Re: Oh my Gawd! Carly!

On Apr 26, 9:37 am, mzen...@xxxxxxxxxx (Mark Zenier) wrote:
In article <3010f9f5-bb58-46e0-bcb3-a1d4b0fbb...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,

MooseFET <kensm...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Apr 25, 10:47 am, Jim Thompson
[....]
It seems, around here, that employees are hard to come by. I see
signs, even billboards, for burger flippers at way over minimum wage.

There is no shortage of low wage and dead end jobs. You can't
offshore burger flipping and floor sweeping. Free trade allows
manufacturing and the like to be moved to where the labor is the
cheapest. Modern communications allow jobs that deal in information
to also go off shore. The result is that for a while we will have a
race to the bottom.

Heard a recent program (BBC Global Business with Peter Day, I think)
about doing business in Cambodia. The wages there for a sewing machine
operator are US$0.23 an hour. $600 a person-year destroys the option
of the advanced countries competing with more productive automation.

We can't build robots cheap enough to compete. And they can't earn
enough money for a real life (and economic development). So doing a
"Henry Ford" and raising the wages would develop the third world and
allow the first world to compete with its technological advantage.

It is very hard or imposible in the current environment to raise the
wages in the third world. The leaders of many of those countries want
to keep the populace at a subsistance level because that is how they
will stay in power. It is the middle class that pushes for
democracy. The truly poor don't have the time or power. The wealthy
are holding 4 aces so they won't call "misdeal".


There is also a change in where the centers of the power in the world
are. In the past, the states had nearly all of the power. Today, the
multinational corporation is becoming a power equal or greater than
the state. Many states are in the situation of a "banana republic".
They have a very small number of exports and those exports are
controled by external forces greater than the power of the state.

In the past, United Fruit could use the force of the US military to
help put down attempts by the populace to improve their lot. Today
that is less likely to happen but it still could or perhaps it would
be hired thugs. Even if the government of the country wanted to
improve the lot of its people, it would be unable to because the
corporation will move the jobs elsewhere in a heart beat.

What is often called "free trade" isn't free at all. It is just trade
that is controlled by somebody other than a government.



Mark Zenier mzen...@xxxxxxxxxx
Googleproofaddress(account:mzenier provider:eskimo domain:com)

.

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