I'm starting to think maybe I'm out of place on this one but NAFTA, thanks Bill(sarcasm), and the price of Oil share some relation as I see it. One of the biggest causes behind the price of oil is the emerging middle classes in China and India that are buying cars as well as the country themselves building infrastructure that'll put us to shame if they already haven't. We are essentially financing our own downfall as I see it. We can't hardly buy American goods anymore and if we do they are of rather dubious quality as I see it. Mind you I own a 99 Durango I've had for six years and kept in great running order.
More or less when we buy Chinese made, lead ladenned, platic pieces of garbage or electronics we are contributing money to that country and with that wealth they are able to compete with us for the supply of oil. We let tech support jobs go off to India where yes they have accents I have trouble understanding sometimes (and I know Creoles) and so India has an emerging middle class they didn't have previously that is again wanting cars and competeing with us for oil.
Is there a simple solution, nope. Is there a good solution, nope. Are we pretty much up s%^t creek, yup.
A lot of my classmates, I go to lawschool here in Florida where I'm a native, think that the whole global trade and free trade bit are good for America, huh. Yeah so now we have more billionares because of it but...what does that matter when the middle class is disappearing and the lower classes are having a hard time making do and many don't even with government aid. My southern counterparts understand where I come from. My English roomate, uh, she's a real pain and has whole "America is just one country, it has to share it's wealth with the world", which if America, Switzerland, and Israel weren't only countries with good civil liberty records and protections then she might have something but I'm an American and a nationalist Republican voting (except for Bush, he's not nor was ever a true Republican) and I say America first.
America is getting bought out by foreign countries more and more, we are losing our identity and becomming tenants in our own country, we are buying products of poor quality(does anyone remember when you could buy American and it'd last a quarter of a century or more).
We keep buying Chinese goods and they keep getting rich and so we have to spend more on gas. The Indians are getting our money from companies setting up there tech support headquarters there and again we have to spend more on gas. What's more important at this point-- spending more on industry made goods and spending less on food, gas, electric, heating, and industry made goods because a drop in the price of gas would cause the cost of goods to come down just as gas getting more expensive have caused them to go up. Or spending less, supposedly, on Plasma Screen TVs(which you can't eat, drive, shoot, reload, etc..) and spending more on gas to get to work, food to eat, and ammo to keep your 2nd Amendment patronage up to par. Just a thouht.