Why this talk about a strong economy is a lie
The GOP keeps touting the record Dow Jones as proof that the economy is strong. I would disagree with this assessment - in fact, it is a sign that the worst thing that could happen to our economy, the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, is well underway. The stock market is in record territory because corporations are shipping formerly high-paying manufacturing jobs out of the country to countries that allow them to exploit their poor.
American workers' wages have decreased steadily since the age of Reagan and the policies of the Bush Administration are accelerating this trend. International or American corporations go into developing countries and take advantage of lax or corrupt governments to exploit poor people. They convince them or force them off of their land and into their factories and they become defacto forced labor fueling the US consumer market. Sure we get cheap Nikes and clothing but we are trading our middle class and our homeland security in the process. I don't think that it is worth it. Our shrinking middle class no longer has union manufacturing jobs to look forward to and can be expected to pay an increasing share for health care (if they have any to begin with).
The corporations use lame arguments that they are helping to industrialize the world thus expanding markets and improving the poor countries they are exploiting for personal gain. This is also supposed to help us here at home by increasing trade abroad. It is not working nor will it ever work. One of the things that made the US manufacturing base expand was our consumer culture. While arguments can be made about whether or not our consumer culture was a good thing, its growth has built the middle class of this country because they could afford to buy the things they are producing. This is not the case in the developing world - how can a worker making $2 a day ever afford a $100 pair of Nikes much less an automobile? The answer is the cannot nor and will not ever to be participants in a consumer culture in their own countries. In addition to the exploitation of the poor workers, the corporations take all the capital out of the country where it is needed to build infrastructure and safety nets for people that desperately need it. Thus, no real development takes place and US workers suffer because only if international wages improve will wages in the US improve.
Homeland security is another component of this issue. We no longer have steel industry, we no longer have a clothing industry, and we are losing our agriculture industry due to foreign competition. It is painfully obvious how our lack of energy independence has hurt our national security. Bush ran commercials about how drug use supports terrorists but this pales in comparison to how filling up your Hummer twice a week supports terrorists. The right whines about the border with Mexico and illegal immigration but insists on their companies in Mexico paying wages that do not allow those people to support their families. It is a no-brainer for a Mexican worker faced with a choice of working in an unsafe factory in Matamoros for $5 a day or to cross the border and make more than that in a single hour picking fruit in California. While this inequity exists no amount of fencing will ever secure this border. Vicente Fox has been using our country as a safety valve for social unrest in his own country and Bush allows it because his supporters profit from it. Establishing and enforcing an international minimum wage and forcing countries that do business in developing countries to help with infrastructure even if the corrupt governments don't require it.
A thriving middle class in developing countries will greatly increase our security and the security of the world at large. People who are able to feed and educate their families are very unlikely to be susceptible to the sway of radical Islam. If workers in Mexico can earn enough to feed their families in their own country, they will not cross the border to work here illegally.
Changing the way multinational corporations do business will hurt their bottom line. It may mean that they fail. They do not deserve to get rich at the expense of our national security or our middle class. If we truly want to make the world safer and push back terrorism around the world multinational corporations must be the sacrificial lamb.
American workers' wages have decreased steadily since the age of Reagan and the policies of the Bush Administration are accelerating this trend. International or American corporations go into developing countries and take advantage of lax or corrupt governments to exploit poor people. They convince them or force them off of their land and into their factories and they become defacto forced labor fueling the US consumer market. Sure we get cheap Nikes and clothing but we are trading our middle class and our homeland security in the process. I don't think that it is worth it. Our shrinking middle class no longer has union manufacturing jobs to look forward to and can be expected to pay an increasing share for health care (if they have any to begin with).
The corporations use lame arguments that they are helping to industrialize the world thus expanding markets and improving the poor countries they are exploiting for personal gain. This is also supposed to help us here at home by increasing trade abroad. It is not working nor will it ever work. One of the things that made the US manufacturing base expand was our consumer culture. While arguments can be made about whether or not our consumer culture was a good thing, its growth has built the middle class of this country because they could afford to buy the things they are producing. This is not the case in the developing world - how can a worker making $2 a day ever afford a $100 pair of Nikes much less an automobile? The answer is the cannot nor and will not ever to be participants in a consumer culture in their own countries. In addition to the exploitation of the poor workers, the corporations take all the capital out of the country where it is needed to build infrastructure and safety nets for people that desperately need it. Thus, no real development takes place and US workers suffer because only if international wages improve will wages in the US improve.
Homeland security is another component of this issue. We no longer have steel industry, we no longer have a clothing industry, and we are losing our agriculture industry due to foreign competition. It is painfully obvious how our lack of energy independence has hurt our national security. Bush ran commercials about how drug use supports terrorists but this pales in comparison to how filling up your Hummer twice a week supports terrorists. The right whines about the border with Mexico and illegal immigration but insists on their companies in Mexico paying wages that do not allow those people to support their families. It is a no-brainer for a Mexican worker faced with a choice of working in an unsafe factory in Matamoros for $5 a day or to cross the border and make more than that in a single hour picking fruit in California. While this inequity exists no amount of fencing will ever secure this border. Vicente Fox has been using our country as a safety valve for social unrest in his own country and Bush allows it because his supporters profit from it. Establishing and enforcing an international minimum wage and forcing countries that do business in developing countries to help with infrastructure even if the corrupt governments don't require it.
A thriving middle class in developing countries will greatly increase our security and the security of the world at large. People who are able to feed and educate their families are very unlikely to be susceptible to the sway of radical Islam. If workers in Mexico can earn enough to feed their families in their own country, they will not cross the border to work here illegally.
Changing the way multinational corporations do business will hurt their bottom line. It may mean that they fail. They do not deserve to get rich at the expense of our national security or our middle class. If we truly want to make the world safer and push back terrorism around the world multinational corporations must be the sacrificial lamb.
posted by tcsned at 12:39 PM
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