A Democratic Party Issue

[JasonBerry]

This is the kind of issue that the Democratic Party has got to drive home - over and over again:

Bread and butter, kitchen-table politics.

Unfortunately, we cannot allow the Republicans to turn the election into another battleground in the culture wars.

This is from CBSNews.com about outsourcing. ColumbiaHouse is shipping their jobs all over the world. Economic populism is a winner if a Democrat has the guts to drive it home, day after day after day. It's the Republicans who started this class warfare - so let us fight it proudly!

When Jean Shaw gets together with her co-workers in Terre Haute, the talk is all about the future: a future they never imagined.

"Where am I going to get a job paying a decent wage at 56 years old? Where can I start over?" asks Shaw.

Shaw and her three co-workers are watching their jobs at the mail-order company Columbia House disappear, the latest casualties of a corporate trend called outsourcing.

Shaw has worked for the company 27 years, Janice Alsip is going on 34, Sue Treash has been there 26 and Faye Johnson just completed her 29th year.

They all worked in the returns department until the company began sending jobs packing.

Some two years ago "they started outsourcing the e-mails to India, the correspondence to Panama and a lot of those ladies have lost their jobs," says Shaw.

Then, as CBS News Correspondent Jane Clayson reports, the entire returns department was outsourced and reassigned to entry-level jobs.

-snip-
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/07/31/eveningnews/ends/printable566131.shtml

[whoYaCallinAlib]

1. You neglected to mention what democrats would do about outsourcing.

How would a democratic president stop it? That's the key. Both parties can bemoan outsourcing. It hurts everybody, democrat and repuke. But the issue is only an issue IF someone steps up with a plan to deal with it. What do you suggest JasonBerry?

[bpilgrim]

19. check out kucinich

http://www.kucinich.us/issues/issue_trade.htm

he has a plan at least to address these issues.

:hi:

peace

[kaitykaity]

2. Well, I would make the outsourcing companies pay the

difference they save in wages in taxes. Call it
a reverse tariff.

[dorktv]

3. I like that. But how would one get them to pay?

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

23. If they don't pay, the executives go to jail

I believe tax evasion is a felony, isn't it?

[whoYaCallinAlib]

4. And you think Congress would approve such a measure?

I'm not arguing. I'm just asking. Cuz I've thought about this issue for a long time. We are losing jobs to overseas outsourcing every day. But I just can't figure out a "realistic" and "feasible" way to stop it.

[kaitykaity]

5. You make not profitable for them.

I'm not a business person, don't have the head
for it.

But the solution is you cut into the profit.
Companies that outsource do it to save labor costs.
If they realize they won't save any money, they
won't do it.

If it's a Democratic issue, and the Democrats have
a unified message, one that gives them power in the
state houses and at the Federal level, well, they
can pass that law and get it enacted.

Make sense? :-)

[whoYaCallinAlib]

6. I'm not saying it is a bad idea. I'm saying that any politician who

proposes your solution would be in the political fight of his life.

[JasonBerry]

How Would We Know???

When was the last Democrat to take economic populism straight to the people in a national campaign (and NOT as a third party)? We need Democrats to act like Democrats and begin winning elections again. Look at the 2002 elections - the winners were those who didn't mollycoddle the right. The rightwing Democrats LOST. The liberals WON. The fact is we don't know what taking the class warfare (the Republicans began) to the people would do. History tells us when we run to the left on economic issues and not let the Republicans run as if Gay Marriage were the only issue of importance - we win.

I can't think of a time we need to do it with more gusto!

[hang a left]

8. yes that makes sense

profit is the motivator, take away the profit

[Warpy]

11. That would make entirely too much sense

...and would fly in the face of the "free market" dogma that both parties have embraced for the past 50 years.

What is killing the US worker is the incredibly high rate of exchange the dollar enjoys against other currencies. Since devaluing the almighty buck would increase energy costs to the prohibitive level, we can kiss that one goodbye, too.

Free trade has benefited every country on earth EXCEPT the USA, thanks to the exalted position of the almighty dollar. Either we have to devalue the buck or we have to abandon this dogma and enact tariffs.

Doing nothing is unconscionable.

[Resistance Is Futile]

18. Absolute bullshit

Free trade has benefited every country on earth EXCEPT the USA, thanks to the exalted position of the almighty dollar.

Go to Mexico and tell the Mexican people that 'free trade' under NAFTA has benefited them. You'll come back with a very different idea. The only people 'free trade' has benefited in the medium term are transnational business interests--the neocon fascists' backers. Not workers anywhere on anything more than a blink-of-an-eye timescale. America has suffered far less at the hands of 'free trade' than many, many others.

As for how to fix the problem of outsourcing, there are no politically possible solutions because the business interests which benefit from this arrangement have an ironclad chokehold on the American government. The American government in turn enforces their idea of 'free' trade on the remainder of the world regardless of if it happens to like it or not.

