Race to the Bottom

[ramapo]

We're all aware of the loss of manufacturing jobs in the US. I've watched over the years the steady erosion of good technical jobs for American IT workers. And for all our emphasis on science eduction, I've had many resumes of highly educated science majors, unable to find work in their field, looking for entry-level programming jobs pass my desk. I've asked the rhetorical, "Where will we (and more important our kids) work?" many times. There are just so many Wal-Marts. I've had a real sense of unease for a long time about our economic future. But now I'm really worried.

I just finished "Race to the Bottom" by Alan Tonelson. Tonelson argues that a worldwide surplus of workers has, and will continue to, depress our living standards. What started as a move of low-level manufacturing out of the US has blossomed into a wide-range loss of jobs both horizontal and vertical. Published in 2000, Tonelson's arguments are playing out before us.

Manufacturing jobs migrated from the northern US to the south. Many northern cities never recovered. Now jobs are leaving for Mexico, India, and other second-world and third-world countries.

We've benefited from cheap manufacturing. No better example is your PC. But along with exporting jobs we've exported the expertise and infrastructure to enable other countries to provide services at all levels, taking our jobs in the process.

There is finally some awareness of the monster that we've created. I always assumed that living standards in the rest of the world would rise to meet our standard. But it might be more accurate that ours must drop to level the playing field. The media is latching on to what may turn out to be a major change in our economic situation. Even Bush* is appointing somebody to lead an effort to retain some manufacturing base here.

So the question is, "How to turn around 30 years of bad economic policy?". Tonelson says that the US economy is so hugh and important that we can demand changes to trade agreements and import/export rules to negate the cheap labor advantage that most of the world holds over the US.

But the corporate bottom line is still the bible. Since the 1980's, corporations have been actively anti-employee. Oddly enough, this attitude has almost been enshrined in our culture, replacing a pro-labor and pro-union stance that held power into the 1970s.

We're also addicted to the cheap goods (needed to fill the Wal-Mart that provides jobs to many) provided by cheap labor and the corporations are addicted to lowering costs.

Will the exporting of jobs continue so this issue become a key in '04? Or will corporations tone it down for a year to keep Bush* safe? Repubs and Dems both bear responsibility here. After all Clinton was very pro-globalization.

Who might be the visionary leader that can spur the development of a new job base?