued a number, the government draws about 150,000 numbers, and the people with those numbers then are allowed to apply for one of the 50,000 slots.

Fairtrade provides a minimum baseline price for commodities, allowing farmers to hedge against market volatility. The co-operative system allows small farmers better access to global markets and encourages democratic representation. Each commodity price also includes a "social premium" which can be reinvested in social or development projects.

the undervalued yuan and overvalued dollar makes Chinese goods cheaper and more affordable for American consumers and companies, saving us billions of dollars, and making us wealthier and China poorer. It would be like accusing Wal-Mart of "manipulation" for offering "Everyday Low Prices," and saving Americans billions of dollars??

We believe that trade should strengthen the American economy and create more American jobs, while also laying a foundation for democratic, equitable, and sustainable growth around the world.

Here’s the short version. If you are worried about having enough tax revenue to pay interest on the government debt, find more taxpayers! And look, here are some people volunteering to become new taxpayers: Haitian immigrants fleeing quakes and poverty! So let’s open the door to our Haitian fiscal rescuers, who will also lift themselves out of poverty as dramatized by a previous post. It’s a TWOFER!

Back in 1992, a ten year old Bangladeshi girl named Moyna was one of 50,000 children who lost their jobs in the wake of protectionist legislation sponsored by the execrable union-backed Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa. How does Moyna feel about Americans now? “They loathe us, don’t they?”, she says. “We are poor and not well educated, so they simply despise us. That is why they shut the factories down.”

If the price of war has become too high, which it has, we will have to value the habits of trade—the only thing that—throughout history, has brought tribes and nations together, benefiting from one another and from their several and different skills. The interlinking of nations in a network of trade causes many problems to which I now turn. But it is also our last best hope for peace. Unlike the battlefield, the market is an arena in which both sides can win.

Company relocations are a very rare occurrence. In 2004, the Bureau of Labor Statistics kept track of U.S. companies that moved their production. The survey includes responses on employer and work relocations, and the answers are fairly surprising. In the first three quarters of 2004, 685,929 employees were separated from their work, but only 40,727 were separated because their companies relocated, and only a quarter of these jobs — 10,722 — moved outside of the United States.

...three Mexican citizens who were charged with illegal re-entry after being found in Travis County Jail [in Texas].

"Once the elites have money and power," Mr. Casimir said, "they’re scared of people like me, the younger generation and so on. Because we travel around the world and see how other governments function, and obviously most countries are not corrupt like Haiti.”

The housing bubble in 2004-2006 was partly driven by rapid immigration from Latin America (as was the bubble in Spain itself!), and also by a perception (which turned out false) that coastal zoning constraints were spreading into interior markets. Many Hispanic immigrants were snapping up older ranch houses, allowing native born Americans to move on to bigger McMansions. The immigration crackdown in 2007 dramatically slowed this immigration (as did the worsening economy.) Population growth estimates going several years forward fell sharply, hurting housing speculators. Ground zero of the sub-prime bust is in working class areas of the Southwest and Florida. Any guess as to who bought homes in those areas? In addition, after 2006 nominal GDP growth slowed gradually, and then very sharply, to a rate far below the level any rational investor could have anticipated in 2006. Even today, few people seem to realize the impact that going from plus 6.5% to negative 6.5% nominal growth has on housing prices. This didn’t trigger the collapse, but it dramatically deepened it.

Greater international trade, aggressively advanced on a truly level playing field, will mean more American jobs, higher wages, and a better standard of living. It is also a matter of national security and an instrument to promote democracy and civil society in developing nations.