Posted on 03/10/2004 7:57:40 PM PST by Luis Gonzalez
But you want to attach those things to the companies that are now doing what the market demands.
Why should workers care? Will higher corporate profits translate into their lower cost of living helping to compete with Indian and Chinese labor? If free market is to equalize trading economies lower DJIA plus lower value of dollar is the way to go.
When you divorce capital from labor, labor becomes a commodity, workers loose any interest in the success of the private enterprises and capital will have to rely on international institutions for survival.
A national flag used to mean the common good for which it is right to sacrifice. When the owners of businesses start to think that they do not owe anything to their countrymen, they loose their right to expect any help or solidarity when other nations will nationalize their investments.
Well, you're right in the big sense. There will be some differences in emotionally charged (and mostly irrelevant to the big scheme) political issues though to make things look like the two are doing things differently. Gotta keep the people at odds with each other or the common agenda of both parties (global socialism) could run into a snag.
Gotta admit, the guys on top are pretty darn smart: They keep the majority of the people fooled all of the time.
This may sound a bit oblique, but I blame this lack of loyalty on the long term effects of the balance of trade deficits. Back during Clinton I recall people discounting it by pointing out that the money was coming back into the stock market and purchase of American bonds. They seemed to think this was a good thing, but at that time I saw it as bing transfer of ownership of American companies to foreign interests. IMO, this foreign ownership of stocks and bonds has cost us the Allegiance of formerly American companies as they have fallen under foreign ownership. Why would an international company be particularly concerned with the good of any country over their profits?
YOU are the beneficiary of lower prices every bit as much as your mythological "leaders", and you most certainly can't be talking about the government because you and I both know that they have no constitutional power to deny industry the right to legally sell their products in the world market.
You benefit every time you buy a video player/recorder for under $100, when a primitive version of that same recorder, with a "remote" that was connected to the unit by a chord, one head, and limited recording abilities sold for over $1,000 in 1980.
And that's just one example.
People in this forum who are in favor of using the government to control the ability of American industry to operate globally, see the fact that Toyota is building cars in America as a victory, because they have jobs.
Let's ignore the fact that Toyota and Honda are now wrestling control of our own market away from American auto manufacturers, and using Americans as a work force to do it.
I am called a "free traitor" by these people, because I believe that unemcumbered by government regulations, American industry can rule the world. Meanwhile, they call themselves patriots as they assist foreign firms in their take over of our market.
I'd rather employ a foreigner on his home turf, than be employed by one in mine.
Especially when labor costs in Red China are about five percent of what similarly skilled Americans make.
Look, Luis, the countries getting the jobs and the associated productive strength stay awake late at night trying to figure out ways to reduce the USA to their level of poverty. They don't play for money, they play for geopolitical power based on technical and economic strength. They seek to impose their will on us. The supposed "rising standard of living" all this is supposed to achieve for them is a smokescreen.
In the end, economic policy administrators get more power, their people get longer hours at pathetic wages in factories where basic safety precautions are considered Western weaknesses, and our folks lose their livelihood. No one else really benefits from this, not the subjugated Chinese serf, nor the American thrown out of work through the process.
The benefit to us that is supposed to result from cheaper consumer commodities is a cheap gambit that blinds us to the shift in geopolitical power. Don't you remember Marx saying that "They will sell us the rope with which we will hang them?"
What utter BS.
In India, an IT job working for an American company, pays anywhere from 10 to 30 times the nation's yearly per capita income.
You think these people are trying to kill the goose that laid the golden Hindi egg?
Per capita income in the US in 1952 was roughly 5% of today's per capita income.
Were we a third world nation then?
"the state will respect and protect citizens' legally-obtained private property"
They're far from a Democracy, but they ain't commies anymore.
Communist governments do not believe in private property.
Actually, I think that was Lenin, but I'm just being picky. The point is the same no matter which of 'em said it, they all intended (as their successors still do) the same thing.
Prices were a lot lower too. Can you say _inflation_ ?
I wonder if the Indian tech companies figured this out yet. Guess their dirt cheap prices will be going up.
That said, John Kerry and most of those senators voted FOR all those things.
And you believe that is actually more than a PR game so they can look good?
I don't believe that's why you are called a 'free traitor' (a term I tend to avoid using). I think it's because your posts never show any allegiance to America above foreign countries, that you never call for people to stand up for American values and the American way of life above and before the rest of the world. I've never read on of your posts that left me thinking that you take pride in America and in being an American. If you do, perhaps you could change the way you state your position in order to reflect it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.