 KrKHeavy Artillery For The Little GuyPremium
join:2000-01-17
Tulsa, OK
 ·AT&T DSL Service
| reply to amigo_boy
Re: Celebrating "Labor"...? Mark, your posts, as usual lately, have been brilliant. You've hit on issues here I particularly agree with, however.
All the time you hear economists and supposed "Free Market Capitalists" explaining how "American workers just need to get used to the idea of competing with the third World" for their jobs. That we are over-paid here, that we provide poor value compared to the cheap labor available overseas.
However, as you point out, this is so much fallacy. I always question this logic and would like to point out: These large corporations, for the sake of increased profits, want to be able to take advantage of cheap labor, this is true.... but they want to turn around and sell the more cheaply made goods BACK to the developed world at full price on the retail market. They want to have the cake and eat it too. Third world production costs, but First world retail prices and profit margins.
Imagine if some talking head got up on TV and started explaining that Corporations doing business here need to start selling their products for the same price ranges the "third world" economy workers could afford. Imagine if someone told GE that that shiny refrigerator they sell at Home Depot for $1300 they now need to sell for $175 to "compete with the Third World" prices. Right, they'd all laugh and tell them to shove it. Yet is this EXACTLY the same argument they keep trying to shove down the American worker's throats here! "It's a Global economy, you must think globally, you must compete with foreign workers."
Ok, sure, whatever. Maybe I'll accept foreign worker wages when I find I can pay third world prices for goods and services.
Oh wait. That will never happen.
--
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini
|
