Posted on 06/15/2003 2:09:25 PM PDT by Willie Green
Edited on 05/07/2004 6:06:46 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
The worst thing that the politicians have done to this country was to sign NAFTA. The Republicans and Democrats are both to blame. The companies in this country said that unless they went overseas for cheaper labor costs, their companies would not survive. At first, I thought if they only sold to the people overseas, it would be all right. So the companies erected plants overseas but then they started closing their plants in America. Now they manufacture overseas and export to America and we have to import the products to be sold here. No wonder our imports are higher than our exports.
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Well, there is also the other half of the theory, that if manufacturing jobs are created in say Vietnam, they will have money to spend, and they will want to buy products, products that preferrably come from america. That is a long term approach to the thinking, that everything balances out. There are obvious and clear holes in this thinking and it contradicts the view both parties are espousing today.
There is a trend of thinking that believes that all white collar jobs require a better educated worker then manufacturing jobs. Sales requirements are simply and generally the same as manufactering. An Example would be somone who manufactered say office supplies, loses that job, and winds up working at staples now selling the very items that they used to make.
However, the hitch is that, that job might or might not pay as well, its an unknown variable. A huge part of the free market and free trade theory that is espoused by both parties, are that we are turning into a service oriented economy, where our people now provide servies and no longer manufacter. There are some very obvious dangers to changing wholesale from going from manufactering to service oriented in policy.
If the manufacturing jobs are in say Vietnam, then they will have products to sell and the jobs that allow them to buy them. Americans sitting around with no paycheck are neither producing products or able to purchase them.
All third world countries have a rich class and a very large poor class. How come all that purchasing power they have in countries like Haiti and Mexico ---where there are actually plenty of rich --as many as anywhere, are doing so poorly? It's the middle class and only the middle class that matters. Without the middle class we're like any other third world hole.
How many hospitals and libraries has Bill Gates built? The kind of rich people who care about this country are few and far between.
What you need to worry about is what the ex-middle class people will do when they're poor, when they have nothing to lose. Look in history books at what brings on a revolution --an overthrow of power. Look at the French Revolution --- they haven't had one since they've had a middle class. Angry peasants aren't good to have around.
They told you wrong. The upper class is independently wealthy ---they can work like some of the Kennedys do but they don't have to. Middle class are all the people who need their paycheck, they work for an income, they work for their lifestyle which can be comfortable but when the paycheck stops, the lifestyle stops. There really isn't a difference between blue-collar and white-collar anymore ---blue collar types can make $50,000-70,000 a year and some white collar types are pulling in $20,000. The poor require charity, they don't make it on paychecks.
Are you serious?
A better question for this discussion would be "how many millionaires who donate to charitable organizations, hospitals, libraries, etc; has Bill Gates created?"
It is not important whether or not rich people care about anyone else. It is totally irrelavant. One rich person pays the taxes that fund the services provided to poor people at the rate of over 200 to 1.
You need to expand your thinking. Compassion does not feed people. Money does.
Sure they do ---do you think Fox's elite class in Mexico has no capital or credit? They don't need credit, they can buy shopping malls all at one time ----they've got vast amounts of capital. So do the wealthy elites of every country. The elites aren't much different in Haiti or Mexico than they are anywhere.
Additionally, what happens when the present "minority" (a mixture of "nonwhite", I guess) becomes the majority and vote as a block, what will they do with their country?
What a challenge for the on coming US citizens – keeping the best of the USA in an ever changing demographics of the homeland and a "smaller world".
EXACTLY!!!! Money that the people earned to feed themselves. People earning money to feed themselves are the middle class.
Restrictions against self determination; including the ability to personally improve one's living conditions, combined with the loss of basic human rights, is what is responsible for revolutions.
No. Just try asking Bill Gates to give you some money. The source of that capital is the banks ---where other middle class people have invested a portion of their left-over pay.
Come on FITZ, this is basic economics. Banks offer credit because Corporations and other entities extend THEM credit by allowing them to invest their money in others.
Banks are middlemen, they are NOT a source of capital.
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