Salon, and so much of other like it, are just blogs with people standing around screaming and backslapping one another about how wonderful they agree each other is. We wish you well with that. I can suggest that the people here who autonomic yawp that of course, America is the same thing as Nazi Germany and anyone to the right of Eugene Debs is an enemy of the state, get it wrong. Badly wrong. But, this is the internet, so no harm no foul. Please continue.

Modern criticism like that of Lewis Lapham or Brooke Allen is fading fast. A downside of the web is that everyone just wants to see and hear a reflection of their own ego. So eventually the web becomes a kind of weapon of tyranny, not the other way around as promised. The secong aspect is that on the web thoughts are reputation driven. Once you are in the 'club' then there is never any doubt of your credentials ever. Blogging as brand. Even here at Salon it seems so much is just shorthand for the same noise everyone knows everyone is going to make about the same subjects over and over. Branding and reputation. Content matters far less. Thoughts count for far less. So criticism counts for far less.

Readers bristle now, armed with their web pages that anyone on the planet could ever dare to delve into a book with more insight than they. So criticism dies. Of course most people aren't that smart, so books die too. All hail the blogging class. All hail propaganda.

The Congress will do nothing until the Dems take back the White House and then continue to do nothing for the sake of the 2010 Congressional elections. I'm afraid our shiny new Congress is running the significant risk of making itself about as useful as the Congress of Qatar or Dubai or something.

They can't outsource physicians assistants, physical therapists, dental techs, chiropractors and such. If you want a job they can't send overseas then you need a job that involves your physical presence. Otherwise you're betting on your skills as a real estate or insurance salesperson. Which are probably not that great.

Tax and protect. Well that's fine as long as you go whole hog and pray for good weather. Which means that what you wind up with is significantly higher structural e.g. permanent unemployment. In France it's about 11% in Germany slightly less. This cost shakes out of the benefit of having some of the highest hourly wages e.g. lowest marginal productivity in the developed world. For example German car workers are the highest paid car workers in the world with massive benefits that protect wages and jobs. The problem is that it comes at the expense not of jobs going elsewhere but of corporate failure. They simply don't make all that many cars. It's the other companies in Germany not held to those contract that make up the lions share of the output. And where firms like Volkswagen are successful it in their overseas subsidiaries.

Now granted the model for car companies is a little different because car companies need to make, sell and service cars near their own markets. Which is why there are so many Toyota plants in the US. And why they are not held to the same UAW congtracts. Do they earn less? Sure they do. So?

But in either case the suggestions here sounds like a kind of protectionism that ignores the fact that in the long run higher costs and prices really do lose in the market. You can't effectively regulate through taxation a market mechanism via labor costs. They'll simply squeeze out those costs one way or another. If service jobs move overseas and you take away the advantage of moving them the the money that goes into those salaries will be redirected into capital projects that eliminate the jobs altogether. Instead of Indian call centers you'll have completely automated ones in lights out centers. It's simply a matter of how badly those companies would need to make those investments.

Similarly for manufacturing you're ignoring the fact that firms can take advantage of that price inflation in ways you didn't think of. Take Chinese scooters. Probably more scooters are built in China than anywhere else. Many of them are exported here. The bottom rung in price is about $800. No one knows or cares how much labor goes into that $800 scooter. But let's assume that the Government assesses a 20% duty on every scooter. That makes the new price $960. But the $160 differential is probably not wide enough to permit an American company to build a similar good in the US. Unless they squeeze the labor out of it and use robots. So the new price point is $960, the builder eventually builds the scooter for about what it costs in China to build, no new jobs are created and the company in the US becomes rather profitable. Ergo, higher structural unemployment.

In other words trade barriers don't always work the way you expect them to.