tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post7094284731780467627..comments2024-03-28T16:08:29.578-04:00Comments on Sardonicky: Jobs in America and the False Promises of Free TradeKaren Garciahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15612731479365562803noreply@blogger.comBlogger13125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-22483023478059520992011-06-24T02:41:37.675-04:002011-06-24T02:41:37.675-04:00@VLT,
"I would ask that you let the benefits...@VLT,<br /><br />"I would ask that you let the benefits to Third World factory workers rest for now. I will write another post in a month or so on this particular side of Free Trade and we can debate it then"<br /><br />As I said I don't think the domestic and forign parts of the discussion are separate or can be separated. I am willing to wait until you post your theory on <br />"free trade" and the third world worker. Then I will post the numbers supporting <br />my view. I don't ever expect to change minds but I think seeing both sides of an issue helps everyone myself included.<br /><br />Respectfully,<br /><br />RichardAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-18442224474492814412011-06-23T17:44:17.726-04:002011-06-23T17:44:17.726-04:00Richard,
What a disappointing response! After rea...Richard,<br /><br />What a disappointing response! After reading some of your more thoughtful and well-researched comments on RealityChex I expected more than just vague references to the better life for Third World factory workers as propagandized by Free Trade advocates. No numbers, no examples and truly no response to my question, do the pros outweigh the cons? If you did your research prior to writing your response, I am disappointed you didn't cite <br />some of it. <br /><br />Respectfully,<br />ValerieVLTnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-80195430664522183792011-06-23T08:35:11.301-04:002011-06-23T08:35:11.301-04:00Ok, write the article and I will have an opinion, ...Ok, write the article and I will have an opinion, but you should look at the numbers too, especially look at China, Korea, Vietnam, and India. I did prior to writing this reply, which as I stated was in response to a comment by Kate over on Marie's site about being "your brothers keeper". However it seemed appropriate to post it here as a counterpoint to your Essay. I think at the end of the day the third world worker should be consulted. I have been there and they see things very differently than do we. <br />I am not sure that you can discuss free trade without Discussing the social and financial impact to the domestic and foreign workers as an integral part of the <br />discussion.<br /><br />Respectfully,<br /><br />RichardAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-74987423457611959232011-06-22T18:48:39.028-04:002011-06-22T18:48:39.028-04:00@Jay,
You make an excellent point about the skill...@Jay,<br /><br />You make an excellent point about the skilled labour that was involved in many aspects of factory work - now completely lost to the unemployment lines. Thank you for bringing up that very relevant point.<br /><br />@Richard,<br /><br />I think we DO owe our fellow man something. We are blessed/lucky to have a standard of living and safety far above that of most people in the world. Should we just sit back and enjoy what we have without a concern for injustice, poverty, disease, violence? I don't think so. But I can see that this issue more than any other defines the political philosophies of the left and the right as they stand today. <br /><br />However, I don't think that is what Free Trade is about; although advocates like to suggest that there is an inherent altruistic benefit of Free Trade to the Third World countries. Neither one of us will find any evidence to suggest that Free Trade has benefited poor countries more that foreign aid and genuine altruism because the numbers just aren’t out there. I posit, there are small gains for the people who work in some of these Third World factories, but most of the profits and advantages go to a few people at the top of the food chain, just as they do in our country. <br /><br />The question I am raising is do the pros of Free Trade outweigh the cons? I believe there are far more cons than pros. But DO raise questions. The debate will bring all the best arguments on both sides of this issue. <br /><br />I would ask that you let the benefits to Third World factory workers rest for now. I will write another post in a month or so on this particular side of Free Trade and we can debate it then. <br /><br />But I invite any other arguments in favour of Free Trade. As Kat says, it is wonderful that Karen has provided us with a venue to discuss these important issues in a civil and mutually respectful manner.<br /><br />ValerieVLTnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-23690039989364338282011-06-21T15:35:27.453-04:002011-06-21T15:35:27.453-04:00Am I my brothers(G.N.) keeper? Or how can you beli...Am I my brothers(G.N.) keeper? Or how can you believe in being "Your Brothers Keeper" and not support Free Trade?<br /><br />This is in thoughtful response to a statement by Kate Madison in a prior post on a different site and is solely my own opinion.<br /><br />The question is are we in fact anyone else's keeper?<br />Is Society anyone's keeper?<br />Should ether of us be?<br />If we should be than to what degree?<br />Who should decide and who should pay for it?<br /><br />The faith based admonition to be your "brothers keeper" is personal between those of us that believe in something and that in which we believe. In this country it is not a place the government is mandated to go nor should it be.<br /><br />Our Western Civilization is currently built on the premise that from a secular Humanist view point We collectively are each other's keeper's. There are and have been other civilizations with very different views on this mater.<br /><br />The success of Western Civilization (such as it has been) has given rise to other civilizations and cultures adopting our views on societies' responsibility to it's members. Our views are very different from the ones that they formerly held.