Is globalization destroying consumer market?

The Sacramento Bee ^ | Sunday, October 23, 2005 | Harley Shaiken and David Bonior

[Willie Green]

ping

[KevinDavis]

No....

[Crim]

Duh...if no body makes anything...no body can AFFORD anything...

We arent just outscourcing manufacturing jobs...we are outsourcing our middle and upper lower class buying power..

Rocket scientists

[Willie Green]

Do you really think that federal deficit spending can keep it propped up forever, Kevin?

[funkywbr]

She should thank God that she had steady employment for 28 years.

And hopefully been aware of what's been going on with the jobs market since the mid 80's.

[quantfive]

$10.60 for Burger King? I doubt Delphi will find a very hard time with finding workers for $10.00 per hour. I haven't seen too much unskilled labor wage increases since the late 80's. I remember being offered a couple of factory jobs then for $10.00 per hour. Now I laugh at being offered that kind of wage but to a lot of Americans, they need a job period...

[VRWCmember]

Historically, U.S. firms have succeeded through innovation and high productivity, not low wages. Indeed, not long after Henry Ford introduced the moving assembly line for the Model T in 1913, he doubled the wage of his workers to $5 a day. Despite predictions of ruin by editorial writers and Ford's competitors, and buoyed by unprecedented efficiency, sales soared and the profits of the Ford Motor Co. jumped almost 20 percent the following year.

Yeah, that was great for the low-skilled workers that Ford hired, but think about what it did to all those skilled buggy-whip craftsmen who were forced out of work.

[Frank T]

Isn't globalisation what the U.N. and the Jihaadis are trying to do?

[Willie Green]

"The high wage begins down in the shop. If it is not created there it cannot get into pay envelopes. There will never be a system invented which will do away with the necessity for work."

-- Henry Ford

There is one rule for the industrialist and that is: Make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible.

-- Henry Ford

[VRWCmember]

paying the highest wages possible.

And when changing market conditions make it IMPOSSIBLE to continue paying those high wages, WWHFD? (what would Henry Ford do)

[Moral Hazard]

No.

[Moral Hazard]

"We arent just outscourcing manufacturing jobs...we are outsourcing our middle and upper lower class buying power.."

Which is why unemployment is exploding and the economy is shrinking rapidly. Oh, wait....

[2banana]

By the late 1940s, unions spread economy-wide Ford's idea that highly productive workers should also earn higher wages.

I would like to see a study on this. I have 20 years of working in/around unions. While there are some exceptions, as a general rule, productivity goes way down when a union does a job (as compared to a non-union shop or job).

[CSM]

Yep, and the same folks demanded garunteed jobs as technology improved. They also flatly rejected flexible manufacturing and they refused to work outside of their "classification."

On the management side, their business structure is horrid.

Both sides have driven the domestic auto industry into the ground, yet they want to whine when the dinasours go extinct. Yes, it will be painful for this country, but we have no one to blame but ourselves.

[Mase]

Wow! Harely Shaiken, a proud leftist from Berkeley who has been closely associated with Barry Commoner and Allen Ginsberg, joins forces with Saddam apologist Baghdad Bonior to write some trash on Globalization and you post it on FR.

Strange bedfellows Willie, and further proof that the isolationist argument is becoming increasingly desperate. Who's next, Krugman?

[Iron Matron]

I dont know..but globalization IS destroying the cultural mores that made the United States of America the greatest country in the world.

[Willie Green]

(what would Henry Ford do)

He'd increase productivity by investment in technological innovation.
Free traitors, OTOH, undermine technology investment with low-cost slave labor.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Is globalization destroying consumer market?

No.

The UAW has destroyed the domestic automobile manufacturing industry.

GM is no longer primarily and auto manufacturer. It's primary function is UAW health care.

[Iron Matron]

Isn't globalisation what the U.N. and the Jihaadis are trying to do?

Isn't globalisation what the U.N.,President Bush and the Jihaadis are trying to do?

And YES, it is.