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Originally Posted by aceventura3
Our standard of living in this country is based on productivity.
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And look where that's gotten us. Perhaps we should focus on education, public infrastructure, and things which are going to give back to our society as a whole. If we took the money dumped into the Iraq war and used it to rebuild improverished neighborhoods, build new schools, etc, in a Roosevelt style public works extravaganza, we would have a huge economic boom. Thousands of jobs created, better education for all Americans, and it might show minorities that they don't have to gang bang and run drugs to buy a BMW.
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Originally Posted by aceventura3
If we want to maintain our standard of living productivity has to improve, we have to continually produce more at lower costs. If we don't other countries will catch and pass us.
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We still have the best technology of any other country in the world, arguably. I don't see why we have to focus on productivity--honestly, this country needs a more socialist approach. We have to aknowledge man's greed, and the fact that he will work hardest for his own gain rather than his neighbors, but we should also control key industries by the state and give the basics required to live to all citizens. But no, we focus on productivity, which leads to our public infratrustructures deteriorating.
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Originally Posted by aceventura3
Rather than unions hindering productivity gains they should work with management as a team to make sure the USA is the best place in the world to employ labor.
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How do you PROPOSE they actually do that? The US will never be the best place to employ labor because the costs of living here are so high. There is no way you can expect any American to live on $2 hour. Third world countries are fucking over their people by selling out to international corporations in exchange for sweet heart deals amongst the bureaucratic elite. The people of these nations get trampled and trodden over by these corporate machines.
If a GM Suburban plant moves to Mexico, and their workers strike, what can GM do?
a) They can hire more workers. There are plenty of desperate people with hungry families to feed who will jump at the chance to get a paying job of any kind to support their loved ones. Forget the fact that they're treated like slaves, they can't afford the convenience of having pride or dignity.
b) GM can just leave. The costs of building another plant in Panama or Chile might be cheaper, so they can always say to the Mexican workers, and to the government, "Fuck off, we'll go get in bed with your neighbor and economic rival then. We'll give them our business"
And this whole process is proliferated by American economic initiatives like NAFTA and CAFTA. It's nice being able to demand small countries open up their domestic markets to foreign competition, relinquish subsidies, and privatize their public services (water systems, electricity, oil and gas), so that power house American corporations can come in and jack the prices up on everything, and take out their domestic farming via US Agribusiness subsidies (up to 40% of their profits, in some cases), leaving them completely dependant on US corporations for labor demand, as well as dependant on us to export them everything they need--because after we crash their domestic economies, we jack all the prices up so that they can barely enough at the jobs we employ them at to make enough money to buy the products we sell them to keep their families alive.
Ace, so far, you have said NOTHING to back up the kind of economics you're talking about. Please explain to me how any the things I have just described to you are going to lead towards a prosperous American society in the next 20 years? How are peoples' lives going to be bettered?
I'm not a raging leftist, or a socialist, or any of that. I am a true neutral, and looking at things from my perspective, I see a lot of rampant abuses of power in this world, primarily stemming from the US.
Can you refute any of this with anything substantial? Can you reply with anything concrete that may change my mind? Can you explain how I'm completely wrong and the scenario I just described is not the situation third world workers are in?
Our system is inherently broken in unhealthy. You remember when capitalism failed? The Great Depression? When monopolies ruled the world and American workers were in the EXACT same situation I described in those third world countries? Capitalism needs competition and democracy to check itself against the abominable beast of human greed, and so far as I see it, those safe guards have failed.
As a result we have global monopolies who go around pillaging and looting the rest of the world, using efficiency and productivity as excuses to create an economy with rapidly increasing polarization of wealth and influence.
I really hope you can respond to this with something empirical, or else just stop wasting our time and admit you're rich, happy, and could really care less about what's happening to people outside the bubble of your own life.