Forum Post: Protests Should Focus On Better Policy and Campaign Finance Reform
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 7, 2011, 11 p.m. EST by jim993911
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I think the comments directed at corporations and/or rich people are somewhat misdirected. The real problem this country faces is its political class. It's years of bad policy that has brought us to this point…this terrible economy. Corporations/businesses in general are created to enrich the individual(s) willing to stick their neck out and take the risks of going into business. A business' duty is, and should always be to the benefit of its owners/shareholders. If those owner/shareholders are willing to share their wealth for the betterment of society, IE Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and others, then that is in fact their choice. No law should be enacted to dictate otherwise.
I realize so many people are upset at the current state of the economy, myself included. Jobs are shipped off shore, companies are housing mountains of cash off shore…it’s easy to quickly blame the corporations…but if you dig a little deeper, you’ll realize it’s years of bad policy in this country. In the US we have a certain set of standards and laws that govern business. Work conditions, age restrictions, minimum wages…etc. No a big deal when companies are competing against other companies facing the same rules. Domestic vs. Domestic. However, when policy makers open up our markets to companies from foreign lands, that entire playing field change. Hell, the entire rule book changed. Not because of trade in and of itself, which I favor, but rather unfair trade.
It’s unfair because our policy makers negotiated trade deals that in effect hurt our businesses. If a US company produces widgets for 50 bucks and resells them for 60 bucks, they’re doing fine. If after a badly negotiated trade pact is put into place, they now have to compete against a foreign company without the labor laws, rules and regulations our companies face, they are automatically at an inherent disadvantage. Now the foreign company paying 25 cents a week to its 10 year old labor in sweat shops, not required to follow EPA laws, or carry certain insurances, or pay certain taxes…etc, can produce said widgets for 10 bucks and sell them for 45…below the cost of production for the US based company. Policy makers should have negotiated a better deal, or had the courage to put tariffs in place to bring the price levels of the foreign goods up to the price level they would be at, had they had to follow our domestic rules. Policy makers have largely neglected going that route.
When you mention that the policy makers should have negotiated a better deal, with whom were they negotiating? And for whose benefit? And when the U.S. Customs was ordered by Congress to lower import duty taxes, for whose benefit was that order given? There's a pattern here. And the pattern is that in each case, the Congress and in turn, U.S.Customs was directed to take action by big business. For their benefit. And the only way that could have happened, is with a whole lot of back room deals. There was a time when very few things were imported and when everyone could find work. I remember those days. I also remember the flood of imports coming in. At first is was cheap crap that no one would buy but eventually, as investments were made in foreign factories, the products improved. Eventually, there were no more USA products to pick from. But how? And for whose benefit? Simply, big business decided 40 years ago to take advantage of slave labor overseas in order to maximize profit. If they had just stayed there and had not insisted on bringing their manufactured products back here by lowering U.S.Customs import duties, I would have wished them all well. Then someone else would have stepped in and opened up a new business to replace them. Just like in a free market. My complaint here is that their ultimate goal was to manufacture elsewhere but to bring the products back here in order to maximize the sales price. In a free market and a fair market, this would not have occurred. Big business engaged in practices that were sharply profit driven and had to twist a lot of arms on the way to their destination. The unions didn't get busted up, the jobs sucked out the back door and the U.S.Customs forced to lower import duty taxes, by accident. It was a plan of deceit from the beginning. Look at their actions regarding the post office. The post office is one of the best managed branches of government there is. They are the only branch with a surplus in the millions. Yet, big business petitions Congress to not let the post office access their own surplus in order to make payments due on their retirement accounts, putting the post office in jeopardy of defaulting. And the plan? Drum up endless media attention directed at the American public so that an easy private takeover could be arranged behind closed doors and the lowest bidding competitor in the shipping industry would quietly phased out. Not an accident, but a plan from start to finish.
You blame the businesses, and your arguments make sense to a degree. I'm sure the corporations are not 100% innocent in all this. Still, even if your arguments were 100% correct and the evil corporations arranged all of it as you state, it could not have happened if it wasn't for bad policy arranged by bad politicians effectively being bribed via campaign donations by wealthy donors including corporations. That said, I think we both can agree that our country is controlled by the money, no longer by the people and has been for a good number of years. I also think we can both agree that campaign finance reform is the first step to getting good policy by replacing the system of bribes and corruption with government as it was intended: By the people for the people.
