20 reasons why Barack Obama is wrong about globalization

[Newsjock]

Source: Benzinga

... Every day there is more depressing news about the U.S. economy. For example, it has just been announced that Harley-Davidson has decided to open a shiny new assembly plant in India. Meanwhile, formerly great American manufacturing cities such as Detroit have turned into rotting hellholes.

The American people are not being told the truth. The following are 20 reasons why Barack Obama is wrong, wrong, wrong about globalization....

#1 American workers are being merged into a global labor pool where they must directly compete for jobs with workers on the other side of the globe that make less than ten percent of what an average American worker makes. In such an environment, it is inevitable that jobs are going to flow away from areas where labor is expensive and to areas where labor is cheaper.

... #6 The United States has lost a staggering 32 percent of its manufacturing jobs since the year 2000.

#7 Even high technology industries are leaving America. Manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry is actually lower in 2010 than it was in 1975.

#8 In 1959, manufacturing represented 28 percent of all U.S. economic output. In 2008, it represented only 11.5 percent.

#9 As of the end of 2009, less than 12 million Americans worked in manufacturing. The last time that less than 12 million Americans were employed in manufacturing was in 1941.

... Sadly, there are very, very few politicians in either major political party that will even talk about the negative effects of the emerging one world economy. It is almost as if there is an unspoken consensus that globalism is the future and that it is a good thing for America.

But it is not a good thing for America. Unless fundamental changes are made, America will continue to bleed wealth, will continue to bleed factories and will continue to bleed jobs.

Read more: http://www.benzinga.com/10/11/596368/barack-obama-we-must-embrace-globalism-and-the-emerging-one-world-economy

[laughingliberal]

1. K & R nt

[OhioChick]

2. K&R n/t

[wtmusic]

3. America is bleeding money from demand for foreign goods.

We want it both ways - cheap foreign goods and high-paying American jobs.

Problem is, with all that money flowing out of the country there's no money left to pay for those jobs. We can tax the hell out of the top 2%, raise the corporate tax, and re-invent the New Deal - create government programs to improve infrastructure - but the bleeding in the private sector won't end until there is some kind of equilibrium with the rest of the world. Any kind of artificial intervention is doomed from the start.

The reality is we're all going to have to make do with less. And if we can limit the hardships of the most destitute Americans, i's not necessarily a bad thing. Paul Krugman has always made a strong case for globalization:

"I've been on the road a lot lately, talking to audiences about my hopes for a great revival of middle-class America, and I almost always get asked about whether such hopes make sense in an age of globalization. Is it really possible to make working Americans better off, when they have to compete with workers around the world?

Yes, it is. The truth, is that international trade is less important, for good or for evil, than most people suppose."

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2007/11/26/krugman_commentary/

[AdHocSolver]

8. There is NO demand for FOREIGN goods.

The corporations choose to manufacture their products in low wage foreign countries and import those products here, rather than manufacture goods here using American labor. .

While many imported products are cheaply made, i.e. of low quality, their prices to the consumer do not reflect the lower cost to the manufacturer. Name brands and designer labeled brands that are manufactured in low wage foreign countries are often higher priced than comparable house brands made in the U.S.

As for "artificial intervention" in international trade, we already have it in the form of corporate cartel agreements such as NAFTA, the WTO, the IMF, and the World Bank, among others, which gives monopolistic control of trade to a handful of multinational corporations. Globalization is merely another term for plutocracy.

The most absurd statement in your post is:
"...The truth, is that international trade is less important, for good or for evil, than most people suppose."

Whoever controls world trade controls this planet. All of the great empires of the world from the Roman to the British were built upon control of international trade. They also collapsed for the same reasons: They bankrupted themselves by spending their wealth on armies to wage wars to protect their empires. These empires destroyed their middle classes that originally created the wealth by importing cheap goods from their colonies.

The U.S. economy will never recover, and jobs will never return to the U.S., until these corporate cartel agreements are eliminated, and trade is regulated so that American-made products are given the opportunity to compete with cheap foreign imports.

[wtmusic]

13. American corps choose to manufacture their products in China

for the same reason a dog licks himself: they can. They have higher profit margins and make more money. A pair of Nike shoes wouldn't cost a dime less if they were made in America, but Nike would have a smaller profit margin. If the American market deems their perceived value as higher than some American-made brand, then it is. Value is in the perception of the buyer.

That globalization makes American corporate masters richer is undeniable, but what is turning America into a plutocracy is nothing more than apathy. Tax the holy shit out of corporations and their masters, put the teeth back in the Sherman Act to create real competition again, and subsidize American companies that create American jobs - and you will see a rebirth of the American economy. Globalization is an extremely positive force if we're selling valuable products overseas, reducing the trade deficit, and at the same time increasing the standard of living worldwide.

