In #1, I explained the Math of why Unions (read YOUR rights as a Worker) are a good thing.
Now, lets talk about “Why the Jobs went away” and disperse the clouds of disinformation about “Global Economies”. Lets talk about TRADE.
I am not an economist, in fact my eyes roll back in my head at the dry numbers and endless spin economists like to put on things.
I am however not STUPID, and can bring this down to a few simple truths.
Truth number one? The next statement is a lie.
“Things are different now, because we have to compete in a Global Economy.”
Things aren’t so different. From the 1st tribal peoples to the East India Trading Company, trade has rarely been confined within borders.
“Have to?” We don’t HAVE to do anything. We have CHOSEN to. Period.
Lets make it simple, how many of you even know the currency in Bolivia, let alone what a loaf of bread costs there? How about what you use and how much to pay for a pound of rice in Indonesia?
“Global Economy” is what the Owners of Megacorporations use as a code word for “Colonialism”.
“Colonialism” is code talk for coming into someone else’s backyard and taking their best shit. Otherwise known as Larceny. Was that too big a word, America? Try THEFT.
The idea of “Hey, they grow great tomatoes, and we can’t, but we grow great corn and they can’t; lets swap” is not inherently evil.
So lets talk about what Fair Trade really is and is not.
If we can only sell China 10 cars and they can sell us 100, its not fair. Most of you get that part. I’ve heard you bitch about it. Why would our government, our Corporations have agreed to this in the first place?
IT WAS NEVER ABOUT FAIR TRADE IN THE FIRST PLACE. It was never really about trying to sell them our shit. We know they couldn’t afford it.
Do.
The.
Math.
IT WAS ABOUT GETTING OUR FOOT IN THE DOOR TO OPEN BUSINESSES THERE.
The jobs went away so THEY could make more money. Period.
Lets see… if we only have to pay some grunt in Vietnam an American dollar a day, why pay our guys a hundred.
Lets see… if getting rid of toxic waste byproduct costs a thousand dollars here, and we can dump it there anywhere free, why not? Its not in OUR backyards.
Lets see… We just saved 1,099 dollars right there. No one will notice. The car still costs 50,000.
When we started noticing, they had to direct the blame elsewhere.
They babble a mile a minute about trading and trends, about how a “Global Economy” will bring workers elsewhere up to an equitable income, and they will become consumers of our shit.
NOT.
GOING.
TO.
HAPPEN.
Trickle down never happens. The rich hoard their wealth, and have no intention of not making RECORD PROFITS, no matter where they have to move their businesses to.
This statement, if they ever spoke plainly, would be true.
“Unless you are a member of our Caste, which you will NEVER be, get used to the idea that in pursuit of our PROFITS, you are interchangeable with any third world person anywhere. You will work for us, at whatever we want you to, or we will find someone else who will. You can all eat grass for all we care. Stupid Cattle.”
The ONLY was to stop this permanent exploitation is to either close our borders, and make it illegal to sell anything made, even in PART, outside our borders in the US, or for workers WORLDWIDE to unite and refuse to make anything they cannot afford.
Really.
Think about it.
They have convinced you you are powerless. They have all the assets. They have all the riches.
NOT SO.
They have paper, not goods. They have desks, not skills. They have fancy houses that are nothing but buildings we built on land that is permanent, owned only by the construct of said paper.
They have nothing without us.
We grow the food, build the skyscrapers, run their telephone companies, service their limos.
WE ARE THEIR ONLY ASSET.
IT SCARES THE SHIT OUT OF THEM THAT WE MAY FIND THAT OUT.
Who can own the land on which a man walks, the air that he breathes? It sounds like such a simplistic comment. It is not. It is truth.
They don’t you want to remember you are free men.
Trade? Is entirely dependent on us, so we must DEMAND Trade that is in our interests.