If you feel like going through an exercise in futility, try proposing any of these solutions to the kingmakers:


A global minimum wage for workers involved in the services trade. Raise the level of pay everywhere to the point that outsourcing skilled jobs isn't profitable.

Strip services out of the WTO treaties. Ban all trade in services, period.

Renegotiate trade treaties to allow punative measures to be taken against states which cap wages through systematic repression of workers' rights. Dumping is dumping, regardless of if it's in goods or labor.

Marshall plan for the third world. Raise all boats to the point that the emerging nations can compete equally--on an equal wage footing--with the first world.

Legally require corporations to engage in ethical behavior. Fat chance of getting this to happen.

Radically devalue the US dollar. It's not possible to do this without severe economic damage and the cooperation from the rest of the world. The fascists' fiscal collapse policy will do this for the US dollar sooner rather than later but the results won't be pretty.

[Iverson]

7. good luck!

You want to talk about corporate outsourcing and destroying our domestic manufacturing base? This ain't 1970 or even 1980 anymore, so that is unacceptably far left. The corporate teat will dry up for Dems.

Bread and butter issues will also compel calling into question the wisdom of economic globalization in its current form. That, too, is unacceptably far left, which is supposedly why Kucinich is considered off the map of serious consideration, at best a sop to the Democratic left.

Hey, I'm all for what you suggest, but you may have a bumpy ride with it.

[hang a left]

15. I call BS

If US Corp want to do business in the US then it should be mandatory.

[JasonBerry]

9. Ideas? Here you go!!

1. I like the idea of punishing - harshly - (high taxes) corporations incorporated in the United States who choose to export their labor for pennies on the dollar. Tax them to where the difference is negligible. Yes, it's called REGULATION. There is not a corporate charter in existence that doesn't promise to care for the community and act in the best interests of - not only the stockholders - but the community as a whole.

2. It's time to start yanking charters. There are several good books on this subject. They now, more or less, mean nothing. We need to again put the kind of meat into enforcing corporate charters and not renewing more than a few.

3. Begin exercising a government option called, "eminent domain." When the best interest of a community is at risk by a corporation moving out - when they are financially sound - take the damn thing over.

Yes. It's called progressive economic populism. A proactive government that protects the free market but not a chaotic free-for-all. And when capitalism begins to run amok (as in check your newspapers ever day for examples) reign 'em in!

We cannot allow the Corporate Nation to leave us a less prosperous nation while enriching themselves.

Read, "Pigs At The Trough" by Arianna Huffington, Jim Hightower, etc. Economic populism is TRUE patriotism!

[kaitykaity]

10. Yes, Very Good. Two more: "Unequal Protection" by

Thom Hartmann and Friendly Fascism by Bertram Gross.

[JasonBerry]

13. Yep!

I haven't read the Bertram Gross book - but Thom Hartmann is great!

[kaitykaity]

17. The Gross book is a truly eye-popping ride.

Gross' predictions are so spot on it's spooky.
I had to ILL it because my library didn't have it.
I was marking it up so much that I ended up buying
it from Amazon.

"Fascism should rightly be called corporatism because
it is the union of state and corporate power."
Mussolini

[Iverson]

21. funny you should mention that

I first heard about the book in the '80s and was always curious. I got it in the mail yesterday. My oldest son is already eyeing it greedily.

[whoYaCallinAlib]

12. One more time . . . I can't argue with your suggestions.

I think they have less than a 1% chance of ever getting to a vote in Congress.

[JasonBerry]

14. And.......

That's what organizing and politics is all about. They won't get the votes until we begin organizing and making CLASS the organizing principle. All of us - Red, Brown, White, Black, Yellow - united for real change. Everyone with a separate agenda loses - united, we win. We win and the votes will be there.

[kaitykaity]

16. Think Big. Think Massive. Think Radical.

Market populism is the name given to the free-market
ideology. It's the invisible hand bullshit that
the Rethugs preach, that they have used to deregulate
everything.

Say what you want about the 50s and 60s, but the
average high-school graduate could get a living wage
job and generally keep it until retirement. These
kind of jobs have basically vanished in favor of a
service economy.

JasonBerry is right when he talks about the return
of regulation and the debunking of globalism and the
free movement of capital.

Being pessimistic isn't helpful, IMHO.

[ulysses]

20. Are you mad???

Challenge the current direction of the benevolent beast that is globalization? Surely you jest!

[onecitizen]

22. IMO, this is the biggest crisis............

facing us today. Cheap labor Cons are hell-bent on destroying the working class in this country, and so far, they're doing a great job.

Our jobs are disappearing by the thousands each week to outsourcing. Not to mention the foreign people who are imported here to take our jobs. And why not? The Cons get to pay them less and offer them no benefits. So, why would they hire one of us? After all, we demand a living wage, benefits, good working environment and protection for our old age. Everything cheap labor Cons are against. We have to wake up soon and take our country back. It makes me sad to write this.