Hooray For China, eh?

Joined: 06 Jul 2003 Posts: 8380 Location: Central CA

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090603/ap_on_re_as/as_china_tiananmen

The country that most of our major corporations would rather buy from and invest in than our own. And now, after yet another major blow to the US economy and the country's working class... hey no problemo, the yuppies are still going to be able to get their hands on a brand new Hummer... produced by a Chinese company of course.

You know, it really doesn't matter to me that they can become the Ubercapitalists of the world when it suits their purpose. is what bugs me. Far too many people read far to much into "the emergent free market" in China as an indication that they going to emerge from the economic war they're waging on the United States on a daily basis as a purely free market democracy or at least a representative republic.

The fact that they can... at the drop of a hat... revert to the good old Communist Chinese dictatorship that we all knew and loved 20-30 years ago pretty much exposes them for what they still are , the only real difference being that now they have billions of American dollars, courtesy of all those major American corporations that would rather invest in cheap labor and shoddy goods than do a fricking thing to make America strong again, to do their REAL thing ... like build an ocean going navy, the lack of which has been the only obstacle to being an actual super power.

They're outperforming us in just about every metric out there, they're doing it largely with our money and fricking Wall Street couldn't be happier with that situation. Something stinks.

When the hell are you people who are always ranting about the "lefties" and the "liberals" and most of all, that bogey man of all bogey men, the "Socialists", going to realize that it's all but over and the REAL SOCIALISTS... the one percent at the very top to whom half the wealth created in this country accrues... have already just about won the fight?

Joined: 22 Dec 2007 Posts: 461

"hey no problemo, the yuppies are still going to be able to get their hands on a brand new Hummer... produced by a Chinese company of course."

Actually I hear the ownership is going to china but the production is still in the usa
www.newsroomamerica.com/business/story.php?id=456060 Not that anyone is really going to buy it anyway..

"The fact that they can... at the drop of a hat... revert to the good old Communist Chinese dictatorship that we all knew and loved 20-30 years ago pretty much exposes them for what they still are , the only real difference being that now they have billions of American dollars, courtesy of all those major American corporations that would rather invest in cheap labor and shoddy goods than do a fricking thing to make America strong again, to do their REAL thing ... like build an ocean going navy, the lack of which has been the only obstacle to being an actual super power."

It isn't so much of a dictatorship. It's authortarian. I have seen and have organization charts of the party and the government structure there. It's hard to simply. It's communist in the name but that really doesn't mean it's a communist government. Same as some of the communist parties in India are really more in line with the Labor part of the UK or Christian Democrat of Germany.

"They're outperforming us in just about every metric out there, they're doing it largely with our money and fricking Wall Street couldn't be happier with that situation. Something stinks."

Every metric? Every year china has 24 million people entering the work force looking for work. They can't find jobs for all of them..this adds up and their unemployment rate can be quite high. The eastern portions are developed but out in the western region most are still farmers.

"When the hell are you people who are always ranting about the "lefties" and the "liberals" and most of all, that bogey man of all bogey men, the "Socialists", going to realize that it's all but over and the REAL SOCIALISTS... the one percent at the very top to whom half the wealth created in this country accrues... have already just about won the fight?"

Considering that products are still designed here they still have to deal with that. if people in other countries are to live like the western world they have to develop things to go around our inventions. You can't simply have a given item and expect it to improve someones life without the things that go around it. If say Nepal took apart some cars and started to make their own they won't live like Americans. They still would have to design roads, bridges, gas stations etc. As for boogymen companies leave countries to go to ones with lower taxes and regulations. The same as what we have seen domestically in the USA. There are plenty of old mills all across the northeast that closed down well over 50 years ago. Then went down south for cheaper labor and chances are they went to mexico or china for cheaper labor than that.
Make no mistake we can make anything in the world. But everything comes with a cost. Health care, pensions, insurance, transportation etc. It even goes beyond just the USA. Waterford Crystal was associated with making some of the finest glassware in the world in Ireland for decades. Earlier this year it all shipped to Czech

Joined: 06 Jul 2003 Posts: 8380 Location: Central CA

I really have no idea what the hell you're talking about so just let me take a wild assed guess here... what you are doing is blaming outsourcing on American workers needing enough in the way of compensations to live in America... not China or India... but in America... where even basic health care is an industry to be exploited by Wall Street. So based on that guess...

