The Brave New Globalist World (What is the real intention of the multinational corporations?)

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.

A Corporation only takes my money in exchange for goods and/or services, that I have freely consented to, of which cost and a profit are accounted into. No Problem, that is capitalism as my meger reason can grasp it. I do not have that option with government. I will in no way (cuss) argue that they don't piss it away in massive amounts and take far more power than they are entitled to under the Constition!

(Mr Gopher is staring down a .223 at this point...)

But, do not complain to me. Go buy a politician like everybody else does, or get up a special interest group to scream loud if enough (or in a PC way) to get what you want.

I would rather not have the world's best machinists and hardware in the hands of China, as it and much of our money seems to be headed. Cut your own throat as you see fit.
Seeing how I make money off of both I have no compunction against you making more profit. Actually, the worse things get the more I stand to make, so get your ass back to work!

Posted on Fri, Aug. 01, 2003

Globalism threatens U.S. living standards
Jobless recovery is only one sign of sweeping, fundamental change
PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
Special to The Observer

Despite the economic recovery, the unemployment rate has risen to a nine-year high.

How can this be?

Part of the answer is the decline in U.S. manufacturing jobs. Between January 2001 and May, U.S. manufacturing jobs declined by 13.3 percent. (As of June the loss was 14.1 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis.)

Every state and the District of Columbia lost manufacturing employment during this period. Here are the losses by state:

• 20 percent: New Hampshire.

• 15 to 18 percent: North Carolina, South Carolina, Arizona, Colorado, Massachusetts, Maine, New York, Vermont and Washington.

• 12 to 14 percent: California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Mississippi, New Jersey, Oregon, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.

Most of the remaining states lost 9 to 11 percent.

Some of these lost jobs might be recovered if the economy gains strength. However, most appear to be jobs that have been moved abroad in order to benefit from lower labor costs.

U.S. labor that costs $26 an hour can be had in China for less than $1.

The United States, with its population of 289 million, only has 14.7 million manufacturing jobs left. If manufacturing job loss continues at the same rate over the next 28 months, only 12.7 million jobs will be left.

As the United States makes less and less of what it consumes, it runs a massive trade deficit. We pay for these foreign-made goods by giving up ownership of our assets -- our companies, real estate, stocks and bonds. Thus, foreigners gain not only the incomes from the manufacturing jobs but also the profits, rents, capital gains, dividends and interest from the assets.

A country that loses income streams from millions of lost manufacturing jobs, and from the trillions of dollars in assets it no longer owns, is a country that is losing a lot of income.

Allegedly, we are gaining it back in lower prices from cheaper foreign-made goods. But once the trade deficit drives down the dollar, the foreign-made goods won't be cheap any longer. We will have the twin evils of high prices and lost incomes.

It requires a lot of economic growth to offset the loss of high productivity manufacturing jobs. Is there a new sector to take the place of manufacturing in driving the economy?

The "new economy" was supposed to be based in "information technology" and services. But those jobs are also leaving the United States at a rapid rate. The Internet makes it possible for "knowledge jobs" to be performed abroad.

These foreign "knowledge workers" are displacing American engineers, designers, radiologists, stock analysts, accountants and researchers, in addition to clerical, customer service and telemarketing workers.

European countries have high unemployment rates among young university graduates, because welfare-burdened companies cannot afford to hire. Is the United States also creating millions of educated unemployables because the jobs for which they are trained go to foreigners?

If Americans wake up one day and discover that their economy is not for them but for foreigners, there will be political hell to pay.

Democrats will blame President Bush for the jobs lost during his term, but Bush is not to blame. Americans have failed to understand that conditions in the world have changed. These changed conditions have implications for their jobs and incomes.

Until recent years, Americans had few competitors outside Japan and West Germany.

Socialism engulfed the rest of the globe. Beginning in the mid-1980s, England, France and Italy privatized their socialized economies. China took "the capitalist road." The Soviet empire collapsed. Mexico undertook reforms.

These developments created investment opportunities abroad that socialism had blocked.

Suddenly vast pools of skilled and unemployed labor were available to multinational corporations. Wal-Mart could abandon U.S. suppliers and stock its shelves with goods made in China.

During the post-World War II period, Americans benefited from high levels of education, technology and capital. This made them highly productive and protected them from competition from cheap foreign labor that had less capital and technology with which to work. High-paid U.S. labor could produce so much more per hour than cheap foreign labor that U.S. employment had nothing to fear.

This has all changed. Today capital and technology can go anywhere, and they go to where labor is the cheapest.

This makes "globalism" a direct threat to U.S. living standards. Americans will continue to lose ground in the global labor market. The "jobless recovery" is one indication of this lost ground.

Yes and the money that is deducted from your paycheck goes to insure risky overseas investments by corporations via OPIC. The corporations have a lot of influence over politicians in and they are getting the politicians to protect them using the dumb ol' taxpayer to foot the bill. While a lot of people think its patriotic to pay taxes, these corporations benefitting from them do not care a whit for our national sovereignty, security or solvency. We(taxpayers) are just fools for the plucking.

Also, corporations promote socialised medicine. If the government(poor dumb taxpayers) picks up the tab, then their employees don't cost them as much and they are guaranteed payment by the poor dumb taxpayers. Sweet deal.

Corporations hate borders.They spend a lot of money on politicians to make sure immigration laws are not enforced. They spend a lot of money on politicians to make sure the government(poor dumb taxpayers) fund their mexicare program, providing housing, healthcare and schooling for their illegal workers. Tyson foods is a multinational. They have been busted time and again for illegals, and even have employees whose sole purpose is to act as coyotes to get the illegals to their plants in the US. Again, that 25% you pay to the government is funding this company, allowing them to slash wages and undercut American workers, because of the government(poor dumb taxpayer) financed mexicare, which pays all the benefits that the corporations used to pay to the American worker to the illegal. Sweet deal, huh?

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