Whether international trade is more or less important than most people suppose, I'll let you argue with a Nobel-prizewinning economist whose predictions of a cash crisis five years ago were spot on.

[AdHocSolver]

29. The economic system we get under corporate-run globalization is destroying the US economy.

When a majority of the everyday goods that are offered for sale (such as clothing, shoes, electronics, appliances, tools, hardware, etc.) are made in low wage countries such as China, without regulation to level the playing field to allow American companies that want to manufacture in America a chance to compete, the U.S. economy will only get worse for Americans.

It is a fraud to suggest that the U.S. can ever manufacture enough goods to export to counteract the trade deficit of so many imports. There is little reason to assume, for example, that China will ever buy large enough quantities of American made goods to balance their exports to us when they can manufacture those goods in China much more cheaply than they could buy them from the U.S.

Moreover, wages in China are so much lower than in the U.S., that few Chinese could ever afford to buy anything we manufacture anyway.

As far as arguing with a Nobel prizewinning economist, I argued with my economics professors all the time when I earned my economics degree, and fortunately for me, it did not affect my grades in a negative way. I would bring newspaper articles to class about economic issues of the day that contradicted what they taught us, and they would dismiss the information as being invalid because it didn't conform to economic theory. What I learned from that was that most economists serve as high priests of capitalist dogma. If the facts contradict dogma, than throw away the facts.

Globalization, as designed and implemented by the corporations, is disastrous for the U.S. economy. More than the banking fraud, and the tax breaks for the rich, globalization, which imports a majority of consumer goods, while exporting huge numbers of jobs, is a disaster for the U.S. The economy will NEVER recover until this kind of globalization is eliminated.

Moreover, raising taxes on the rich and enforcing the Sherman Antitrust Act will do nothing to help the U.S. economy so long as NAFTA. the WTO, and their ilk are operative. The ONLY valid measure of an economy's health is the employment level in terms of the number of family supporting jobs that exist. Merely increasing taxes on the rich won't help the economy if 20 percent of the population are struggling to pay their bills.

The claim that we are experiencing a "jobless recovery" is a farce. The stock market is NOT the economy. The increase in executive bonuses is NOT a valid measure of the economy. This economy is not in recovery, and won't be until imports are substantially REDUCED to balance exports. This will only happen when most of the goods that we buy are manufactured in America by Americans.

The information about how ruling elites bankrupt empires can be found in economist Kevin Phillips' book "Wealth and Democracy". Phillips served as President Nixon's economics advisor.

[wtmusic]

32. How do you propose to eliminate globalization?

Place tariffs on all imports? Won't work - the raised price of all the goods we take for granted now will exactly offset any increase in jobs. You'll have a nation which is twice as employed with half the buying power. And those who still aren't employed get shafted.

It seems you have a conspiratorial notion that corporations all get together in a meeting and decide how to best shaft the American consumer. The truth is that thousands of corporations fail every day, and most are in a bitter fight to stay alive. The biggest ones don't have to worry, largely because of non-enforcement of Sherman (which you dismiss offhandedly), and a tax structure that's a sham.

You don't want to get rid of the ruling elite, you just want to be part of it - part of an antiquated nationalist vision which is responsible for most of the world's wars and most of the world's poverty.

[RaleighNCDUer]

9. I beg to differ - it is not that we want cheap foreign goods.

With the Walmartization of America, cheap foreign goods is all that is available.

This did not start with American consumers saying "I really want to go out and find some cheap Chinese crap to buy today!"

It started with the corporations which import the cheap crap, and the manufacturers who ship their operations overseas. WE were given no choice. All because NAFTA and other similar agreements did NOT write in consumer protections to keep us from getting flooded with cheap crap made without environmental concern and slave labor. Instead of demanding that foreign competitors meet minimum standards before exporting, we instead gave OUR corporations tax breaks for moving overseas.

You couldn't do a better job of ruining an economy if you had been intending to do that very thing.

[Hannah Bell]

14. oh, bullshit. the only people demanding foreign goods are financiers &

capitalists.

"make do with less" = code for cutbacks in social spending & high unemployment.

fuck that.

[pampango]

16. Indeed international trade is 11% of our economy, while it is 30% in Germany. Yet

Germany prospers with strong unions, high wages and benefits, effective national health care, progressive taxation and a very equitable distribution of income. The middle and working classes in Germany prosper because of how Germans structure their society and how they take care of each other.