So what your saying is that American workers should adapt the living conditions of the virtual slave labor that is used in China and India in order to enable companies there to take jobs away from Americans? Apples and oranges buddy. It costs a lot more to LIVE here than it does there... and we'll eventually get to why that is later. Right now...

OK let's say we're back to 19th century labor standards and that the big corporations have finally gotten their way and American workers are now working in sweatshops and boiler rooms and factories and mines with no pensions, no benefits, no pesky safety requirements... being paid somewhere between 3 and 7 bucks a day... all those things that American workers fought to overcome for years and years... just swap that teenage girl sewing shirts for under some coyote labor contractor in the jungles of Upper Byte Me for an American working stiff with a family to feed and a mortgage to pay. Se the difference?

Of course, once the American worker has been reduced to the level of his barefoot, uneducated counterpart in the jungle or the Mongolian Desert... then the question arises as to who's going to have enough money to BUY all that shit they're producing because it will certainly limit THEIR ability to do so. But that too is fodder for another post.

How about this? Will the CEOs and other execs ALSO adapt the living standards of THEIR counterparts in China and India and give up their claim to nobility along with their multimillion buck salaries, their megamillion buck incentive packages and their multi megamillion buck golden parachutes?

HELL NO! Not EVER on THIS flipping planet, wouldl they do that and therein lies the tale that the Corporate turdminions keep avoiding by a mile in all the "blame the workers-they make too much-they drag the company down-yadayada" screeds.

Once again... you leave out even a smidgen of concern for the working class people that go out and grow, manufacture, dig up, or otherwise produce, process and/or transport the goods that produce the wealth that the one percent simply takes because they think they're entitled to take it.

That entitlement, which is based on nothing but primordial greed and self centeredness is the root cause of all of the outsourcing and offshoring that has taken place over the past thirty years... it's one and only goal being to increase the flow of wealth upward from those in the nether regions doing the producing to those at the top who produce basically nothing.

Can you show me a single instance of outsourcing production to some jungle hut somewhere that actually resulted in reduced prices to the American consumer? right off the top of your head?

And I don't mean just tell me about how you heard that the Acme TNT company is selling cheaper dynamite to Wile E. Coyote... I mean show me one goddamned major American corporation that has ever lowered prices to the end consumer because they were allowed to kick American workers in the balls.

They've been building Chevrolet trucks in Mexico for Years and they damned sure didn't sell for any less than the market will bear, nor did they sell for less than the Toyotas and Nissans that are built here in America using American labor. It's a fricking scam manl and I'm amazed you're still falling for it.

And finally, there is ALWAYS going to be a limit to how much you can take out of a system without putting anything back and expect that system to continue working. That limit was passed for many of us in this country a whole bunch of years ago when Saint Ronald of Reagan launched an all out holy war on regulation.

I know this is going to be hard... if not downright impossible for you to believe... but the system QUIT working for the bottom two quintiles during that period and it's rapidly gnawing its way through the middle as we speak as 600 thousand jobs a month are lost to the same rapacious greed that triggered the recession the corporations blame for the vicious cycle we're in without addressing their own part in creating that recession.

Wall Street has pretty much had its way with the working class since the 80s and there is a damned good reason why the bottom 20% are actually LOSING ground every year in terms of REAL income and why the next to bottom 20% is hanging in there flat and why the vaunted middle middle is beginning to feel a sharp pain in the vicinity of their own hip pocket.

It all boils down to your heroes on Wall Street being allowed to TAKE any fricking thing they want while feeling that they should NOT be required to put back in proportion to what they take and that to impose such a requirement is "Socialism" or "Communism" or whatever the epithet du jour happens to be.

I suppose YOU could probably come up with something you could CLAIM they contribute but if you decide to try... don't let it be that damned lame old "They create joooobs." bullshit because we've LOST more jobs in this country in the last year than those bastards have CREATED... here... in the United States, not China or India or Mexico or the Marshall Islands of Samoa... since NAFTA went into effect.

Joined: 22 Dec 2007 Posts: 461

"So what your saying is that American workers should adapt the living conditions of the virtual slave labor that is used in China and India in order to enable companies there to take jobs away from Americans? "

You are assuming that all labor in china is like slave labor. I've toured factories and I went there. Are the labor standards the same as the western world? No but some things do take time. Even if the standards were the same the valuations of the currency would not be at par and thus jobs would still move.

"Can you show me a single instance of outsourcing production to some jungle hut somewhere that actually resulted in reduced prices to the American consumer? right off the top of your head?"

