The job situation in America is a great moral and ethical question.
Over the past three decades, jobs have been exported, eliminated or converted downward into low pay service or part time jobs. This has enriched a small number of Americans – the top one percent of the population now controls 42.7 percent of the financial wealth of the nation – the top ten percent have 93 percent of the nation’s wealth.
The result – – the bottom 90 percent of the American people own 7% of the nation’s wealth.
If globalism and free trade are inevitable. If the free market is the best method of determining economic results, then a continuation of this is all that awaits us.
Americans are handicapped when it comes to having jobs in a world wide market. Americans have roads, bridges, police, fire departments, educational systems and an extensive military. These require taxes. Corporations have no desire to pay taxes and so they go to countries who have favorable tax laws or are willing to forego taxes for the jobs shipped there. Americans tend to be well educated and middle class. This means they will not work for 75 cents an hour and expect to be treated with some respect while having a high survivability on the job. This is inimical to the interests of corporations. It is easier to manipulate and use poorly educated people with no social standing. Safety costs money and killing Americans draws attention while dead foreigners are less of a problem. Americans live in a nation that has laws. Corporations do not want laws restricting their activities and they absolutely do not want to be prosecuted for their crimes.
So, if globalization and free trade are inevitable all we have to do to compete in a global economy is to give up way of life and gradually drift downward in our standard of living but only for the bottom 90%.
Is this a moral outcome?
Are the citizens of the United States similar to bacteria on a slide under a microscope? Do they deserve that level of analysis? .. the cold powerful corporate intellect realizing that a dash of penicillin could clear the way for new corporate profits?
Or do human beings have souls? Do Americans have a duty one to another? Do companies organized and financed in this nation bear a responsibility for their economic decisions?
There are things like justice, honor and duty. These are a joke in the world of the international corporation. I don’t believe these ideas draw laughter among the general population.
James Pilant
Sixty years ago Chairman SMS warned the American people that Asia will be a force. That we better get our act together or we will be clobbered in the future. That was back in the Fifties…talk about how management and the unions better start to see how things really are. But, every one was just interested in feather bedding their own nest. Well the chickens have come home to roost. As they say too early old…too late smart.
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China has roughly two-fifths as much manufacturing as the United States. It is only a competitor but by no means the winner in global competition. China is currently entering a dangerous economic phase because of dangerous over expansion in real estate both commercial and private. The United States has shipped far more jobs overseas because of financial speculation by international banks than any real competitive advantage those nations have. Americans have far more to fear from other Americans than foreign competition.
James Pilant
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