The only FAIR TRADE AGREEMENT for American Workers, and Workers Worldwide is that there MUST be a cap on how the Elite can profit from us, or the elites themselves have to be eliminated.
We are the wealth. They are just Paper Dolls.
That concludes Math Lesson Number Two.
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You ARE wealth.
Ask one question about any trade deal:
* will it give the same amount of exports and imports?
That is, will the trade be balanced.
Balanced trade is not guaranteed to be a good deal for both sides, but its possible for it to be a good deal for both sides.
To get specific, every time they pass one of these corporate wealth agreements, there is supposed “protection” in the form of retraining and adjustment assistance. Now, if the trade is balanced, there is at least a chance that there is a new export industry job to replace the lost import-competing job. If trade is not balanced, then the trade deficit country (that would be the US in these deals), then the import competing businesses lose more business than export producing businesses pick up.
And which kind have the recent crop been? I’ll give you a hint on the score so far, from the passage of NAFTA to the present: unbalanced, all of them, to balanced, none of them.
The economists’ spin often includes lying to each other first, by modeling impacts with a model that assumes that everything automatically tends to balance. So the chief problem with the current crop of deals is simply assumed away … its like “modeling” the Vitamin C content of a banana smoothie by assuming we are making it with oranges and lemon juice instead of bananas.
EXACTLY. Beautifully phrased. You’ve got ’em dead to rights.
largest trading partner. Not China. Not Mexico.
In the 1980’s in the shining Reagan era there was an election in Canada held just over the issue of whether to sign a Free Trade agreement with the United States. At that time I reasoned that a small nation could hardly have “free trade” with a larger one never mind the most powerful and get a fair shake. Free Trade according to Neo-Cons led by PM Mulroney at the time was going to be the big golden apple. So. I voted against it. It was all free trade, the high tech future blah blah.
So what actually happened? Good manufacturing jobs in Southern Ontario where I lived started disappearing even quicker moving to union hostile regions of the US. What did they replace them with? No jobs. Then in the late 80’s and early 90’s the future watchers and trendy economics types started talking about how everybody in North America was going to do these ultra special “high tech” jobs that would require “educated” workers. They were pretty vague about what these mystery jobs were and I was doubtful. That was why I went back to school in 1994 after being over educated and underemployed to become a nurse. I thought well sick people aren’t disappearing any time soon and this high tech gravy train everybody is talking about sounds more like wishful thinking.
The thing is one does not need to be overly schooled in politics or economic theories to be able to spot bullshit.
I will die laughing if some conservative pundit tries to re-package the idea that there will be a consumer driven recovery assisted by the free market suddenly getting perky and creating mystery jobs that could only be possible by breaking the unions. But some ill informed and dim fuckwad will make that argument even as more Americans become homeless.
I hate to say this but even after being here in the US since 1996 I still think I am participating in some giant satire and I will either wake up or hear somebody shout “cut”.
was so pissed at what he saw upon supervising the transfer of American made widget making machinery to Mexico during the first great rip off of NAFTA
(1993) that he distanced himself completely from “the company” to the extent of refusing the traditional retirement parties.
The “bitches” of Mexico had to submit three months worth of “rags” to prove they were not pregnant and thus would remain “on the job” for a “decent period of time”.
The installation crews I have personally spoken to about their exploits installing American widget makers in foreign lands have reported waking to automatic weapons fire. “It’s a normal thing here”. They also reported problems with how to expense report bribes to the local police for keeping their ass out of the local jails.
Clinton, the asshole who signed NAFTA and the other globalist douchebags who started the “movement” way back in the very same year I started my now defunct career with the Globocorp Widget Manufacturing Company in 1986. My first assignment was to figure out how to clean used widget maker parts because the shitheads in Mexico could not follow the required specs and sent us here in American widget making parts that did not fit the widget making machine.
Oh, and let me add the we in America sent them premium Bridgeport milling machines fully equipped with digital position readouts, for fucking free no less, something the American machinists had to do without.