Well clothing. Check out Filson.com much of it's clothes are made in the USA. Filson has been making clothing for quite some time. I'm not doubting the quality. Then take a look say at Aramark or any other clothing manufactuer and see the price difference. On Don Imus's show he even talked about prices differences in terms of merchandise. I believe he mensioned trying to just get hats made in the USA in nearly the same price range and it took some time but he did.

"And I don't mean just tell me about how you heard that the Acme TNT company is selling cheaper dynamite to Wile E. Coyote... I mean show me one goddamned major American corporation that has ever lowered prices to the end consumer because they were allowed to kick American workers in the balls."
Every single electronics company and every single call center.

"They've been building Chevrolet trucks in Mexico for Years and they damned sure didn't sell for any less than the market will bear, nor did they sell for less than the Toyotas and Nissans that are built here in America using American labor. It's a fricking scam manl and I'm amazed you're still falling for it. "

Well given the pension costs alone that is a clear difference between those. Nissan tried to unionize actually a number of years ago but there wasn't enough of a voter turnout.

"I suppose YOU could probably come up with something you could CLAIM they contribute but if you decide to try... don't let it be that damned lame old "They create joooobs." bullshit because we've LOST more jobs in this country in the last year than those bastards have CREATED... here... in the United States, not China or India since NAFTA went into effect."

Who exactly is we? A job is moved not lost. So just the creation of any job is a good thing? Hiring someone to build a road to nowhere is a good thing?

Ok fine so what exactly is your argument again for the way things should be? What is your solution? Here's a soap box the size of Sears Tower.

We have logically two choices here.

1) we continue with the free trade policies

2) we dismantle them

1 is easy to see. We have nafta and trying to add dr nafta (domenican republic)

How exactly can we do #2 (I'm assuming this is what you want) without ticking off the world. We're still the LARGEST market in the world to sell goods in. If you think people in india and china buy the goods and services they export they usually don't or not nearly in the same volume that we do.

You talk about jobs lost. How is it lost if we can go into canada or mexico or china and work? The concept of living and working in the same area 30,40, 50 years is long gone. I understand you are mad but again what's the recourse? There's nothing wrong with learning other skills and having three or four things lined up incase something happens.

Joined: 06 Jul 2003 Posts: 8380 Location: Central CA

I've been using this soapbox for a lot longer than you have and I have offered my ideas for solutions many times over. They are many and varied and I'll be damned if I'm going to set each one out here again just for you.

If you're really interested in reading... and understanding what it is I'm saying then feel free to read back through the posts... my position is perfectly clear... or at least nobody else seems to go out of their way to constantly question me. You don't have to agree but don't ever pretend you don't know exactly where I'm coming from.

As for the validity... or the perceived validity of my position(s)... that's what gave birth to my signature at the bottom of this post. You don't have to consider them valid... they aren't yours

I entered the labor market in 1956 at the age of 13 and up until becoming disabled in 2002 I worked in that labor force the entire time no breaks for college, no nattering around from job to job no trips around the world. I started when it was possible for one parent to support a family and the family unit was one of the strongest entities in existence and I have watched both the situation AND the American family unit deteriorate ever since through ups and downs of all kinds.

But the general trend has always been ever downward for the working classes and ever upward for the privileged few... and as the numbers of the privileged few began to increase over the past three decades thanks to deregulation and the birth of our "bubble" economy, the lot of the working poor has deteriorated at ever faster rates... until finally we reach the point at which we find ourselves today.

I'm really sorry that you can't grasp the fact that this was planned... that it did not HAVE to happen... that it was not somehow inevitable that we would find ourselves returning to a system that our ancestors came here to escape.

But lo and behold, here we are doing the same damned shit that mankind has done to each other since Ogg figured out he could knock little people like Ugg in the head and take his pretty pebbles just because he was bigger than Ugg. You might say old Ogg was our first robber baron and nobles of one kind or another have been emulating him ever since.

Nobody here is talking about "redistributing the wealth" or any of the lame assed catch phrases the corporatistas and the nobility, along with their right wing enablers, are so fond of tossing out there every time someone mentions a living wage or an improvement in working conditions. Nobody preaches any kind of Socialism here, nobody here is a flaming ultra left wing liberal... although we have had a couple of flaming ultra right wing "conservatives" MAKE those claims from time to time.

All anybody here wants is to try to hang on to whatever opportunity there is left to make a decent living for their families, have a little dignity and be treated with a little respect. I believe that the workers in this country deserve that, don't you think? There's not a goddamned thing wrong with that is there?

