Forum Post: About job creators
Posted 12 years ago on Oct. 25, 2011, 9:12 p.m. EST by NielsH
(212)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
In politics it is said the rich are job creators, but that statement doesn't say where those jobs are created. Investments do create jobs, but instead of creating jobs in the US they are created in China, India and elsewhere.
FoxConn the maker of many of of our computers, mobile phones and other electronic devices employs 900 thousand people. People that work under such terrible conditions that they had to install suicide prevention measures.
Is this to blame on the richest 1%? Well only partially, because in the end it was Congress that passed legislation that forced corporations to go abroad. Not doing so would mean bankruptcy.
Of course that same legislation was heavily promoted by those same business entities that saw themselves forced to go abroad, hence the partial blame.
Yet, it was eventually a political decisions to agree to global free trade that caused the down turn of both the American and the European economy for the interests of businesses that operate globally. Businesses that have no loyalty to a nation and don't care about the general welfare of the population.
This down turn, which started in the 1980's, was exacerbated in the 1990's, by such treaties as NAFTA and GATT only to be postponed by a massive build up of credit both at the private and at the public level.
It's not only the poor that have debt, it's not just the nation that has debt, even the richest 1% have a debt, exceeding $600 billion.
Global free trade is an anachronism of post World War II thinking, when in the minds of the leaders of the Western World, the globe only existed of the Western World. China was a closed market, Russia was a closed marked, India was a closed market, but by the end of the 1980's all that was changed, yet we kept pursuing the global free trade agenda as if nothing had changed. As if we could just add billions of people to the market place without any effect on the stability prosperity and well-being of our nations.
So let's not try to be smug and deny that investors create jobs, because they do, but let's ask ourselves if the jobs created make out lives better, more prosperous and more worthwhile to live.
Unfortunately the answer to that, I believe is negative.
The business and banking community, "Educated,"the politicians on these matters. No one in the business or banking commnuity was forced to destroy American jobs or undermine the futures of two generations of the most highly educated Americans, in the history of this country. The I-Bankers and the businessmen simply want to make a lot of money, many of them enjoy inflicting pain on people and they don't care how much it hurts the United States. They are no more forced to act the way they do, than a sociopath is forced to have no regard for the feelings of others. Come to think about it, many of them probably are sociopaths.
The Soviet Union collapses and what did Wall Street do? Wall Street pushed to turn the World into the Soviet Union; where a tiny minority of the poulation of the World, Oligarchs, will have all the resources and power, maintaining undemocratic rule over the remainder of humanity. Does that tell you everything about, "Lo, the noble Wall Street bankers?" [rolls eyes]
I don't know all business people, nor do I know their personal motivations.
There are certainly sociopaths among the corporate CEO's and most likely more so than in society at large, but that conclusion doesn't help us all that much.
My use of "forced" implies an entirely self-inflicted force, because large corporations lobbied intensely for global free trade.
Once legislation as GATT was signed, large manufacturing and service businesses no longer had another option but to move large part of their labor abroad, not doing so would put them out of business, because competitors would move abroad. This applies just as much for those businesses that extensively lobbied for global free trade as it applies to businesses that had nothing to do with those lobbying efforts and even those that were opposed to it.
That is like saying, once the mugger shot the guy with the wallet, the mugger had to shoot the lady standing next to him, so the mugger could eliminate all the witnesses, capable of pointing the mugger out, as the State charges the mugger with Felony Murder. [wink]
Not quite, but it's a funny analogy.
Sorry, it was a little bit on short order, [wink] My main point is that Corporate America is not held hostage by Globalism. Corporate America is pushing Globalism. Corporations can always offer Americans top dollar and attract workers to move to the USA. There are cases of German accountants, moving to Norway, to work in factories, doing manual labor, because Germans can make six figures working in manual labor, in Norway and only five figures, as accountants, in Germany.
If companies want to create jobs in the USA, pay top dollar, hire the unemployed and attract foreigners to the USA, they can do it tomorrow. There is no law against brain draining the World, into your home market. You can't send a professional job to China, if all the professionally educated Chinese are living in NYC. [giggle] You cannot compete in the World, attempting to pay workers, as little as possible, if there is a place, the workers can go and make top dollar, doing the same thing.Simply put, your consumer market will move to the country where they can make the most money and live at the highest standard of living. Are you going to move to Cambodia to work for bugs and rice?
Define more clearly what you mean by "forced" to hire abroad? And in doing so consider the perqs even the average executive at AnyCorp USA enjoys (i.e. nice lunch meetings, plush office furniture; cushy suites when traveling; conventions in fun cities at nice hotels). I'm not necessarily indicting this in moderation (I and members of my family have experienced thus and have quite enjoyed it) nor saying people shouldn't have some perqs... but there is the thing of moderation and scaling back at times for the greater good. Certainly the claim can't be made in every case that businesses are "forced" to hire cheap labor and have no other cost-saving alternatives but to do so. I have personally witnessed a lot of instances of flagrant waste at companies I have worked with/for, and within the last two years. Things like just not knowing reasonable prices to pay for things-- buying a tv for a meeting for $1000 from an interior designer instead of renting one for the day for $30. This kind of thing is a regular occurence.
Forced means that once global free trade was in effect, large manufacturing companies had to move abroad, because otherwise they would be out-competed by others that would move abroad.
Of course this being "forced' was entirely self-inflicted, because large manufacturing companies lobbied for those very laws that made it possible and with that necessary.
I think what interests me too is that business is always pretty quick to use words like "was forced" and to portray itself as having no other options and a kind of victim mentality in this respect. The same kind of victim mentality many of the movers-and-shakers deplore in those with a lot less means and a lot less flexibility to be able to economize. They are very quick to point out to the poor and middle class how they just have to figure things out better to be able to get by because success is a "choice" and if you don't have it it's because you're not making the right "choices", not economizing enough, not coming up with a better game plan... when it's largely their business decisions which have limited a lot of this so-called "choice". Again, the same "choice" they claim they didn't have.
I totally agree, but I deliberately used the word forced because also those businesses that did not lobby for global free trade, and even those businesses that actually opposed it, had to move their manufacturing base abroad to stay in business.
All in all, a raw deal for a lot of folks...
Yes. And it's in the nature of business to want to say competitive and in so doing get the cheapest deals for themselves. And it is up to legislation to create proper boundaries as to how far they can go to these ends.
Indeed. Businesses are a wonderful instrument to fulfill the needs of society, but are not themselves aiming to improve society. This is why government needs to set rules.
The economy should work to our benefits, to improve the common welfare and the playing field should be organized such that we maximize common welfare (which is not the same as maximizing GDP). When we do that, there will still be plenty of room for 1% of the people to be very rich, and I would be the last to begrudge them that.
Damn... I should have used a more divisive title.