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#11
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OT- Reclassifieing fast food jobs as manufacturing jobs
On Sat, 21 Feb 2004 11:13:21 -0500, Harry Krause
wrote: Hell, the idiot in the White House had to back away last week from one of his adviser's comments that the outsourcing of jobs was a good thing. He must have been left over from Clinton, since Clinton was all for that and started the current exodus of jobs from the US. Steve |
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OT- Reclassifieing fast food jobs as manufacturing jobs
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#13
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OT- Reclassifieing fast food jobs as manufacturing jobs
"basskisser" wrote in message om... (Steven Shelikoff) wrote in message ... On Sat, 21 Feb 2004 11:13:21 -0500, Harry Krause wrote: Hell, the idiot in the White House had to back away last week from one of his adviser's comments that the outsourcing of jobs was a good thing. He must have been left over from Clinton, since Clinton was all for that and started the current exodus of jobs from the US. Steve I find it amazing that no matter how bad Bush screws things up, a good goose-stepping Ru****e will find a way to make it Clinton's fault. Actually, we have been exporting jobs a lot longer than Clinton. Just did not hit your area of skill's. The garment and textile industry has been mostly gone for a long time. Why Digital Equipment and Data General used old textile plants for headquarters. Clinton made some things easier with NAFTA, but has jsut been another step in a long walk. |
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#14
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OT- Reclassifieing fast food jobs as manufacturing jobs
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OT- Reclassifieing fast food jobs as manufacturing jobs
How many of Levi Strauss's original 63 U.S. manufacturing plants were
closed in the last three years? Answer: not many. How many were closed during Clinton's, and Bush 41's, and Reagan's presidencies? Answer: Lots Bill is right. The efflux started long ago. http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/Southwest....s.closing.ap/ Below is an interesting article on this issue. It's tough on both Bush and the Democrats. Trading truth for lies It's time Democratic presidential hopefuls get honest with labor BY KEVIN GRIFFIS Imagine this: You're in a Corvette with Democratic presidential hopeful Dick Gephardt. He's driving 100 mph down the interstate, sixth gear, top down, wind in his helmet-like coif, and then he realizes he's missed his exit -- five minutes ago! Funny thing is, Gephardt still thinks he can make the off ramp. You know he's nuts, and most importantly, he knows he's nuts. But he just can't stop reassuring you that he can make that turn. Sound weird? Not if you're an American manufacturing employee. You're used to Gephardt's brand of "logic." Because Democratic presidential candidates are telling them every day: We can make the off ramp -- to the 1960s, turn back the clock on a decade of free trade pain and jobs that have fled our shores. Make no mistake. The pain is real. Manufacturing employment, between 1967 and 1998, accounted for a relatively constant 18 million workers. As of August, that number was down to just 14.6 million. That's the loss of 3.4 million jobs that pay middle-class wages and benefits to workers, few of whom have college degrees. Meanwhile, manufacturing's share of gross domestic product dropped from 16.3 percent in 1998, to 13.9 percent in 2002. Those are some scary numbers for Democrats. Union voters pull the lever for Dems, and unions themselves are hellacious organizers that get out the vote come Election Day. It's created a situation where the candidates are making promises they can't keep: They're going to staunch the bleeding of our manufacturing jobs by using America's economic might to enforce fair trade, not just free trade. They're going to make the countries we negotiate with adopt our labor standards and our protections for the environment. They're going to level the playing field. The good ol' days can return. It's just a vote away. Too bad it's bull****. The manufacturing jobs we've lost are gone, and no matter what we do, few if any, are coming back. Second, using trade negotiations as a club to bend countries to our will actually undermines the democratic principles we say we want to promote abroad. Third, America is one of the world's worst offenders when it comes to fair trade, and our policies -- negotiated primarily by the Clinton administration -- are responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people and the impoverishment of millions of others. So Democrats are stuck with something of a Catch-22: Tell some fibs and hope the blue-collar vote buys it, or tell the truth and pray blue-collar workers can stomach it. For the sake of argument, let's go with the latter. Democrats can make humane free