Monday, May 5, 2014

The Information Economy - A Fancy Excuse For Turning Good Union Jobs Into Low-Tech Slave Labor

Photo: When someone tells you we live in a "post-industrial" age, you might want to check their facts. The dirty secret is that there are more than enough industrial jobs to go around – they're just being done with appallingly low efficiency in 3rd world sweatshops! The photo above is taken from a New York Times article about the drift of the production of manhole covers from the US to India. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/26/nyregion/26manhole.html?_r=0 While American manufacturers like the Neenah Foundry Company (formerly a primary producer of these manhole covers) are long gone or in and out of bankruptcy, semi-skilled (and sometimes skilled) industrial work – from the shop floor to the engineering department – proliferates in India, Mexico, China, El Salvador, and anywhere Wall Street and corporate America can oppress workers enough to satisfy their shareholders. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is essentially a reflection of China's ascendancy, and the desire of the west to shift sweatshops to Vietnam, Chile, Bangladesh and other countries that keep their workers in line. The early Republican Party, represented by Abraham Lincoln, William McKinley and others, was founded largely to promote protective tariffs – the logical and perhaps only solution to prevent job loss to lower-wage countries. During the civil war, the tax protecting union manufacturers from the British empire approached 50% and generated half the nation's revenue. But wait – aren't tariffs an outdated concept that don't apply in our global world? Ask China – they protect their own manufacturers (like their emerging auto industry) and internal economic development with tariffs in the neighborhood of 25%! Maybe it's time we take a lesson from the country that used to supply much of the world's "coolie labor" (a racist slur for the early Chinese workers in America, South Africa and elsewhere), and is beginning to act a lot more American than America. End free trade, demand a protective tariff! http://againstausterity.org/program/protective-tariffUnited Front Against Austerity
Progressive Gazette
May 5, 2014
 
When someone tells you we live in a "post-industrial" age, you might want to check their facts.

The dirty secret is that there are more than enough industrial jobs to go around – they're just being done with appallingly low efficiency in 3rd world sweatshops!

The photo above is taken from a New York Times article about the drift of the production of manhole covers from the US to India.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/26/nyregion/26manhole.html?_r=0

While American manufacturers like the Neenah Foundry Company (formerly a primary producer of these manhole covers) are long gone or in and out of bankruptcy, semi-skilled (and sometimes skilled) industrial work – from the shop floor to the engineering department – proliferates in India, Mexico, China, El Salvador, and anywhere Wall Street and corporate America can oppress workers enough to satisfy their shareholders.


The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is essentially a reflection of China's ascendancy, and the desire of the west to shift sweatshops to Vietnam, Chile, Bangladesh and other countries that keep their workers in line.

The early Republican Party, represented by Abraham Lincoln, William McKinley and others, was founded largely to promote protective tariffs – the logical and perhaps only solution to prevent job loss to lower-wage countries. During the civil war, the tax protecting union manufacturers from the British empire approached 50% and generated half the nation's revenue.

But wait – aren't tariffs an outdated concept that don't apply in our global world?

Ask China – they protect their own manufacturers (like their emerging auto industry) and internal economic development with tariffs in the neighborhood of 25%!

Maybe it's time we take a lesson from the country that used to supply much of the world's "coolie labor" (a racist slur for the early Chinese workers in America, South Africa and elsewhere), and is beginning to act a lot more American than America. 

End free trade, demand a protective tariff!
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