Occupy Wall Street

Why should that ultra special class of fearless, heroic, ruggedly individual capitalists be forced to hire only from the pool of parasitic, weak, entitled Americans? There is a whole slew of third world countries whose citizens don't suffer from the same entitled expectations of safe working conditions, reasonable wages and tenable working hours.

 

Yep. All the multinationals would immediately pack their bags. There would be no point in staying. And I expect that the largest market in the world - China - would pretty much immediately shut off for us as they figured out that they could go elsewhere for a slightly higher price than they're used to paying. The Japanese and the Europeans would be happy to sell their goods.

Let's not forget that the very first folks hurt by this would be the farmers and ranchers. If we're going to get all protectionist on other countries, they'll probably figure out better places to buy grain and meat very quickly. The US overproduces on agriculture by something like 25%. Nothing like plummeting food prices to kick off a recession, 1930's-style.
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No, no, no. Eddie only supports local and state regulation and taxation.
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Oh, and if we're looking for a return to cheap labor to make America great again, we'd better turn the immigration tap back on PDQ. That cheap labor's not just going to sneak across a border itself. It has to come in on its own volition.

I, for one, look forward to visiting Denver's Little Bombay in the near future.

 

Exactly. I am against heavy government regulation, against big government and against federal taxes.

 

Yep, two things.

 

I've never seen this strong of a reaction from you regarding my opinions, Baraka. I must have really hit a nerve.

Fyi, american companies hiring american workers is not socialism, it's nationalism.
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I think you want people to view Canada as some big success. But it isn't. There's been rampant, unchecked immigration which has lead to a complete degradation of national identity. And, from my own travels in Canada I've gathered that there's very little ingenuity there, in terms of business and even free thought. It just seems like a very dispassionate population. I think that's what happens when you take away a people's motivation to achieve.

 

No. government legislation doesn't not equal socialism. Government legislation equals elected representatives fulfilling the will of the American people.

 

i had stayed out of this because i was busy earlier---and in part because i enjoyed watching all this unfold. fact is that the reason the wage consensus broke down was the profit squeeze in that came in the 70s as a function of many factors---but the oil shock of 1973 stands in as the main sign that something was changing--and the response was pure free-market capitalism. this before the idiocy of monetarism/supply side/thatcherism hit in the later 70s as a political reaction to the inability of the then-extant regime (of accumulation in marxist-speak) to adapt to new situation. it made wages a variable cost in principle--by the end of the clinton period, with the consolidation of the net, we were in supply-pool land and that was the consolidation of the wage disaster that conservatives have made. it takes considerable contortions---helped by not knowing the basic facts, seemingly---to act as though the origins and course of the assault on wage levels came from anywhere else. so it's funny, in a perverse way, to see people who still believe that old hayeky nonsense clinging to the illusion that more of the same shit is going to fix anything that was caused by this same ideology applied. of course its socially dysfunctional--but free market ideologues don't care about that because they, like margaret thatcher, don't see the social. they only see individuals and every individual is like every other. so in the end, they only see themselves, multiplied, like paper dolls. what's astonishing is the power of the dominant media in building consent for this lunacy over such a long period. what it engendered, in a general sense, is an ideological monocropping the end result of which is the crisis you see all around you. to which ows is a response, and a very interesting response. i don't think anyone who's not already ultra-rightwing gives a fuck about the inability of the ultra-right to comprehend it. most everyone i talk to in meat-space, including quite a number of older-line conservatives, know full well what the occupation is doing and what it's general aims are.

 

Telling companies who they can/can't hire and where they can/can't sell goods is the exact opposite of free market capitalism

 

My mind boggles to think about how General Motors (or ExxonMobil or Wal-Mart) would deal with this kind of thing.

They are global businesses, and larger than some countries.

 

I'm sure GM would be fine with the US Government telling them that they have to stop selling 78% of their vehicles

 

I think it could be more problematic. Cut off their parts factories and they can't even construct cars in the USA.

It's all a ridiculous hypothesis, though. Wouldn't it be better to let them make a lot of money and have them contribute to the US economy (but not have a say in politics)?