trade a selling point in the 2004 elections. It means promises of investments in the re-training of workers who will lose their jobs. It means investing in the education of those workers' children, and it means coming up with a comprehensive health plan that leaves jobless workers with a real safety net. Finally, and most powerfully, Democrats can tie free trade to the blood we've lost. And not just on the streets of Seattle and Genoa, Italy, but in the collapse of the twin towers of the World Trade Center. As much as any air base in Saudi Arabia, our free trade hypocrisy is responsible for a rising tide of anti-Americanism throughout the world. It threatens our national security. Of course, this matters little to people such as Deborah White, a woman who embodies the human cost of globalization. White watched her job at the Levi Strauss & Co. plant in the north Georgia mountains of Blue Ridge disappear overseas. She worked in the plant for 29 years before it closed a little more than a year ago. She sewed the leather labels onto the jeans -- 60 pairs in six minutes, a fact she still mentions with a hint of pride. On a recent Saturday afternoon in Atlanta, White along with fellow out-of-work apparel workers, Eddie Neal and Luvan Griggs, found themselves together at a Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE) meeting at the Ramada Inn just across the interstate from the construction of Hartsfield-Jackson Airport's fifth runway. The irony was inescapable. They could stare out at an orange moonscape of giant bulldozers preparing the way for a landing strip where the commercial titans of the world will stop off for downtown conventions, steak dinners and Scotch. Meanwhile, they sat at their paper placemats sipping iced tea, chewing tasteless fish and spongy fried chicken, wondering how their lives got turned upside down by an acronym -- namely NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. White, 50, wears every one of her years on her face. She still collects unemployment -- $275 per week -- and goes to North Georgia Tech in Clarkesville under NAFTA's Trade Readjustment Assistance (TRA), which allows her to keep those unemployment checks coming as long as she remains in school. She made $16.80 an hour at the Levi plant, a wage that allowed a single woman to cling to the rungs of the middle class. "I don't ever expect to make that much money no more," says White, who has been under doctor's care for three years because of Crohn's Disease, a nasty inflammation of the intestines that causes digestive problems. "My insurance runs out in December. How in the world am I going to get insurance?" Neal, 55, of Columbus knows exactly why White worries. He was one of the last of some 1,500 employees let go by Pillowtex Corp. when the company closed the last of its three Columbus-area plants July 30. His most recent trip to the doctor cost him $375, and after 31 years working for the company, Neal finds himself paying $99 out of pocket when he goes to the drug store to buy blood pressure medicine. Pillowtex declared bankruptcy, so Neal got no severance pay or compensation for vacation time, and his health insurance stopped immediately. He's eligible for an insurance plan under TRA, but no one's helped him figure out how to get it. But even Neal has it better than Griggs, 48, a former loom technician at the plant. Neal has a high school diploma and is headed back to school to become an auto mechanic. Griggs dropped out of school as a teenager and went straight into the cotton mills that used to employ much of Columbus. To get into tech school, Griggs must first get his GED. After that, he's not sure what he'll do. The silver lining? The note on his house, which his out-of-work wife and 10-year-old daughter also call home, is paid in full. Otherwise, "I'd be living in the street right now." As for Pillowtex, investors will get the first crack at the company's assets. There's no telling what Griggs and Neal will get, if anything. "When I think about it, we're the creditors," Neal says. "We were making the product." To understand why the Democrats find themselves shucking and jiving with their base, it helps to get a crash course in Economics 101. It's less painless than the brutal lessons learned by White, Neal and Griggs. Truly global free trade works on the principle of comparative advantage, meaning one country has an advantage compared to another country when it comes to producing a given good. That's specialization. For example, Brazil can produce steel much more cheaply than the United States. It finds that advantage -- and here's another downside to globalization -- by paying lower wages and having fewer protections for workers. But that's the way comparative advantage works. Sometimes it means a country can exploit its labor and hurt its environment, or even steal intellectual property. But trade is not Democratic or Republican, says Emory University law professor Robert Ahdieh, a specialist in international trade agreements. It's become more closely associated with the