Our economic problems are self-created, not the fault of foreigners, caused by tax cuts for the rich, deregulation of markets and the finance industry, the weakening of unions, an ineffective and expensive health care system and the worst distribution of income in the developed world. Europeans don't sit around blaming their problems on foreigners, particularly those from poor countries. (In fact the EU allows tariff-free imports from the really poor countries in the world.) They demand that their their own governments pursue progressive domestic policies which benefit working and middle classes.

All the progressive countries in the world trade more than we do, but take care of their own people much better than we do. Look at Canada, Australia, Sweden, Germany, etc.

BTW, all developed economies have seen dramatic declines in manufacturing employment - some worse than the US - that mirror the decline in agricultural employment a century or more earlier.

[TheKentuckian]

4. Plain old horsesense. Very obvious or should be

[moondust]

5. "global labor pool" is the enemy.

Capitalist logic implies that to minimize labor costs all the jobs will end up with the most desperate people on the planet who will work for beans and not make waves out of fear that some other desperate people will get those jobs.

Inescapable feudalism, or worse.

[The2ndWheel]

23. A global labor pool is no different than a national labor pool

What's different is that there is no global government to regulate matters, where as there are national governments to do so.

We have a global economy, with regional governments. One of those will have to change. Some governments do A, others do B, or C, D, etc. Then the reasons that the governments do whatever they do depends on probably too many factors to mention.

[Crazy Dave]

6. Sign holders and nude dancers....

Are the only real jobs that are in our local paper and craigslist. The rest are fake jobs posted by the career schools and bored HR managers.

Only the rich can send their kids to college these days but how many rich kids will want to get into or have a career in the technology or education fields?

[Skittles]

7. politicians know all this

they just don't fucking care, because they answer to corporations, not WE THE PEOPLE

[billlll]

10. "2 000 000 000 (billion) people pushed down into poverty and extreme poverty" UN

UN report on Globalism about 2 yrs ago.

Interesting that no one else here has heard of the report. MSM ignoring it?

I think so.

[muriel_volestrangler]

12. Can you link us to it?

I presume it's not this UN report from a couple of years ago:

On balance, globalization has unleashed a wide array of opportunities as
well as new problems for realizing the internationally agreed development
goals. A number of developing countries have made major inroads in reducing
poverty and hunger by taking advantage of those opportunities and
safeguarding against potential threats. The principal challenge is to ensure that
all countries and all people benefit from the positive potential of globalization.

http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N08/490/98/PDF/N0849098.pdf?OpenElement

[wtmusic]

15. .

:thumbsup:

[Starry Messenger]

11. k&r

[xchrom]

17. recommend

[HughBeaumont]

18. K & R.

America has not created one net new job in 10 years. This madness has to stop.

[grahamhgreen]

19. Out of slave trade agreements now.

[lightningandsnow]

20. I'm creeped out by the emphasis on how it hurts the US.

Economic globalization hurts people in the global south a hell of a lot more.

[durkermaker]

22. people know best what they experience personally

and most middle class people havent traveled the world to see it - they only know how it's affected their own town

can you really blame them for that?

[durkermaker]

21. To get a tech job in the late 1980s, was hard

you had to prove that you were super straight laced

you had to answer for an endles number of things, while being looked at sideways to see if any answer you gave could possibly be untrue in any context

some companies even had 'psychological tests' as part of the screening, and many had drug tests. your background was checked.

on the job, you were contantly examined and quized about endles issues, and you could never be suspected of 'shading' and issue

so it's pretty galling to give up everything gained from that, to a never ending series of lies that is somehow 'right'

1) 1996 - It's ok to give up manufacturing, because tech is the future

2) 1998-2000 - It's ok to bring in a sea of guest workers the size of a midwestern city because of a 'shortage' of workers

3) 2003 Guest workers, do take some jobs. but they help slow outsourcing. The 'jobs of the future' are 'a thing of the past'. We need to 'innovate'

4) 2010 Guest workers do speed up outsourcing, but outsourcing creates jobs for americans

[durkermaker]

24. treason is patriotism

so it's a good thing that slavery is freedom

[maryf]

27. Excellent!

Welcome to DU!

[kenny blankenship]

25. What happened to "I will renegotiate NAFTA" ??

Went the way of the Public Option, I guess.

[FiveGoodMen]

26. One more lie

[Romulox]

33. By which he meant "Append a Free Trade deal with Korea thereto"...

Weren't you paying attention in the primaries?

[maryf]

28. K&Rnt

[durkermaker]

30. what makes me angriest about h-1b visa is this

when I entered the tech job market, it wasn't a good year. we were all scared to death

we knew that some of us were not going to make it into the field. but NOBODY I know ever suggested that a (then) middle aged person be replaced by one of us to make room for us. such a thing was unthinkable

yet, people in other countries are DEMANDING exactly that, and our 'leaders' happily oblige them

[RainDog]

31. kick n/t