<br /><br />India currently the world's largest Democracy has been in transition from a prior civilization where not only were there tribes but classes within the tribes. Most of those tribes and classes felt that they owed nothing to and had no responsibility for anyone not related to them. The ones that did believe differently were universally persecuted. Over the last hundred years or so India has transitioned to a more Western system of social responsibility. It is still a work in progress after more than a hundred years<br /><br />Japan after the shock of contact with the West in the late 1800s quickly adopted a number of Western values including beginning in the 1920s Western ideas of social responsibility as they apply only to Japanese citizens, as did China after the end of the cultural revolution and total central state planning. The Human Condition in both has improved astronomically in spite of several wars and revolutions.<br /><br />Today about two thirds of the worlds population lives where there is a belief in society's responsibility to it's members. In fact the practice is something less than the talk and Tribalism is still a large problem in much of the world.<br /><br />One of the unintended results of the internationalization of commerce (read Free Trade) since WW2 is more progress in the improvement in the Human Condition world wide than in all prior human history. This increase has been in the face of a very large increase in population which also proves that conditions have improved. Yes, not all areas have improved equally and wealth inequities have increased. All of which is deplorable until you realize that some having more and some having less is vastly superior to everyone having nothing and sharing the nothing equally.<br /><br />The point of this is that Capitalism and free trade have done more by accident to improve the Human Condition than all of the charity, aid, and Socialist rhetoric combined. Has that improvement come at a cost here at home to our workers? Of course it has. Does that need to be addressed? Yes, without question. <br /><br />My parting thoughts on Free Trade as the Instermantality of "Am I my brothers Keeper" is a quote from Marx "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" and one from myself, "It's better to be exploited and get 3 meals a day for my family than to be left free to starve".<br /><br />None of this addresses the serious problems here at home in dealing with the consequences of Free Trade. There is enough blame to go around!<br /><br />RichardAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-21421022705051930452011-06-21T10:59:19.817-04:002011-06-21T10:59:19.817-04:00I subscribe to MJ and have already read the articl...I subscribe to MJ and have already read the article. Another great companion piece to your post.<br /><br />I hope you've all given a few dollars to Progressives United so it can grown into a truly effective force for real change. Russ has declined to challenge the President in 2012, but there's still 2016. Most people here in WI will never forget that he was the lone voice against the Patriot Act and probably the only Senator who actually read it. This one vote delivered bipartisan votes to him until the 2010 elections, which were, of course, bought by the Koch's. Unfortunately that is not an over-the-top statement.Janet Camphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03645361065385918800noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-88669654211691339172011-06-21T00:22:42.770-04:002011-06-21T00:22:42.770-04:00Thank you, Valerie! Excellent post! I think the f...Thank you, Valerie! Excellent post! I think the free-market sucks and always have. How did we ever put the "free" into free trade? It is anything but!<br /><br />Russ Feingold is THE MAN!Kate Madisonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-13762753456833470532011-06-20T21:33:20.035-04:002011-06-20T21:33:20.035-04:00My friend just sent me an article in Mother Jones ...My friend just sent me an article in Mother Jones by Mark Matcho. The title of the piece is "Overworked America, 12 Charts That Will Make Your Blood Boil." It is in keeping with this thread and I think all of you would find it informative reading.<br /><br />Very much agreed, Janet, that Russ Feingold is a great man - one of the few politicians out there who is genuinely devoted to public service and highly capable. Thank you for the link. "We all do better . . . when we all do better." I would certainly stick it on the bumper if my car! <br /><br />And thanks everyone for your support on my first foray into this kind of - what is it called? - blog posting? I was expecting a big backlash but feel it is an important enough issue that I am willing to take some heat for my opinion.VLTnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-2628696290666538092011-06-20T17:07:54.731-04:002011-06-20T17:07:54.731-04:00Well done Ms. Tweedie!
I have only this response...Well done Ms. Tweedie! <br /><br />I have only this response. I would embed this, but I don't think you can do that in comments. Russ Feingold can be our voice, even if not our candidate. I encourage you to listen and then decide if you can support Progressives United. I think this ties in nicely with your essay, Ms. Tweedie. Thank you for your contribution and thanks to Karen for offering to share her space.<br /><br />Here's the link:<br /><br />http://www.theuptake.org/2011/06/17/progressive-toothpaste-to-fight-corporate-political-control/<br /><br />It really gets going about three minutes into the talk. Thanks to Reality Chex for putting me on to this site. Al Franken spoke as well, very movingly about good progressives like Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale, and reminded the audience of a lovely quote from the late (and much missed) Paul Wellstone:<br /><br />"We all do better....when we all do better" - Good bumper sticker material, no?Janet Camphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03645361065385918800noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-27732808517111647642011-06-20T15:12:51.326-04:002011-06-20T15:12:51.326-04:00Excellent post.