GOP, because multinational corporations are often the most obvious beneficiaries of lowered trade barriers, and they are more closely aligned with Republicans. But the fact is, free trade doesn't mean deregulation. It doesn't mean small government. If anything, disasters like Enron, aided and abetted by government deregulation, proved the foolishness of those who insist free market utopias -- free from all government intervention -- can exist. Trade is an economic argument, not a debate over political systems. In fact, Ahdieh says, you could have a socialist government that engages in free trade. For the United States, our benefits generally come in the form of cheaper prices for consumers and businesses, and while it might not show up as a line item in a budget, that usually means growing wealth, even if we lose some jobs. The other misunderstanding that free trade endures, as Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz told CL, is that that while trade liberalization often means jobs will be lost, in a well-functioning economy like ours, trade and unemployment don't have much of a relationship. It's in developing countries that trade has a noticeable effect on the labor market, because their economies aren't stable. Economies like ours depend on our own internal economic policies -- taxes, spending, interest rates, etc. But leftist economists, like the Economic Policy Institute's Robert Scott, say America can do things to bring back the jobs or at least retain the ones we have. Failing to do so risks shrinking the middle class by squeezing workers who possess only high school educations -- still 70 percent of the workforce -- into low-paying service sector jobs. Scott says we should start by lowering the price of the dollar and pressuring China -- with whom we have the largest trade deficit -- to revalue its currency, the yuan. "This is really a coherent strategy for improving manufacturing. We will get some jobs back." What is necessary is a devaluation like the one forged in 1985 that drove down the dollar by at least 30 percent. That would make American goods cheaper in foreign markets and make imports more expensive in domestic markets. Thus, manufacturing would rebound. But Stiglitz, Ahdieh and Emory economics professor Stefan Krause argue that such a devaluation is pure fantasy. The reason? One, the net loss to the economy would be greater than the jobs gained. Two, the United States' economic policy is dictated as much by multinational powerhouses such as Citibank as by anyone in the White House. "We have substantial leverage in [capital] markets, but at the end of the day, they are now bigger even than the United States," Ahdieh says. "President [Al] Sharpton I don't think could radically alter the basic parameters of our international trade. Although it sells well, I don't think the rhetoric the candidates give on this issue of trade bears through." In the worst-case scenario, a devaluation of the dollar might lead other countries to devalue their currencies. "What you have are these competitive devaluations that actually happened outside of the Great Depression, which is something you want to avoid," Krause says. Furthermore, he adds, Scott's argument for a weaker dollar neglects to mention what will happen to the American consumer. Everything will cost more for the benefit of only a small percentage of the American people. Simply put, we would drive up prices while moving workers from a sector of strength, service jobs, to a sector of relative weakness, manufacturing. But perhaps the worst things the Democratic candidates are doing is telling Americans that we're the ones, with the 6 percent unemployment rate, getting screwed on free trade. Because of our economic strength, the U.S. has been able to wring trade concessions from other nations, though, that will become more difficult as countries unite into separate trading blocs. Most recently, the Bush administration pushed through steel tariffs that hurt developing countries. Those tariffs are expected to be struck down by the World Trade Organization Nov. 10. Stiglitz, who served as president of Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers, takes special care in pointing out the differences between our rhetoric and our actions in his new book The Roaring Nineties. In it, he chronicles just what went wrong and whom our negotiations of the NAFTA Treaty and the establishment of the WTO hurt. As the former chief economist of the World Bank, he doesn't spare himself. But he also hammers the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which is basically an arm of the Treasury Department (and Wall Street), for pressuring countries into economic decisions that have had long-term negative economic consequences -- chiefly that developing countries now keep massive cash reserves that keep them from investing in their own economies. "Given what happened to the countries that had a deficit, and particularly under the IMF, which took away national sovereignty for countries that got into problems [during