On the back of this industrial output, rose America’s middle class. High-paying manufacturing jobs in turn helped spur a robust and growing economy that had little dependence on foreign nations for manufactured goods and armaments...However, manufacturing, as a share of the economy, has been plummeting. In 1965, manufacturing accounted for 53 percent of the economy. By 1988 it only accounted for 39 percent of the economy, and in 2004, it accounted for just 9 percent...The loss of the manufacturing industry manifests itself most clearly in job losses. - The Trumpet
The wing-nut shell game continues as they on the one hand decry the loss of jobs and the high unemployment figures and yet at the same time were the architects of the policies that gutted the manufacturing sector which drove the job creation. The unfortunate truth that the politicians, pundits, and CEO’s refuse to tell the American public is that unless we retool our manufacturing base we will continue to have high unemployment. The current and future high unemployment numbers are not solely based on the recession. Prior to the recession we were seeing unemployment rising as the economy was supposedly humming along.
The historic fact is that you get out of a deep recession or depression by working your way out. You don’t get out of it through austerity measures or attacking the unemployed. You didn’t get out of it by giving tax breaks to rich folks. You build or make things. This presents us with an impossible scenario. We no longer make things. The engine that would power our economy back to profitability and high employment is now driving the economies of China, India, and Singapore. What we are witnessing in America today are the results that were predicted but roundly denounced when the whole outsourcing process began. You don’t have to be a Harvard educated economist to figure out that if you ship your middle-class creation mechanism overseas that you will have fewer middle-class people. In fact it’s probably easier to understand if you’re not Harvard educated.
Remember, how we were going to replace all of those “dirty” manufacturing jobs with “clean” new technical jobs. While granted there were people who were able to make the transition from the manufacturing sector to the technical sector the majority of people were not so lucky. Many of those living wage manufacturing jobs were replaced with low wage service sector jobs which did not offer benefits that many people were accustomed to. What the economist’s neglected to tell us was that there was going to be a segment of the population who would not be able to transition into the new technical jobs. This magnitude in the numbers of people who can’t transition is the real cause of the term “jobless” recovery.
According to one study, every 100 jobs in durable manufacturing support 372 jobs in other industries, while every 100 jobs in business services supports 164 jobs elsewhere in the economy. We are losing good jobs which will stimulate the economy (and we are left with the shit jobs). – Stephen Hanson
As the American labor force has become more efficient and with the advent of robotics and other technological advances this places more pressure on an already shrinking labor force. When you combine these with the changes in the attitudes of the corporate elite from thinking of what is best for America to what is best for their short-term profits you have the current situation we as a nation find ourselves in. Let’s be clear the early industrialists were no angels and they clearly made enormous profits on the backs of their workers but one thing many of them understood was that they were Americans and they were guardians of a dream (the American dream) and their long-term success was tied to their workers long-term success. At no point in American history has there been this large of a discrepancy between the corporate elite’s salaries and their workers. The really sad fact for most Americans is that the media and the politicians have been co-opted by the wealthy into this mind game that none of the policies they have instituted have led to this American trauma.
The current state of affairs with the American economy is not some accident of nature or some perfect storm of naturally happening occurrences it was orchestrated by a group of greedy and unscrupulous people who presided over one of the largest transfers of wealth in the history of the world. And yet despite all evidence to the contrary we have these shell groups who on the one hand claim to be against bail-outs and yet they are being funded by those who created the need for the bail-out. This could only be created in America. Where else would you have a group of peasants with pitch forks and torches at the gates of the wealthy but not to demand equality but to bring more riches to them? It would be funny if it weren’t so tragic.
Every person familiar with business knows that labor is always your biggest expense and whatever you save in labor goes directly into your pocket, it is this mentality that has caused this new class of corporate titans to join the race to the bottom searching the world for the lowest labor costs they can find. We have supported our own demise through allowing the politicians to give tax-breaks to those who have shipped our jobs overseas.
There are those who claim that the days of American manufacturing are gone and will never return. They claim we are better served as a country because of it. I disagree because if you look at the fastest growing economies in the world they all make things. The other thing that is not being discussed is that when you outsource your production you also outsource your ability to innovate. Innovation is primarily done through the production process by workers who through the process recognize ways to create a more efficient or even a better way to create a product. Those innovations are now being made overseas. It’s not surprising that all of the new green and innovative products are now being developed and manufactured overseas. We have not only lost our production capabilities we have also lost our ability to innovate.
