By Charley Reese

I've observed through the years that more people like to support free-market economies verbally than actually participate in one. It's understandable when you know that a true free-market economy is a dog-eat-dog affair. Any good history of the Industrial Revolution will teach you that.

Living in the South, I've never belonged to a union. I've always thought that one boss was one too many. I was never about to pay somebody else to be a second boss. On the other hand, I've always recognized that most of the workplace benefits most of us take for granted are the result of long battles waged by unions.

Ironically, when unions were strong, the best situation was to work for an employer who was afraid his employees would unionize. A little industry developed in the 1950s of consultants who advised corporations that the best way to keep unions out was to pay a decent wage and provide a safe workplace and reasonably good benefits. Most of the smart bosses went along, however reluctantly.

Today, the American union movement is largely broken, thanks to free trade and generally unsympathetic politicians. Free trade — which as practiced is not really free and certainly not based on reciprocity — enabled the multinational corporations to export their jobs to foreign countries. No union has any leverage if an employer can say, "Accept my terms or I'll close the plant and move your jobs to Mexico or China."

The Big Lie politicians trot out when people begin to complain about so-called free trade is that American workers can compete with anyone. That qualifies for the Big Lie label because it is obviously untrue. How can an American making $20 an hour compete with somebody who will do the same work for $4 a day? Can you compete at $9 an hour sewing bluejeans when poor women in Central America get paid 75 cents a pair to cut and sew bluejeans? 

How can American farmers compete, while complying with all of our labor and environmental laws, against somebody south of the border who can grow the same produce without giving a spit for his workers, sanitation or the environment? The trouble with the "flat earth" propagandists is that the hidden assumption is Americans will endure the same low standard of living you find in places like South America and many parts of Asia.

Some of the blame for this falls on the shoulders of union leaders who were either stupid or corrupt. They were stupid if they fell for the government line "Don't worry about lost jobs; we'll train people for new jobs." Sure, some 56-year-old assembly line worker will easily transition to a computer programmer or a medical doctor. Sure, frogs sing opera and lions eat turnips.

People sometimes forget when they talk about the 19th-century battles over tariffs that Southerners never advocated not having tariffs. They simply wanted a uniform revenue tariff. Even so, an honest look at the American economy will tell you that we became a great industrial power behind a wall of protective tariffs. If you want a prosperous population, you must have a strong manufacturing base, and you must control immigration.

The politicians we've elected since the 1960s have destroyed most of our manufacturing base and opened the floodgates to immigration, both legal and illegal. When there is a surplus of labor, the price of labor is driven down. That's free-market economics. So-called free trade has consistently produced trade deficits, which have resulted in a massive transfer of wealth to overseas countries. Most Americans have no idea how much of our country is owned by foreigners. We are ill-informed by the press, lied to by our politicians and poorly prepared by public education. That's a formula for a bad future.

(Write to Charley Reese at P.O. Box 2446, Orlando, FL 32802)