the worldwide financial crises of the 1990s], no country in their right mind wants to be in that situation," Stiglitz says. "So basically, we instilled in the '90s the fear of God or the fear of the IMF in everybody." In his book, he goes further: "By the end of the '90s, the treaties that we had hailed so proudly were seen ... as a new way in which the rich and powerful could exploit the weak and poor," he writes. "America pushed the ideology of the free market and tried hard to get access for U.S. companies overseas. In doing so, we in the Clinton administration too often put aside the kinds of principles for which we should have stood." The U.S. talked a good game about democracy but tried to maintain control of the system so that it worked for its corporate interests, Stiglitz continues. Two examples stand out in The Roaring Nineties. While America pushed countries to knock down their trade barriers, at the same time, it maintained massive agricultural subsidies. For instance, in 2001, the U.S. paid 25,000 mostly wealthy cotton producers more in subsidies than the cotton they produced was actually worth -- $4 billion versus $3.5 billion. That was twice the subsidy allowed under the WTO. And yet it costs America twice the international price of 42 cents per pound to produce the crop. Meanwhile, American subsidies, which drove down the price of cotton worldwide, hammered poor African cotton farmers to the tune of $301 million in lost revenue, according to estimates by Oxfam, an agency that works to end poverty worldwide. Remarkably, American subsidies cost some countries more than they received in U.S. foreign aid. "Mali, for instance, received $37 million in aid but lost $43 million from depressed prices." Stiglitz singles out then-U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor -- now a member of retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark's campaign -- for criticism. Kantor, a lawyer by trade, used the economic might of the U.S. to push through debilitating WTO concessions. Under pressure from drug companies, Kantor finagled tough intellectual property rights guarantees with absurd and deadly consequences. In one case, Texas-based RiceTec Inc. received a patent on a type of basmati rice that had been grown for hundreds of years in Pakistan and India. Only after an international outcry did RiceTec withdraw its claims for patent infringement. Perhaps most sinister, however, was what intellectual property protections did in Africa. It kept generic drugs out of the sub-Saharan region where tens of thousands of people were dying from AIDS. Stiglitz says American hypocrisy on trade, combined with Bush's go-it-alone approach in Iraq and the recent blow-up over steel tariffs, which he said were necessary to protect the industry, is diminishing the admiration that many developing countries once felt for the U.S. There's absolutely no doubt that there's a huge difference between what happ ens to an American who loses his job and somebody in a less-developed country who loses his job. In the underdeveloped world, unemployment rates often top 20 percent; there's no health insurance, no unemployment insurance, no savings. Stiglitz, in a phone interview, says: "This is a calamity, not just to one person, but to a family. The asymmetries are just enormous, and that is why the steel tariffs that Bush put in did more to damage our arguments for free trade than anything else, because what we said was, 'We need to protect American workers' jobs.' Everybody else around the world said, 'If the United States says that, what about us? And how can you tell us with 20 percent unemployment we don't need to protect our jobs?' It just resonated." Stiglitz says the protests against war in Iraq had deeper roots than Bush bucking international sentiment. "As I've traveled around, it has never been anything like this before," Stiglitz says. "It is amazing. Presidents of countries will come up to me and whisper in my ear and say, 'You've got to do something.' There is an enormous intensity of feeling." The implication is simple: Trade policy will lead to more international grievances, which puts the bellows to international terrorism. And as renowned historian Howard Zinn pointed out at a recent talk in Atlanta, if you only concentrate on the fanatical acts of terrorism and not on the grievances from which they rise, you will never overcome it. Because for one, as strange as it sounds, forcing environmental and labor standards on other countries undermines democracy. Trade negotiations are a heavy-handed diplomatic tool when backed by the WTO. "The reality is the WTO, in enforcing its rules, really does dictate what countries can and can't do," Ahdieh says. "Even the United States and Europe, [which] have made some practice of resisting WTO rulings, are increasingly finding that not sustainable. By incorporating labor and environmental norms into the trade agreements, you're not simply trying to align standards, you really are ... dictating environmental law of a given nation." The