As a result, our US based companies had a choice, continue to produce here in the US at a higher, uncompetitive cost level, and likely go out of business, or move production (and jobs) to a lower cost foreign country to leverage those cost advantages in order to stay competitive against the new foreign threats. That’s what has largely taken place over the last 20 or 30 years. The result has been lower levels of employment and lower wages for US workers. If in fact it was true free trade, the imbalance would have corrected itself over time as the foreign countries got richer, their currencies would have increased in value, thus negating their low cost advantage over time…that has not happened in many cases as these foreign countries basking in the riches of bad policy on this side of the ocean, decided to artificially keep their currencies at a lower value, thereby ringing up huge trade surpluses because they know our policy makers have no backbone…the best illustration of this is China.
What China has also done, is exercise tremendous control over US company operations in their country so as not to allow too much competition for their domestic industries. They also impose large tariffs on many US and other countries goods, again to protect their domestic producers…something the US should be doing. For instance the tariff on large motorcycles is 30%. Most video, digital video, and audio recorders and players still face duties of approximately 30%...There’s a long list. As a result, the US products are more expensive than China’s domestically produced substitutes, and so US companies again get the short end of the stick…To make matters worse, China has notoriously weak copyright and intellectual property protections…as a result, they often reverse engineer the superior US products then begin producing them domestically, again at a lower price. There’s a laundry list of unfair trade practices and unfortunately the middle class in this country pays the price for it.
Other policy failures include, raiding the Social Security Trust Fund…had the fund actually existed, and had the surpluses accumulated and been reinvested over those many years, there’s a good chance SS would be solvent long after the boomers retired and the population shifted back to more paying in than collecting…again, bad policy, allowing the fund to be raided, has created yet another problem. How about that energy policy? You know the one initiated in the 1970’s that developed the department of energy in an effort to get us off foreign oil and bring us energy independence. How has that faired? Not well. The department of energy costs billions a year to run now…yet we’re importing a far higher level of our energy than we were in the 1970’s. Years of bad policy again has put us at the mercy of countries that despise us. Again there’s a laundry list of bad policy decisions that have done tremendous damage to our country and our people. What needs to change is quality of policy making…which means the quality of the politician. If you’re going to protest anything, you should be protesting years of bad policy and demanding our politicians start working for us again. I think the ground work for that would be campaign finance reform.
No more default winners because they have the deepest pockets. All candidates should share in a national pool of campaign funds. Everyone gets the same amount and when the money is gone, it’s gone. No more taking bribes, er, I mean, political donations…ah screw it, call it like what it is. They’re friggen bribes. Donating/bribing politicians should be banned…then no more favors have to be repaid and the representative can finally start representing the people, not the money that funded them. Candidates will then start spending money to get their message out, not smear their opponents with half truths and in some cases, flatly wrong information. No more allowing the media outlets to pick and choose which candidates they invite to a televised event. If you’re running and you want to be a part of the debate, then you will be allowed to participate. What might actually happen then? We might start getting the best qualified candidate. Imagine that? Someone who actually has the skills and know how to do the job. Wouldn’t that be something. Campaign finance reform. Start there. Better policy will follow and a better America will be in our future.
I love your essay and agree with almost everything except for 2 issues: First of all, there will always be a cheaper labor force somewhere to skew the sick free trade/free market theory, and they are only theories. We keep most of the world in starvation conditions to assure that we will always have a slave labor force to draw from worldwide. The funny thing is that we control the weather through HAARP so there is no longer need for drought or starvation, except by design. But in the end, they always try to shove the product through the shipping docks of the USA for their real profit. If they would go off, produce somewhere else and then stay there to sell it, I would say Bon Voyage and don't come back. But the USA consumer market is the premium desire of every corporation in the world and that needs to be legislated differently with all the measures you have mentioned, bringing imports tariffed to a USA equivalent. Most importantly, there has to be a USA equivalent. And that starts by us demanding that daily through our emails to every single retailer we can think of while also voting at the cash register for only USA made products as often as we can in any way that we can. The trick is in not buying new imports and forcing an automatic inventory reorder for more of the same. So I say, get ready to buy resale or refurbished for products that you absolutely need and can not presently find a USA equivalent. It shouldn't take them too long to figure out what is up when they are being avalanched with email demands explaining the decision to buy only USA or boycott. Secondly,campaign finance reform is better than nothing. And we have nothing.I'm opting instead for a virtual continental Congress where we vote on everything and every dollar.Congress will be reduced to being our secretaries and page runners. I'm speaking about complex,verbose legalized-to-be-confusing, laws boiled down to a simple 1 page summation with net affects, costs and method of payments listed as well. We'll forum each law for 1 month then vote and click. And we will take complete control over the budget, defense, military budget, CIA etc. They can frame it but we are the ones that finalize it or instruct to improve.So the war profiteering comes to a halt and so does the corporate/government communism we have today with the corporate welfare given to companies that whine like shit for free handouts. Please copy your essay and post it elsewhere on the site so it gets more exposure. You can take my comments with too, once you edit them.