How Bill Clinton’s Balanced Budget Destroyed The Economy …

http://www.businessinsider.com/…destroyed…economy-2012-9

The Untold Story Of How Clinton’s Budget Destroyed The American Economy. … a strong economy, Bill Clinton is remembered … Clinton Destroyed The Economy.

When President Bill Clinton signed off on the North American
Free Trade Agreement and the General Agreement on Trade & Tariffs in
1993, otherwise known as NAFTA/GATT, he quite literally slashed the economic
throat of the United States. We’ve been hemorrhaging jobs to foreign nations
like Communist China ever since.

Until 1993, the United States of America was the world’s
economic king, and our people enjoyed the highest standard of living in
recorded history. But NAFTA/GATT changed all that by virtually removing
all trade protections that ensured our general prosperity.

Compared to the United States, labor costs in China, Indonesia
and similar nations were substantially lower than what U.S. workers earned.
NAFTA/GATT allowed our corporations and U.S. entrepreneurs to move their
manufacturing technology overseas and take advantage of the reduced costs
of doing business, while avoiding our former trade protections that made
such a move prior to NAFTA/GATT unprofitable. For those enterprises that
made the move overseas right away, there was nothing but exorbitant profits
to be made.

What could be better for a typical American manufacturer?
You get to avoid all U.S. payroll taxes, worker’s compensation costs and
environmental regulations and hurdles. You no longer have to deal with
unions and provide employee benefits like health insurance and retirement
plans. You get to manufacture in China, Indonesia and similar foreign nations
to your heart’s content, and you still get to sell your products to the
U.S. consumer at the same or nearly the same cost as before.

Those who benefited are the stockholders of these firms
and their top CEOs and CFOs. If you had money to invest before NAFTA/GATT,
your returns on the investments spiked. But if you are just the typical
middle-class American family with an average $9,000.00 per month credit
card balance and little or no savings except what’s in your 401k, you didn’t
have the chance to participate in that gold rush. You were blind-sided
and left behind, and the immediate effect of NAFTA/GATT was for around five
million people who had high-paying, family wage paying manufacturing jobs
to lose them to low-wage workers overseas.