We bought my soon to be 2 year old grand daughter a tricycle off Amazon. It arrived today and old Papa here took it to the workbench to assemble. It's about the same Radio Flyer that I got for my daughter back in the early 1980s.
Except...Radio Flyer is now made in China. Why? And what does this have to do with OWS, the 99%, capitalism, outsourcing and our lack of a political system that refuses to look out for the electorate?
I'm sure you can tie it all in without jumping below the squiggle for my take, but it is the weekend, so my post won't distract too much from the more important weekday posts from the big people in the movements.
The tricycle I assembled in 1980 or so had ball bearings in the hubs and stem. The hard rubber tires weren't slightly out of round and the seat was upholstered, not just a hard metal tractor seat. I think it cost about fifty dollars. The trike I built today was lacking ball brearings, a good seat and round wheels. It still says Radio Flyer on it, but the differences are obvious. And oh yes, it was about fifty dollars- thirty two years later.
What would it have cost if it had been made here? I don't know right off, but it would have been more than fifty bucks. And it would have been much better built, I'll bet you that. Sure we get it cheaper from over there, but the old adage applies, you get what you pay for!
When American industries can't compete on a manufacturing basis with those overseas, something is inherently wrong. When our bread winner stateside making $20 an hour to make a trike or refrigerator is forced to go head to head with a country paying 1875 wages, no bennies and no environmental restrictions- it's just wrong.
This is one of the points that none of our leaders address and won't, since they opened the gate to "globalization" in the first place. We hemorrhaged good paying jobs and factories for twenty years, every week, more plant closings, more layoffs with a promise of "retraining" to disenfranchised workers. It didn't matter in the upshot. If the new job paid decent, it too got outsourced. This is one of the points now being made by the young people, specifically- what now is there for us to do? Where do we go to find work. And not just any work, but noble work, where my wife can stay home with the kids and my paycheck covers everything comfortably.
Free trade never meant fair trade. Clinton was pedaling hard to stay ahead of the pack, signing NAFTA, CAFTA, you name it. Eventually, we conveyed Most Favored Trading status to mainland China. Now, exactly what was the point in that? And why wasn't key worker fairness provisions ever enforced in these agreements? Why are we beholden to the WTO that sees nothing wrong in limiting but six thousand US made cars to Korea, yet would hammer us if we only allowed six thousand Hyundais into America?
Why were these agreements set up to depress US wages, rather than lift wages in the developing world? Because of greed, the quick buck at any price, we're now getting a preview of the gathering maelstrom.
Our President talks of good paying infrastructure jobs, renewable energy, etc to get us back on "path". Even if the Republicans took total leave of their collective non senses and voted for jobs bills, they're still just quick fixes. Once the bridge is fixed and everyone has a solar panel, then what? We're right back to today's dilemma again.
We still don't clothe ourselves, make our own toys or machine tools or a host of other consumer items. We'd still be utterly dependent on US sources in foreign countries to supply our needs, while more of us, our kids and theirs fight for the right to serve a hamburger or work in a call center.
What OWS is rightly pointing out is that this cannot continue. Our country is no longer contributing durable goods, other than items made for war. It's a plight not of our making, but one of Wall Street's making with the tacit agreement and help of our elected leaders.
More brilliant minds than mine will have to conjure up solutions to these pervasive problems. I'm not an "isolationist". I like my very old German motorcycle. My Swedish car is in it's third decade and I'm a sucker for Belgian chocolates. But the people that made or make these things are well paid and provide a quality item. In return, they bought US made Levis, TVs, batteries, you name it, we made it. Now...it's different. Every large facility it seems across our land is shuttered, up for lease with no takers- at any price. Little restaurants are filled with men nursing cups of coffee, figuring out which heirloom to sell next to survive.
The world isn't buying much non war stuff from us except grain and farm products. We're losing a lot of topsoil to do those exports, so it's not as good as it might seem.
The only way we'll return to sanity hinges on the success of movements such as OWS, of people reoccupying vacant homes, civil disobedience to our ineffectual leaders and success in dismantling large financial institutions and their off shoring minions, WTO be damned. The intricacies of such plots elude me so I'm just pointing out the obvious. But with the imminent coming collapse of the Euro, the recession we've seen since '07 will be minor league by comparison. We'll be forced to once again do what we should have been doing all along, before greed got in the way.
I just wish for all of us we could get started before the tide comes in.