Three from the NY Times: First up, proof the
Robber Barons are alive and well!
Some Assembly Needed: China as Asia Factory
By DAVID BARBOZA
SHENZHEN, China -- Hundreds of workers at a sprawling Japanese-owned Hitachi factory here are fashioning plates of glass and aluminum into shiny computer disks, wrapping them in foil. The products are destined for the United States, where they will arrive like billions of other items, labeled "made in China."
But often these days, "made in China" is mostly made elsewhere -- by multinational companies in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the United States that are using China as the final assembly station in their vast global production networks.[snip]
`Made in China' is indeed a misleading label, a label intended to protect the guilty.
It may look as if China is getting the big payoff from trade. But over all, some of the biggest winners are consumers in the United States and other advanced economies who have benefited greatly as a result of the shift in the final production of toys, clothing, electronics and other goods from elsewhere in Asia to a cheaper China.
American multinational corporations and other foreign companies, including retailers, are the largely invisible hands behind the factories pumping out these inexpensive goods. And they are reaping the bulk of profits from the trade.
It's also misleading to say US consumers are the big winners here. The consumer may win lower prices but it's costing an entire segment of our society their jobs! Jobs shipped overseas to bolster the bottom line of US multinational corporations.
Yasheng Huang, an associate professor at the Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, explained: "Basically, in the 1990's, foreign firms based in America, Europe, Japan and the rest of Asia moved their manufacturing operations to China.
But the controls and therefore profits of these operations firmly rest with foreign firms. While China gets the wage benefits of globalization, it does not get to keep the profits of globalization."
The real losers, it seems, are mostly low-wage workers elsewhere, like the ones at Hitachi who lost their jobs in Japan, along with workers in other parts of Asia who suffered as employers began relocating plants to China. Blue-collar workers in the United States have also lost out.
Asian exports to the United States have actually slipped over the last 15 years. Factories in Taiwan used to assemble many of the world's computers; now China does.
Hong Kong garment workers used to stitch tons of fabric into finished clothing; now Chinese workers do. And Japanese plants once manufactured the most popular consumer electronics brands, like Sony, Panasonic and Toshiba; now many of these are shipped from Chinese ports.
In fact, about 60 percent of this country's exports are controlled by foreign companies, according to Chinese customs data. In categories like computer parts and consumer electronics, foreign companies command an even greater share of control over the exports, analysts say. [snip]
"Everyone has moved to China," says Tony Yang, an executive at Aopen of Taiwan, a maker of computers and parts. "Our suppliers, our buyers, their main production facilities have all been relocated. Wages in Taiwan are just too high."
Geez, why does that sound familiar? Just how large of an economic desert is globalization creating as workers around the world find themselves `priced out of the market?' Just where will you go to find a job that pays a living wage keeping in mind it will have to be someplace where they can afford to pay you for your services...and people without jobs have no money.
Same thing applies to businesses that have no customers.
The article notes that G.M. is joining the circle of Chinese profiteers yet today the NY times reports this:
Benefits Go the Way of Pensions
By EDUARDO PORTER and MARY WILLIAMS WALSH
For years, the benefit packages of General Motors were considered to be so good that the company was known among workers and retirees as Generous Motors.
But now even G.M., struggling to maintain its grip in the global auto industry, is being forced to bow to a changing competitive landscape and join the ranks of hundreds of other companies that are moving to unburden themselves of as much of the cost of supporting their retired work force as they can.
Some of you have your ducks in a row while others, like my humble self, are planning on working `til we drop. There is no way in the time that's left to put enough aside from my meager earnings to even consider retirement.
Given the `pace' at which the corporate world is divesting itself of it's obligations to its workers the word retirement will vanish from out vocabulary. Save when it becomes fashionable to force retirement upon you when you're 30 or 40 because you can no longer `keep up' with the younger employees.
Don't laugh, it's already common in China to be let go for exactly this reason...at age 30.
But, in fact, the change has been long in coming. While there are exceptions in industries less subject to intense competition, G.M. is like many other once impregnable American corporate titans in arguing that reducing the burden of caring for retirees has become essential to compete against foreign companies with lower benefit costs and domestic rivals with younger work forces and less generous benefit packages.
Understand that this is like swimming in quicksand, struggling to keep up only makes you sink that much quicker!
The practice of cutting costs to trim prices is absolute bullshit! It doesn't matter how cheap a product is, if you have no money you can't afford it.
We have seen the real `bottom line' here. Not only record corporate profits but record CEO compensation.
Makes you want to scream `RAPE'...it's too bad there's no one around to put a stop to it here in our absolutely insane cash driven society, a society that puts money before people.
With retirees living longer and accounting rules forcing companies to more honestly reflect their full costs on their books, the corporate-sponsored social contract is no longer sustainable. Something else, experts say, needs to replace it.
Something else? The current plan seems to be `cut and run'. How will our soon to be bankrupt nation care for its elderly...line them up in front of a ditch?
There may be no welfare left for the working class but our government is still jumping through hoops for the lords of commerce at the taxpayer's expense:
Rich Guys Over Here
This just in for the snaking lines of air passengers waiting in their socks to pass through airport security: homeland security officials have proudly approved the diversion of 16 screeners from Kennedy International Airport to a private heliport entrepreneur so Wall Street executives can purchase speedy velvet-rope clearance and chopper right to their planes for $150 or so.[snip]
In July, the Port Authority, which runs the New York area airports, protested the federal decision to cut the number of local security screeners by more than 240 slots -- a 6.5 percent drop despite a growing market of waiting travelers.
Now that same Port Authority has blessed the heliport screenings, including shifting security equipment at no charge from Kennedy to the heliport. "Well, why not?" asks Charles Gargano, the authority's vice chairman, who says the service will be "selective" and help business.
Selective indeed. Fewer than 500 passengers a day may use the heliport flights, even as 50,000 other fliers face the chow-line alternative at Kennedy. Government officials say two other New York heliports may be similarly "federalized" -- a peculiar term for a direct subsidy for private business.
I'm not pounding my fist on the table. I'm not screaming with my hair on fire. I'm merely pointing to the writing on the wall good citizen.
These three pieces are your government, a bought and paid for subsidiary of Corporate USA, in action.
I personally think it's foolhardy to nurture the notion that any of this can be corrected at the corporate owned ballot box, but that's just my opinion.
The social Darwinism many of us fear is on its way. How long the bandits will maintain the charade of prosperity is anyone's guess.
Difficult choices lie ahead. The most difficult of all will be the decision of whether to continue to go along to get along or whether to make a stand.
Those who do not stand will be enslaved, spent and cast aside by their uncaring corporate masters.
Thanks for letting me inside your head,
Gegner