Comments on: Naked Planet

by: united fast cash

Fri, 13 Jul 2007 07:12:20 +0000

united fast cash

by: The Mahablog » French Lessons

Tue, 08 May 2007 18:08:57 +0000

[…] That said, “the forces of globalization and discontent over immigration” certainly are at work in U.S. politics as well. Republicans and neoliberals like the Clintons are on one side of the globalization issue; progressive economic populists like Sherrod Brown are on the other. The “solution” of the Republicans is mostly to ignore the problem, or to pretend that manufacturing washing machines in Mexico to sell in India will create lots of high-paying jobs in the U.S. I’d like to see them explain how that will work in a PowerPoint presentation. Regarding immigration, Democrats need to be very clear that our first priority is to protect American labor and wages. But the right-wing “solution” of punishing illegal immigrants while protecting the corporations that benefit from hiring them is not helping. […]

by: The Mahablog » Ohio

Sun, 26 Mar 2006 16:30:47 +0000

[…] But back to Wills’s fear that Dems will destroy the economy with “protectionist” policies — I argued here that unfettered globalism is hurting the U.S. more than it’s helping. Members of the investor class, like Will, can’t see it, because their stock portfolios look just fine and the GDP is growing, if not at record rates. But globalism in practice has given us corporate profits based on the exploitation of foreign labor, which in turn is eroding wages and employment standards within the U.S. Robert Kuttner argues that it may be compromising national security as well. […]

by: Erin

Mon, 13 Mar 2006 19:47:47 +0000

I wonder how many outsourced jobs it will take before people sit up and go, “Heeyy, I’m un/underemployed, but millions of Indians have jobs from American companies. That’s not quite right.” Not just manufacturing jobs, but customer service, typesetting, and all kinds of other things are being outsourced, too (or given to contract workers instead of full-time benefitted employees, but that’s a different issue, I suppose.)

And a note on anti-unionism during the NYC transit strike, which I had the pleasure of dealing with in person. I think there are a couple of things going on there, not just straight-up “Unions suck!” The transit union held the city hostage for three days — which, by the way, most affected working-class people who couldn’t get to their hourly-wage jobs and therefore didn’t get paid — even though the transit authority caved in to nearly all of the union’s demands. If you’re curious about the fall-out, the union leadership negotiated a very good contract agreement — which, by the way, includes salary and benefits far superior to what most of us get, which is why unions are good and why our liberal anger stems partly from jealousy — which should have been the end of it, but the union vote came up 7 votes short, so the new contract has not yet been adopted and the city is trying to get binding arbitration which sucks for everyone, but the union created the mess. I mean, they certainly deserve pensions and health insurance and high salaries, but is it right for them to acheive that by depriving other city residents of the ability to get to their jobs? (It was really cold that week, too; how many people sacrificed their health by walking to work from Brooklyn?) I support unions, but this situation is ridiculous.

by: linnen

Sun, 12 Mar 2006 02:07:36 +0000

I am not an econimist, but I would consider ‘national security’ commerce regs to be market neutral. At least I fail to see the down side.
I mean, aside from the ‘War on Drugs’ (Which is a ‘quote’ health ‘un-quote’ issue, ar at least a moral issue *cough* B-llSh-T *cough*.), all this is doing is to prevent hazmat X from entering the country. That terrorist T is is trying to import hazmat X is already preventing an equal volumn of commercial material from entering, so where is the commercial ‘harm’?

PS, for the globalization fans consider, Germany has a very strict quality standard when it comes to beer. Is anyone going to even try to claim that Germans are clamoring for lessor beer? I have yet to find anyone who would disagree with the Canadian joke, ‘Why is American beer like sex in a canoe?’

by: Steve Nichols

Sat, 11 Mar 2006 21:57:19 +0000

5% of the world’s population couldn’t expect to use 25% of the world’s energy and resources forever.

by: Donna in WI

Sat, 11 Mar 2006 21:51:29 +0000

You know what scared me the most, during the transit strike in NY there were many so called liberals who complained about the strikers, saying things like, “I don’t have a pension plan they should be happy with what they got and quit whining.” It isn’t just conservatives, liberals have taken the globalization bait hook, line, and sinker too. Instead of expecting a florishing middle class with decent wages and benefits, they have lowered their expectations to subsistence levels with no benefits for all of us. We should all be working two or three jobs without healthcare or pensions, I guess.