But as long as the bloodsucking leeches that you're so fond of popping in here and defending can't be satisfied with their millions or billions or probably even trillions the way we're heading... that isn't going to happen now, is it?

NO, because their goddamned millions and billions have to come from somewhere and the biggest and most vulnerable source out there is the massive majority... the 60+million in the workforce that make less than 25k a year and measure their lot in life in terms of HUNDREDS, definitely not millions and billions.

When your extra million or billion comes from the hundreds that are all myself and people like me have, then your millionaire ass is in my face and I damned sure intend to do whatever I can to get you out of my face. (That's a literary "you" by the way. I'm not accusing you of being rich... although if you were, I could probably better understand some of the positions you take.)

I am a 100% champion of the middle class. Hell I used to BELONG to the upper middle class, at least in my lttle pond where I was just about a medium sized frog. I think a strong, healthy middle class is essential to the survival of our country as we have known it up to now.

Therefore, I don't like feudalism Dovell. I've read the histories and I've seen the documentaries and let's face it man, the working stiffs had shit for a life back then... can we agree on that? And while we haven't devolved all the way to that point yet, the situation is certainly beginning to take on an extremely recognizable odor. My question to you... if I could only have one.... is why would anyone try to stand up and defend a return to the fricking dark ages?

I truly believe you have to have more than just an extremely poor peasant class and an unbelievably filthy rich nobility. Generations of American workers have fought... some even fricking DIED... to fight their way up out of the kind of damned ooze that the one percenters are cheerfully doing their best to push them back down into again. Some of us just don't choose to go down quietly that's all. You got a problem with that? I don't fricking care.

MY position is clearand as long as nobody else has any trouble hearing what I actually say and reading what I actually write, then I'm good with it.

Joined: 22 Dec 2007 Posts: 461

"I've been using this soapbox for a lot longer than you have and I have offered my ideas for solutions many times over. They are many and varied and I'll be damned if I'm going to set each one out here again just for you."

Well I've been on the internet since around 1996. You're dodging the issue by not stating a solution. Heck maybe you should run for office!

"I'm really sorry that you can't grasp the fact that this was planned... that it did not HAVE to happen... that it was not somehow inevitable that we would find ourselves returning to a system that our ancestors came here to escape"

Aaa so it's a conspiracy then. You have to consider that post ww 2 we were largely sheltered from much of the world with our trade policies. The idea of the developing world being some sort of backwater or simply something to glance at and ignore was a fallacy.

You are totally ignoring it.

I understand it now you are a stereotypical angry white man who's mad at the world. Get in line with the others. Implying as if the 50's and 60's were good times to raise a family ignores a whole bunch of other issues (civil rights for starters). There's nothing wrong with standards and I'm sorry if these standards have risen past points of that some cannot reach.

OK I'll ask you again. Enough with the venom and ranting. HOW do you think we should change? And HOW can we do this given that the actions of the USA effect nearly every other country on the planet. We're a superpower, like it or not.

You want to know what political repercussions can do? I don't consider you old, you must remember the early 70's with the oil embargo right? By supporting Israel during the yom kippur war it caused OPEC to slap this embargo on the usa (and netherlands). Now it didn't happen to other countries though.

I live in one of the most liberal states in the country. To a degree we have higher protections that you probably cite. Working on sundays is largely time and a half and optional work, we've mandated that everyone has health insurance, we might mandate sick days...heck we even decriminalized pot and allowed gays to marry. So with all these things some might assume that maybe the unemployment rate would be lower than others. Dispite all these things that's not the case. April unemployment figures it at 8%. Higher than states in the midwest. Even worse is neighboring RI has a rate of 11.1% Some people where I am act as if we are protected to the point where we're economically separated but that's not the case. There are plenty of places that have closed going back decades. We used to have businesses that were more regional based but they did not survive. It was cheaper to do business in other parts of the country.

The exact same cries of pain and disgust you emit about sending work to places with lower standards and working conditions were the EXACT same arguments used here decades ago about the rest of the country.

I'm not calling you a communist, socialist, leftist or even a democrat. But what exactly are you advocating. Anyone can site a problem. Heck you're a firefighter. Anyone can call 911 and report a fire but that doesn't mean they are able to put it out.

If you want to look at income much of what you said is generally true however there's a strong correlation with higher education leading to higher incomes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States

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