Amazing!

I had a letter to the editor published in Maclean 's Magazine, August 22, 2011, issue.  In this letter they let me say:

"Millions of Canadian manufacturing jobs have been transferred to China and other foreign countries.  There is only one way to improve the economy of Canada, and that is to get the manufacturing jobs back..."

It is amazing that they let me say these things because there is a strong censorship in the United States, spilling over into Canada.

In the United States, the effect of the censorship is that the media will not publish anything that includes the above two statements, and politicians do not make these statements.

(There are a few U.S. politicians who do make these statements, but they are in minority and have great difficulty making their point with their colleagues.)

The measure of the manufacturing status of any country is the balance of trade calculated as follows:

value of exported manufactured goods MINUS value of imported manufactured goods

If a country imports more than it exports, the balance of trade is NEGATIVE.

In the United States, the NEGATIVE balance of trade in manufactured goods, with all foreign countries, is over 500 billion dollars per year.  This is real physical money pouring out of the country, greatly impoverishing the country.

Mention of the negative balance of trade is another issue not allowed, under the censorship.

In Canada, the latest information I have found is that the NEGATIVE balance of trade in manufactured goods is 89 billion dollars per year.  I am open to any further information on our balance of trade.  If I receive or obtain better information I will be happy to revise my statement.

You can see that proportionally the Canadian NEGATIVE balance of trade in manufactured goods is GREATER than in the United States. 

In an overall sense we are saved in that we have oil to export, while the United States imports oil.  And, our oil industry including the oil sands creates a lot of employment.

But the "overall" situation does not trickle down well.  For Canadian students graduating from high school, college, or university, and for Canadians generally of all ages, it is very difficult to find employment.  We are missing great chunks from our manufacturing sector.  It is the manufacturing sector with all its complexities that provides little nooks and crannies where people can find work.  There is work for assembly line people, engineers, designers, machinery maintenance, purchasing agents, financial personnel, sales, liaison with distributors, and so on.

Canada also benefits from having materials and resources (commodities) other than oil to export.  Superficially, sales of these commodities make the national balance sheet look good.

The great concern however is that there is no forward planning to see how much of these commodities we will need here in Canada in the future.  We are selling commodities today at giveaway prices, whereas in twenty years we could be short of these commodities, and the value could be 10 to 20 times higher. 

In the past in Canada there have been regulations that unprocessed logs could not be exported.  The object was to create employment in Canada and I assume to reduce the wholesale denuding of the country.  However, if I am not mistaken, for some incomprehensible reason these regulations have been removed and large volumes of raw logs are being exported.

Take another example: coal.  Maybe it is OK to sell coal to China.  But for heaven's sake don't destroy the Canadian landscape to find coal to sell to China, again at giveaway prices.  Also, don't sell ownership in the company, land or processing facilities to China.  Sell the company, the land or the processing facilities and you are on a downhill slope to national economic suicide.  This statement applies to all other bulk commodities such as potash, salt, and metallic ore. 

But  now let's go back to the censorship issue.  Who are the people imposing censorship in the United States?  I believe the most likely suspect is the China Lobby.  China doesn't want questions raised concerning the wisdom of United States or other western country pouring out its life blood to China, enriching China beyond imagination.  China does not want talk about "getting our manufacturing jobs back from overseas".

Because people are not allowed to talk about the real causes and real solutions for the economic problems, writers and analysts who are prepared to sell themselves for money are inventing what I call fantasy explanations of why we have these problems.

Thomas Friedman of the New York Times says that the problem is that "the boomers have eaten through the abundance".  This fantasy explanation is absolutely outrageous in several ways.  First of all, it blames the ordinary citizen for the problem, rather than government and business "leaders" who actually created the problem.  It is a "blame the victim" theory. 

The boomers are the people of retiring age around the present time. Friedman says that these people lived extravagantly over the 40 to 50 years of their working careers, and this is why there is now so much government debt and so much unemployment.  On its face this theory is ridiculous.

But add in the fact that Friedman conveniently forgets that the 50-year period 1961 to 2011 is exactly the period in which transfer of manufacturing employment to overseas locations began, and continued at higher and higher levels for 50 years.  Doesn't it seem likely that tremendous loss of manufacturing employment, rather than normal behaviour of ordinary people, is the cause of the present grim situation?

Please excuse this lengthy explanation but I am getting to my point now!  Believe it or not!

In the first part of 2011, Maclean's Magazine included a lengthy article about unemployment in Canada, and especially the greatly reduced prospects for young people.

And who did they quote in this article?  They quoted Thomas Friedman and his outrageous theory!

Here we have a very strong example of censorship spilling over from the U.S. into Canada.

Then in the August 15, 2011, issue of Maclean's, page 12, Thomas Friedman's alleged wisdom is invoked again.

Can't Maclean's find any Canadian experts, to the extent that they have to rely repeatedly on the completely corrupt Thomas Friedman? 

In any case, maybe the Canadian experts are also obeying U.S. censorship!

At least in this blog there is no compliance with censorship!