Posted on 08/05/2003 6:05:13 PM PDT by comnet
It took generations of hard working, sacrificing Americans to build our economic system, a system now being dismantled by small-minded, greedy globalists. By Lawrence J. McNamee
As Americans witness the flight of their manufacturing and now white-collar service sector jobs to Asia and Latin America and other nations with low wages, some are asking, "What is the real intention of the U.S.-based multinational corporations?" Perhaps economic globalism represents an attempt to equalize incomes of the First World and Third World. Yet this policy is impoverishing American workers and providing highly exploitative, low-paying jobs elsewhere. This could be discounted as just misguided economic policy if the policy was not making the highest investment incomes in the world higher still.
When the United States shifted from a nation where most personal wealth came from some form of productive labor to one derived from the value of stock holdings, short-term thinking and shallow, self-serving policies took root. At that point the very nature of the game of capitalism changed for the United States and for the world. The speculative economy can be reported as doing well, while the productive economy and its workers' incomes are marginalized. Hence, we have our current "jobless recovery."
Today IBM contemplates firing thousands of American software engineers so that the company can employ thousands of Indian software engineers. The Indian professionals will work for a fraction of the salaries currently paid their U.S. counterparts. This is what commentator Kevin Phillips calls "the race to the bottom." In theory, minimized wages yield minimized costs which result in maximized profits. Unfortunately, this also increases unemployment and reduces the quality of life in the United States.
Such short-term economic thinking has the potential to turn the "race to the bottom" into a race to global ruin. Men are not angels, and appeals to the marketplace or to modernism are only a thin coating of gloss on the ugly surface of unchallenged greed. When coal miners went on strike in 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt asked mine workers and mine owners to come to the nation's capital and negotiate in good faith. Representatives of the mine workers arrived, while representatives of the mine owners refused, citing a sort of "divine right of capitalists" as their reason. Roosevelt threatened to nationalize the mines if the owners continued to refuse to negotiate. Divine right took a fast turn and the owners sent their men to Washington and the matter was resolved.
Even in this age of lightning-fast communication, there remains such a thing as the national interest. Until globalist corporate America understands it is the national interest, and not short-term profits and stock market prices, that represents the ultimate "bottom line," this erosion of the economic infrastructure of the United States will continue. More jobs will disappear here and the gains to our neighbors will be small and temporary. The clock is ticking off a countdown to the end of the political-economic system that took so much of America's strength and heart to build. At least two hundred and fifteen years of innovation and sacrifice is being downsized to nothing.
Lawrence McNamee is a History Instructor and writer in San Antonio, Texas. He is the proud son of a retired American industrial worker.
As for the rest of your post you are getting ridiculous now. I need to go anyway.
I will try to break you of your liberatarian left feildisms another day...
Before you attempt to break anyone of anything, you need to break yourself of your liberal mentality that most people engage in business for venal reasons.
A Corporation is an artificial person established by the state to provide the owners of the corporation limited liability so that their personal fortunes are not at risk for the actions of the corporation. Until the Santa Clara case in which the US Supreme Court ruled that a Corporation was a person under the 14th Ammendment most Corporations had a tuime limit in their charter. In fact originally most Corporations took a legeislative enactment in order to be granted a charter.
Now to continue your history lesson. Originally the incorporators were entrepenuers who used this method to attract investment in fact many corps are still set up this way but as professional managers came in (technically employees of the corporation) the management of the corporation became more and more isolated from teh owners of the corporation. As more and more stock ownership passed to the hands of mutual funds and other managed investment entities, the actual control of the stockholders was further diluted so that now in many (not all) corporations the company is controled by the CEO and that CEO controls the board of directors that has hire and fire authority over him. Thus there is about as much chance of regime change from inside the corporation as in any totalitarian dictatorship.
Now you state that corporate power is moonshadow compared to that of the state. Since some corporations control soime nations and have in the past controled several governments I must ask which state you are referring to?
Things are not as black and white as you try to make them seem. Deal with reality.
BTW, I read the history of Byzantine Empire and I notice some interesting similarities. The Byzantine Empire declined economically and militarily as most of wealth got concentrated in the hands of the super-rich who DID NOT PAY much taxes (they got most of tax cuts while the middle class shrinked or disapeared). At the same time the trade and lucrative state monopolies got transferred to the international corporations key of them controlled by Venice. Venice did not show much gratefulness as she was willing to help crusaders to loot the Contantinople for extra profit.
Poland declined as the wealth got concentrated in the hands of few magnates and middle class (merchants, craftsmen and industrialists) got squeezed out of existence. At some moment the kings could not afford to protect the state from foreign powers.
Who does not study history will be forced to repeat it.
As far as campaign finance reform is concerned, I favor the solution proposed by Dr. Alan Keyes: eliminate ALL organizational contributions and permit donations only from individual citizens.
I don't accept the "extortion" excuse from those who gleefully pay for such influence for their own benefit.
When push comes to shove, corporations are merely artificial entities, and are not entitled to the same rights as individuals. In the very act of incorporation, investors yielded those rights to government in exchange for limited personal liability for the actions of the corporation. This arrangement is agreed to by our representative government because promotion of commerce is recognized to benefit the general welfare of We the People. However, when corporate activity ceases to provide this general widespread benefit to our society, and actually begins to function to our detriment, it is time for government to intervene and terminate this very fundamental agreement.
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