If we are to regain our leadership in the world we have to become a producer again. We will have to do it better and cleaner than we did it in the past and how they are doing it overseas. As a country we have to make some tough decisions about our future. Are we going to continue to ignore the evidence and continue to listen to the greedy or will we demand a return to the principles and policies that created the largest middle-class in history? That is the choice that lies before America.
“I have come to a resolution myself as I hope every good citizen will, never again to purchase any article of foreign manufacture which can be had of American make be the difference of price what it may” – Thomas Jefferson
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Work Your Way Out
Monday, September 6, 2010
Made in America
“I have come to a resolution myself as I hope every good citizen will, never again to purchase any article of foreign manufacture which can be had of American make be the difference of price what it may” - Thomas Jefferson
At a time when we are losing manufacturing jobs in this country, we should be doing everything we can to help our manufacturers stay competitive. They are the backbone of our economy. - Debbie Stabenow
This is my ode to the America worker on Labor Day.
Remember the “Made in America” mantra that epitomized our once mighty manufacturing sector. I wonder today if there are any products left to put the Made in America tag on. While this is definitely an ode to manufacturing in this country, it is also an indictment against those who have reduced the standard of living for the middle-class so that they are forced to purchase inferior products at reduced prices. As the manufacturing base of this country has continued to shrink I believe there is a direct correlation to the shrinking middle-class.
From the beginning of our Republic the founding fathers realized that it was imperative for a nation to be able to provide for the needs of its citizenry internally. The welfare of a nation and its citizens would be directly influenced by that nation’s ability to provide not only goods but also subsistence or employment to its citizens. Alexander Hamilton put it this way:
Not only the wealth, but the independence and security of a country, appear to be materially connected with the prosperity of manufactures. Every nation … ought to endeavor to possess within itself all the essentials of a national supply. These comprise the means of subsistence, habitation, clothing and defense. - Alexander Hamilton
There are those who have tried to put forward a new dynamic over the last few decades that say outsourcing manufacturing and other jobs overseas is a natural outgrowth of our new global economy and the evolution of the post-industrial age. While this philosophy has served the corporations and the investment class very well it has left the middle-class in shambles. Since the off-shoring of jobs began in the 1970’s we have lost millions of jobs that were supposed to be replaced with cleaner, better jobs. Despite their rosy prognosis our economy has not been able to keep pace with creating new jobs that provide livable wages to these displaced workers. Instead what we have been given is more service oriented jobs that tend to be low-paying and many without benefits. So we have replaced good paying manufacturing jobs that provided a pathway to the middle-class with these low wage nowhere jobs that are providing a pathway to poverty or the working poor.
We are constantly being bombarded with the images of folks saving money at these big box retailers. What is not being shown in those commercials are all of the small businesses in towns all over the country who will not be able to open businesses or who has had to close businesses. These small business owners will not be able to return their profits to their local economies. What we don’t see in those commercials are the inferior quality of the products we’re being sold or the sucking sound as our trade deficit with China and other Asian countries continues to rise. While their standard of living improves ours declines. Researchers are beginning to believe that our economy can now perform at capacity using 25% fewer workers. That means we currently have a surplus of workers due to increases in our productivity. Yet while the American workers productivity has continued rise their wages have remained flat for almost a decade. With the wing-nuts assault not only on the middle-class but also against the unemployed how will our society deal with such a large portion of our fellow citizens not engaged in our economy?
Consider the depths of our new dependency. Imports, 4 percent of GDP for the first 70 years of the 20th century, are near 15 percent now, and 30 percent of the manufactures we consume. Pat Choate, author of Agents of Influence, gives the following levels of U.S. dependency on foreign suppliers for critical goods:
Medicines and pharmaceuticals: 72 percent
Metalworking machinery: 51 percent
Engines and power equipment: 56 percent
Computer equipment: 70 percent
Communications equipment: 67 percent
Semiconductors and electronics: 64 percent
There are enormous challenges facing this nation and one of the greatest is reestablishing our ability to manufacturing and produce things. Has our society been better served by dismantling our manufacturing sectors, by off-shoring jobs, or by removing the incentives for small business development? With our march into the future and our drive towards technology is it inevitable that we will continue to push so many of our neighbors into economic peril? Some would have us believe that we don’t need to produce anything that we will retool our workforce and reeducate our workers into more technical positions. I personally don’t consider just the economics of manufacturing as reason to reestablish it. I believe that there are some intrinsic values gained for a society that creates and builds things. It gives the society a sense of accomplishment and the people a sense of pride. The time has come for us as a nation to stop allowing the folks who have sought to gut our middle-class for their short-term profit and against our long-term benefit.