It’s time for all liberals to get on the union bandwagon. Instead of being envious when they get something you don’t, remind yourself that everything you have, and might be losing, is due to unions during the history of this country. Minimum wage, 40 hr work week, your children not only don’t have to work but aren’t allowed to and must be educated instead, vacation time, healthcare, pensions…unions and workers willing to strike and mobilize got these for all of us. When unions get something for their workers then other businesses must also give to their employees the same benefits or risk being unionized. This is why Republicans in the pockets of big business try so hard to bust unions.

by: alyosha

Sat, 11 Mar 2006 21:08:25 +0000

The history of the last few centuries is full of examples of hot industries that matured, and then moved to locales that offered cheap labor: from textiles to automobiles to software/knowledge workers.

The last great industry that the US had a strong suit in was software, epitomized by once legendary places such as Silicon Valley. The bloom is definitely off that rose, at least within the US. Silicon Valley, while still great, will never return to its former go-go glory days.

In the past, there has always been a new growth industry to replace what moved away, but not this time. For a variety of reasons, we have not been investing in the next wave of technologies that would allow us to be the pre-eminent leader, as we once were with software and automobiles.

There are a number of reasons for this, mainly ideological and educational. Other countries are more willing to do stem cell research, for example, which is a no-no here because of the power of the right-to-life movement. I read that China graduates something like five times as many engineers as we do in the US, and they have the cash to pour into research that we do not.

After 9/11 and the Patriot Act, our universities became starved for foreign graduate students. Just as the rest of the world thinks we’re crazy with the cowboys in charge, they’re not quite so nuts about coming here anyway.

A real missed opportunity, one that will need to be solved anyway, is kicking the oil addiction. Had we used the remaining window of time where oil is still cheap, and directed our brightest people to solve this problem, instead of massively squandering our resources and reputation to corner the last remaining oil reserves on the planet, we could be energy and politically self-sufficient, as well being in a leadership position to sell this technology to the rest of the planet.

In the automotive world, this is what Toyota and Honda did with hybrid cars. They’re now a generation ahead of the American companies, who are on the ropes.

Because other countries are moving in/have moved in to the advanced technologies that we could’ve invested in, our country will be doomed to second tier status, and possibly lower given our massive debt within the next generation.

There are real consequences to having neanderthals in charge.

by: the bewilderness

Sat, 11 Mar 2006 20:50:01 +0000

The sweatshops of Saipan are considered the model for the future, “perfect petrie dish for capitalism” is the way they were described by the chairperson of the Committee for a Permanent Republican Majority. I do not understand why people will not believe they mean exactly what they say. They will run this country like a business, and so they are. Our children are the human resources that will be spent in the sweatshops and the armies of the future.
The Republicans have been chanting the same mantra for thirty years. They have been making it happen for the past ten years. They told us exactly what they were going to do to us and now they are doing it.

by: emel

Sat, 11 Mar 2006 20:45:32 +0000

We assume( don’t ever do that) that we will change China by trading with them, that we will ‘open up’ their society and change their values. We forget that other nations’ standards and practices may be coming to us( it is a 2 way street after all ), and alot of the corruption in other parts of the world, the lack of intellectual property rights or of property rights period( not even mentioning human and environmental) will influence us as much as we influence them.Our business ethics keep going down hill, could we be a little too influenced by the standards of others? We assume that a rising tide floats all boats but we know that is not so. As multinationals skim all the cream and leave the rest of us down in the dirt in a more and more controlled world, our boats get stuck down with the rest of the world and the water level down there is very low.
There is no planning here. We operate on a weekly monthly economic window and do not plan anything but this weeks sales. There is no real R&D anymore as we had in the past. We get gadgets we don’t need. There is no will to change any of that. Free market rhetoric is great if you have the past 70years of regulation and government investment to fall back on and depend on. But that investment is over and without continued policies as we had in the past( that is thinking of the the country as a whole not just of me and my buddies corporate interest) there will only be stagnation and widening gap between rich and the masses. When well funded right wing foundations even exist to promote the privatization of roads for example, you’ve got a problem. You’ve got the Money behind the dismantling, and there is no counterpart on the other side.