steven n fettig's Jitterin' Thoughts

Because you wrote this on my birthday and didn't congratulate i will respond on this one ;-)

You said, that the U.S.-Government should support ony american businesses, but who do you think wants Things like NAFTA or the EU. The companies who take part in globalization want. Its not possible to compete with Asia or Eastern Europe without transferring your Know-How to other Countries where you can build cars (only an exaple) cheaper. Especially the American Car-Industry has the same Problems the germans had in the 80s (there are not many branches of which one can say that). They are too big, the technical standard is too low and the design is not up-to-date. In Germany hundrets of thousends of Jobs were deleted (I don't know the right word) or transferred to other countries. Now they create hundrets of thousands new jobs in germany. They needed to have the chance to rduce costs dramatically to stay alive and grow strong again. Now they come back due to quality-reasons. That is the same with the american carbuilders.
Generally I think that globalization always helps transnational companies.

The other point is that the american government should support the people. I think this will need some serious reforms of your political system to make your government feel obliged to the people and not to the large companies.

And then the "Cellphone Fight". Some reasons for GSM:

1. It is a modern technologie compared to CDMA. GSM is not up to date compared to UMTS or WiFi but they need a cheap and reliable system in the Irak.
2. GSM is used in more than 70% of the world's countries. Even in North and South America it is a growing thechnology. Why should your government spend money to help protect something that is probably not able to compete on its one? And especially why should the Iraqi people have to suffer from this, life isn't easy there right now, don't make it even worse. ;-)

I made a mistake in my post regarding the description of the type of technical cellular technology. I think that if America is involved in rebuilding Iraq, CDMA2000 should be used... not CDMA. Thees is right. GSM is superior to CDMA. I don't think, however, that WCDMA/UMTS is superior to CDMA2000 - the overall backwards compatability of CDMA2000 to CDMA and even GSM is better than that of WCDMA/UMTS to GSM and on top of that, data throughput on CDMA2000 is apparently superior to WCDMA/UMTS (I'm currently searching for the articles that made those claims). Otherwise, I agree w/ Thees...

I think I read somewhere else that the GSM/CDMA arguement for Iraq was put to bed as none of the US Generals, wanted the Iraqis (and potential terrorists) to have CDMA, this I think was due to the GPS reciever in the CDMA handsets and the US military didnt want that kind of thing freely or easily availible outside the US. (I'll try to find the link)
I agree with Thees, I think that there should be a unified global Mobile Network Standard. I think GSM should be used as Quartel (CDMA patent or whatever holders) also work with GSM, motorola, and other US mobile phone manufacturers also produce GSM phones simply because if they didnt then they would have a severly limited market. So for them its not really hurting them. Also the previous problems with Europeans getting behind the US, I think the last thing they would want to do would be to lock out european mobile manufacturers from iraq.
If the US and Europe try harder to co operate then things might get better. Also changing Freedom fries back to French fries might help, Freedom fries just sounds stupid. Big Mac with Freedom fries, just doesnt have the same ring to it.

I want to work in iraq.

Geffy,

You have some things mixed up unfortunately.

First, the people who wrote the constitution are a bad example since they were generally a priviledged class. A lot of things were done by them to put themselves and their families/future generations in economically advantageous positions.

Regarding manufacturing moving to other countries, I recommend you pull out some intermediate college economic textbooks for a review class. Over time, industries tend to migrate where productions costs/wages are the lowest. This is a natural occurrence. As wages rose in this country (no thanks to the wonderful labor unions ), it became too expensive and production moved to Asia, close to cheaper labor and raw materials. One example of this is shipbuilding, which used to be a more common industry in the US. It has moved to Asia (S. Korea? etc.). As those countries move up the totem pole (wages, technological improvements, etc.), shipbuilding again may migrate somewhere else (Nigeria?).

I have another beef with the complaint of a great 'sucking sound'- jobs migrating to Mexico that you & Ross Perot object to fervently. Would you prefer to make $.30/hour for your labor or $3.00? That might make the difference between food on the table, or a color TV for a Mexican family. Perhaps it's below our standards of living, but ask some of the people employed by the 'maquiladoras' and they are glad to have such a job around. The idea that all industries will exist in this country forever is short sighted and just plain preposterous. Hourly wages provided by unions in major urban areas and elsewhere may pay college tutions for some families, but they also distort the economic picture and add to the distress when jobs are eventually cut (and more will be cut, don't even question that fact which is a reality). I hear people bitch and whine about call centers moving to India. It's another simple example of an industry moving to a place with better returns over time. Nothing sinister, just unfortunate for those folks who are not trained to do anything else. Other countries deal with this on a regular basis- what makes us so special?