“As long as our culture continues to fawn over its downward-aspiring lowest common denominators, the United States will remain a social and political punch line. As long as we continue tracking the every deed and fart of the Paris Hiltons and Kevin Federlines among us, we will continue to come out sixteenth best with regard to producing and introducing to the human race things of true substance worth appreciating for their aesthetic ingenuity.” - Anthony Beal
Thursday, August 2, 2007
The Best Government Money Can Buy 2
In the last article, I wrote that I had 3 opening proposals to wrest our government away from the corporations and the special interest groups that now dictate our political policies and direct our national debate. Like the tick or the octopus with its sticky tentacles, loosening the hold of corporations and special interest money will be difficult and will require the efforts of all of us. These guys rely on the apathy of the masses to continue their hijacking of our government and elected officials. Here are my proposals and I welcome comments and other suggestions on the part of fellow concerned citizens.
The three suggestions I would like to have implemented are:
1) Revoke the personhood of corporations.
2) Limit the number of lobbyists, the amount of money they are able to donate, and require a five year ban on government officials and employees from joining or lobbying for corporations in which they have worked on legislation for.
3) Institute a two term limit for all elected offices.
Revoke the personhood of corporations
This I believe is the cornerstone of any real reform of our political process. Our political system has become more and more unresponsive as corporations have been given more rights as individuals. The founding fathers of this nation were very suspicious of corporations; it was after all a corporation (East India Trading) that was used by the English crown to project their empire on the Americas. It was even debated and proposed by Thomas Jefferson to have freedom from monopolies inserted into the Bill of Rights.
We believe that corporations are not persons and possess only the privileges we willfully grant them. Granting corporations the status of legal "persons" effectively rewrites the Constitution to serve corporate interests as though they were human interests. Ultimately, the doctrine of granting constitutional rights to corporations gives a thing illegitimate privilege and power that undermines our freedom and authority as citizens. While corporations are setting the agenda on issues in our Congress and courts, We the People are not; for we can never speak as loudly with our own voices as corporations can with the unlimited amplification of money.[1]
Corporations were never meant to be endowed with the rights of humans, by their very nature they cannot be human or considered so. In a grave miscarriage of justice and bribery the Supreme Court in 1886 granted personhood to corporations and the rest as they say is history. Because many of the judges were once corporate lawyers themselves eventually the pleas of the corporations that they were in fact people won out. This decision opened the flood gates and allowed the wealthy corporation owners to remove the shackles placed on them by the states that chartered them. They now had 14th Amendment protections from government intrusion. This amendment had been written for one purpose and that was to guarantee the rights of slaves, period.[2] This was stated in the dissenting opinion and still holds true today. Because the original decision was based on incorrect interpretation of the law and bribery on the part of greedy corporate owners, it is in the best interest of the Republic to resend the original decision.
Why is this change so important? With the current sitting Court co-signing on the side of all corporate cases that come before it, the power of the corporations is only going to get greater. We the people cannot compete with the corporations. The founding fathers of this nation knew that and warned of this impending loss of control of the government to these corporate benefactors. It is unfortunate, but they knew that the darker side of human greed for money and power would overrule what is best for the people. As long as we afford corporations 14th Amendment protections they can continue to pump boatloads of money into the political process and continue to corrupt our system of democracy. Democracy is based on one person, one vote and equal protection for all. How can this include a non-entity?
How cruel was it to use the same law that disproved one lie (slavery; one man can own another) to create another lie (that corporations were people). Sometimes the irony of these guys just baffles me. They have the gall to use the same law that freed people and use it to enslave people. The whole purpose of corporations getting personhood was so that the same small group of owners could continue to control the country and maintain “white male privilege”. Remember when all this started “We the people” only included white males, who owned property. This only amounted to 10% of the population at the time and they were the only ones able to participate in democracy. If we are really serious about changing this clusterf**k we call democracy, we must open up democracy to all the people; not just those of privilege.
And please spare me all the corporate PR feel good messages about how corporations have been good for America through its racial policies, gender equality, and foundations. Corporations have done more to harm to the Republic than to help it and we will all be better off once they are relegated to being under the control of we the people once again.
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