Bernie Sanders to Obama on Nike trip: Just Don’t Do It!

Yahoo ^ | 5/07/15 | Dylan Stableford

[Libloather]

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is urging President Barack Obama to cancel a planned visit to Nike’s headquarters over the low wages it pays foreign workers.

Obama is scheduled to travel to the sneaker giant’s Beaverton, Ore., headquarters Friday, part of the president’s effort to galvanize support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a multinational trade deal between the United States and 11 other countries, including Vietnam — where Nike manufactures most of its shoes.

“Given Nike’s legacy of offshoring American jobs and exploiting low-wage workers, I would strongly encourage you to cancel this meeting,” Sanders wrote in a letter to Obama Wednesday. “Nike epitomizes why disastrous unfettered free-trade policies during the past four decades have failed American workers, eroded our manufacturing base and increased income and wealth inequality in this country.”

[Libloather]

Maybe it's just a fitting session for Mooch.

[Cowboy Bob]

What does Bernie want? The wages Nike pays to workers in Viet Nam are a lot higher then the norm. They are good paying jobs by local standards.

If Nike is forced to pay higher salaries, they will go elsewhere. The Vietnamese workers will lose their jobs (thanks, Bernie!)

Of course, if Nike has to pay higher wages, they might as well come back to the US.

So, maybe Bernie’s demand to pay higher wages will result in jobs coming back to they US. But, people who have jobs and pay taxes usually don’t vote for Socialists. So, Bernie may later regret what he is doing...

[edpc]

This wealth inequality nonsense really grates me. First of all, when I was growing up, most of the people I knew who owned the high dollar athletic shoes were from economic positions that, supposedly, couldn't afford them.

Competition in a true free-market system means inequality will always be present. Your only constraints would be ambition, intelligence, and talent. Those attributes are developed, not handed out in some government queue.

[grundle]

“Given Nike’s legacy of offshoring American jobs and exploiting low-wage workers, I would strongly encourage you to cancel this meeting,” Sanders wrote in a letter to Obama Wednesday.

Sanders doesn't know what he's talking about. This is from an article about a Nike factory in Vietnam:

http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/11183/the-noble-feat-of-nike/

"But when I talk to a young Vietnamese woman, Tsi-Chi, at the factory, it is not the wages she is most happy about. Sure, she makes five times more than she did, she earns more than her husband, and she can now afford to build an extension to her house. But the most important thing, she says, is that she doesn’t have to work outdoors on a farm any more… 10 to 14 hours a day in the burning sun or the intensive rain, in rice fields with water up to your ankles and insects in your face."

By opposing letting Nike operate in Vietnam, Bernie Sanders is waging a war against women - Vietnamese women.

[Wolfie]

Vietnamese workers will lose their jobs (thanks, Bernie!) Of course, if Nike has to pay higher wages, they might as well come back to the US.

Perish the thought.

[Common Sense 101]

As usual, this old, communist-loving perverted doesn’t have a friggin’ clue what he’s talking about. The continual and unrelenting, excessive taxation and regulation placed on businesses by the Demonic Party, not free trade policies, have “eroded our manufacturing base and failed American workers.” Look in the mirror, dumbass.

[Common Sense 101]

As usual, this old, communist-loving perverted doesn’t have a friggin’ clue what he’s talking about. The continual and unrelenting, excessive taxation and regulation placed on businesses by the Demonic Party, not free trade policies, have “eroded our manufacturing base and failed American workers.” Look in the mirror, dumbass.