Comments
by Bob Brandon....
Have you noticed all the boarded-up stores and
factories in some parts of town? It doesn't matter what town...you
pass through the blighted areas on your way to somewhere else everyday.
What happened? There used to be life here, bustling, vital. Now the
buildings are falling apart, occupied only by the homeless.
This is one of the great
ironies of America: We in the midst of a record-breaking economic
expansion. Thanks to technology, we've had a nice smoth ride.
But now, the roadbed is beginning to decay. The Internet stock debacle
was a strong signal that it takes more than a glitzy facade to be successful.
If there's no tradition of excellence, no foundation built the hard way,
most of these quickly rich mogols will lose just as much as they've made.
Much of business today is
infected by an epidemic of get rich quick gimmicks that's going to collapse
like fake stucco. Just what do we make in America these days?
Computers? Uh, no, most of them are ade in Taiwan and other Asian countries,
clothing? Nope, tiny Asian fingers probably made your shirt, shorts
or shoes.
There are some products that
are proudly American-made, but every day we lose more. And with each
loss, the lives of dozens or hundreds of people are disrupted. It's
not easy to find a new job, especially when the only job you've ever done
was shipped overseas. The industrial muscle of the United States
is strong in certain areas, but overall, we're wasting away.
Part of the problem lies
with our unique lifestyle. We live in a convenience oriented, throwaway
society. If you can't zap it in the microwave, we don't have time
for it. If you can't throw it away after using, we don't buy it.
All of us are wasting huge mountains of stuff everyday.
Have you ever contemplated
the vast machinery that keeps our fickle public happy? Start at the
top, in the driver's seat. The fatcats who own all the stock and
golden parachutes. They make about 15-hundred times more than their
average employee. They're rolling in billions of dollars and they
want more. So they create a market for disposable products.
They have to be cheap, to be cost effective. That rules out manufacturing
in this country.
Our workers won't accept
third world wages. So the MegaCorporations exploit the poverty and
ignorance of the teeming populations. These folks get a few cents
an hour and are damned glad to get it. And on it goes...we're presented
with more and more opportunities to live a convenient life, all the while
nibbling away at the very foundation that makes that endulgence possible.
Unless we begin to stress
pride in accomplishment, unless we actually educate our students, and actually
begin to make things again we can create new jobs, and enjoy real economic
prosperity.
Right now, there's an incredible
shift on wealth taking place in our country. There are more millionaires
than ever, but they're highly concentrated. A very small percentage
of Americans hold the vast majority of the wealth. The rich really
do get richer.
It should worry you when
you can't find anything at Wal-Mart that is made in USA. Sure, there
are a few dozen little factories they've helped to survive so they can
use them in their marketing campaigns. But the sad truth is, we don't
make most of the things we want to buy.
China, and other developing
nations are a lot hungrier than we are. President Clinton is worried
about it. That's why he's pushing the new trade bill with the Chinese.
He knows this is one really large population. They could easily overwhelm
us with sheer numbers.
Their industrial sector is
growing much more rapidly than ours ever did. They don't have a lot
of regulation or government interferrence getting in the way of their goals.
There aren't any anti-trust rules, so the same mega-corps make everything
from toothpaste to airplanes. They don't have cumbersome equal hiring
regulations, licensing, or safety guidelines that add to the cost of American-made
items. They aren't constrained by a minimum wage, or any other oversight
of their business operations.
They can physically restrain
their employees, forcing them to work seven days a week, 12 and more hours
a day. It really is a different world. Clinton says this new
agreement will force China to follow the rules. It will cajole them
into respecting human rights and international law. He really believes
that, and wants you to as well.
Don't buy it. It's
inevitable that China and the United States will have a trade agreement.
We have a huge trade deficit with our friends from China. We buy
so much more from them than they buy from us, that they posess more American
currency than we do. The story is the same time and again with Japan,
Mexico, Korea, Taiwan, and dozens of other factorynations.
Bit by bit the foundation
is eroding from under us. The President believes entering into this
agreement will make it too expensive for the Communists to mess with us.
If we have a healthy trade going, they'll think twice before acting like
the tyrants they really are. It's all a dream.
The Chinese pride themselves
on inscrutability. They do what they want, and to be honest with
you, we're not nearly as important to them as we think we are. If
they had been living the same consumer oriented lifestyle we enjoy, this
trade agreement could possibly constrain their agression.
But since their system has
assured nearly everyone is equally poor, with nothing to lose, that material
incentive doesn't come into play. They don't even know what they're
missing, so how can we expect the average Chinese citizen to speak up and
demand their rightful place as American-style consumers?
The short term result will
be wider trade opportunities for America's farmers...oh wait a minute,
make that America's farm corporations. We'll sell them wheat and
corn, and they'll sell us all the things we used to make here, once upon
a time, when America used to make things. |