The whole job (re) training thing...Excellent post. <br />The whole job (re) training thing as espoused by Clinton and other New Democrats always has me seething. There are many low paying service jobs that cannot be outsourced. How about instead of asking these individuals to "reinvent" themselves we simply pay them more? Most of these jobs are far more necessary than many of these "highly skilled" jobs.<br />And, developing nations are not going to catapult themselves into the ranks of the developed world with these crappy manufacturing jobs: not when they're missing important parts of the equation such as organized labor and yes, protectionism. Would Japan's auto industry be anywhere without protectionist policies? How about the US?<br />Still, I have to wonder, absent real class consciousness in the US, did the labor movement sow its own seeds of destruction? Seems to me, that once people got comfortable they began to identify with the upper classes more than those at the bottom.Katnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-72345109306608296092011-06-20T14:16:39.727-04:002011-06-20T14:16:39.727-04:00I don't think the wealthy cabal who run this c...I don't think the wealthy cabal who run this country care. I believe the plan is for us riffraff to emigrate to Mexico or somewhere else, leaving America for the monied elite. They can't wait to get rid of us leeches on the system. <br /><br />I already know of many Americans who have moved to Mexico because it is far more affordable, including the health care plan they buy into for a pittance. <br /><br />Speaking of health care, if the Supreme Court upholds mandatory private health insurance, there will be nothing will stop mandatory annuity plans to replace Social Security. <br /><br />Anyway, nicely written piece, Valerie.Anne Lavoienoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-68939273260533864672011-06-20T13:29:55.416-04:002011-06-20T13:29:55.416-04:00Thank you, Valerie. The land should be reverberat...Thank you, Valerie. The land should be reverberating with such talk, and solutions being essayed everywhere.<br /><br />The drift away from respect for American labor as distilled in labor unions has been paralleled by a generalized denigration of manual labor itself. The other side of that dinged and dirty coin is the attraction of keyboards for hands that once shaped products of hard physical value. <br /><br />Valerie, you allude to one of Bill Clinton’s counterarguments against objections to NAFTA, to wit, that North American blue-collar workers made idle by shuttered factories at home could always “train up” to those near antiseptic and more cerebral tech jobs, most likely involving lots of sitzfleisch before computer screens. Future talk so often sends us reeling backwards. You go on to describe how NAFTA and other trade arrangements under the umbrella term of globalization really turned out. Corporate profits for the few are way up, and the unemployment rate is also up and holding steady at double the official rate put out by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.<br /><br />Many people dismissed from the old production lines were highly skilled in making steel, crafting tools and making parts for products they also assembled. Such industrial manual work, when intelligently organized – that is, not exploitative, was dignified and challenging and inherently worthy of the muscles, brains and courage of men and women who made things. <br /><br />Sitting at a desk eight to twelve hours a day is not one millimeter higher in status over manual work. Check the morale level in cubicles. Keyboarding is rarely cerebral. We need a new term for the millions who sit before flickering screens, making nothing, but tracking numbers for bean counters, or outfoxing others by out-clicking their counterparts in the firm across the street, or churning client accounts to skim off artificial profits, which are not taxed. They are not manual workers. They are not cerebral workers. How about ass workers, since so much of their time is spent in chairs and their product mostly waste?<br /><br />What will happen to the millions of unemployed – once highly skilled in their trades, now becoming low skilled, soon to be utterly unskilled for lack of use? Are we on the threshold of seeing hobo camps again, ruddy workers roaming the land in bands, an unstable proletariat in the cities ripe for new Marxists to organize their discontent and then for dictators to gun them down? And we presume to write stories in the MSM about the explosive unrest in China if and when their production lines slow down? In some way or other, a large mass of the unemployed, whom elected officials and the moguls of commerce ignore, cannot serve as a boon to any democracy or dictatorship. The final consequences from the con of Free Trade have yet to come home to roost.<br /><br />I am anti-Free Trade.Jay–Ottawahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10360356126450612113noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-12951208496741777962011-06-20T10:52:26.127-04:002011-06-20T10:52:26.127-04:00Thank you for this intellectually honest, factual ...Thank you for this intellectually honest, factual piece. Free trade, as championed by both Democrats and Republicans, has for the most part been a boon only to those who were ready and able to exploit its constituent labor. (If that sounds Marxist, so be it.) It's failed trickle down theory on a global scale.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com