American government needs to let go of the industries that don't have comparative advantage -- for its own safety. We'll continue to manufacture goods "but it will be linked in one way or another to some area of our strength -- knowledge capital, skill capital, innovation, closeness to market," Stiglitz says. But just as much as reforming U.S. trade hypocrisy, Democrats can make a stand on trade and differentiate themselves from Republicans and court lower middle-class voters, such as White and Griggs -- people slugged in the face by the president's economic policies. The question is, where does the money go that is generated by free trade? This gets a little tricky, because again, the wealth created by free trade doesn't show up as a line item in the budget. Bush's answer so far has been tax cuts that largely benefit the wealthiest Americans and war -- $87 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan on top of the already enormous $450 billion we spend annually for defense. It leaves the president in a situation where he can't even fund his own education plan, No Child Left Behind, among a string of "compassionate conservative" initiatives. Meanwhile, students are paying more than ever for college tuition, because the first things that states across the country cut during the downturn was funding for higher education. So Bush's economic and foreign policies are striking at the very heart of where America possesses comparative advantage -- knowledge capital. So the goal for Democratic candidates should be clear. First, tell the truth about trade. Second, promise to invest our gains in the people who have lost the most, and that means a comprehensive health care plan for all Americans and starting a conversation about a national livable wage. It also means putting people to work in government jobs to help the suddenly unemployed use the system. Finally, rescind the Bush tax cuts that went to the wealthiest Americans -- a gambit Stiglitz argues backfired on the economy -- to pay for programs that help us make gains where we're already winning. The message should be jobs, jobs, jobs, says Krause, a self-described Republican. "Why don't we stick to what we're doing best, which is we have great universities, great formation of human capital, a lot of money dedicated to research and development, people really getting trained to do things better, to think, to have ideas, to develop ideas?" Only one candidate, thus far, has come up with a plan to make such investments. U.S. Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., promises to pay for the first year of college education for every American teenager at the state school of his or her choice. Meanwhile, Democrats can promise to re-engage in the international community by becoming part of the Kyoto environmental agreement and the international criminal court. That's called leading by example. It would put the country's money where its mouth is, and it wouldn't be forcing any country to follow its lead by twisting arms for free trade concessions. Of course, anyone with a conscience knows that will mean cheaper prices in America, while other countries steal our ideas, exploit their workers and ruin their environments -- a stomach-churning trade-off. But if we play by the rules, other countries will generate wealth, making them less likely breeding grounds for anti-Americanism. Meanwhile, we'll have the moral authority to put diplomatic pressure on the most offensive regimes. "Conventional international trade theory would say that [exploitation of workers and the environment] are issues that speak to the comparative advantage of Nation X vs. Nation Y," Ahdieh says. "As a result, if a particular nation does not want to protect its environment or does not want to provide adequate labor conditions, they should be permitted to do so." But, Ahdieh says, we should stress that "destroying your environment, eventually will come back to haunt you." So we can have it both ways, just not the way we have it now, and not the way the Democratic candidates for president want American workers to believe. "There's no version of the United States' continued economic success, growth, that does not include global trade." We've already passed that exit. |
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#16
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OT- Reclassifieing fast food jobs as manufacturing jobs
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#17
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OT- Reclassifieing fast food jobs as manufacturing jobs
"Tom Enright" wrote in message
m... (basskisser) wrote in message . com... I find it amazing that no matter how bad Bush screws things up, a good goose-stepping Ru****e will find a way to make it Clinton's fault. What kind of car do you drive? Car??? That's a tired old example. The "big 3" intentionally threw quality out the window in the 1970s. Their loss of market share didn't have much to do with price competition. |
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