On June 30, 2013, Dave Johnson writes on NationOfChang.org:
Companies say they are being patriotic and responsible by bringing jobs and manufacturing back to the US. Is it true? And how come you can’t buy clothes that fit anymore?
Q) what policy to bring back? A) Give voters the real story behind where tax dollars go, we need Buy American policies for our tax dollars.
They need to know gross jobs created vs net jobs gains, also the govt should report income levels of new jobs vs old jobs.
When politicians talk about creating jobs, ask where they were when jobs were going overseas.
If a politician is opposed to free trade agreements that don’t promote free trade, how do you explain the actual long term benefits and costs, loss of jobs and consumer choices? It is not two-word reasonable-seeming soundbites, takes a long time to explain.
We have to hold foreign manufacturers accountable in this country the same way we hold US manufacturers accountable. This is opposed by Chamber of commerce.
Full employment is not an objective of businesses. Companies strive to keep labor input and other costs at a minimum. Private sector job creation in numbers that match the pool of people willing and able to work is constantly being eroded by physical productive capital’s ever increasing role.
NY Times article about an assembly plant in Lake Orion Township, MI, GM is building this car in the US. But really, GM brought in new hires at half the wage, is doing pre-assembly by non-union contractors. This is all about cutting the wages of the American people.
Then GM announces the Spark, which is built in interior of China so they are using slave wages. Now they also build it in Korea, only 10% of this car is made in the US.
Last month GM announced the new electric Spark, entry-level, made in Korea, using a China company battery, with a $199 a month lease.
This is the reality of business in the global setting where lowest cost production is necessary to be competitive. There are only two ways to protect American citizens from this spiraling disaster that will continue to undercut American workers, destroy jobs and devalue the worth of labor in the United States.
The first is to implement policies to create an OWNERSHIP SOCIETY, whereby EVERY American is extended the right to acquire productive capital with the self-financing earnings of productive capital––the physical wealth-creating assets of corporation, e.g., machines, super-automation, robotics, digital computerization operations, etc. Currently non-property-owning Americans are left to acquire, as best as they can, with their earnings as labor workers. This is fundamentally hard to do and limiting. Thus, the most important economic right Americans need and should demand is the effective right to acquire capital with the earnings of capital. Note, though, millions of Americans own diluted stock value through the “stock market exchanges,” purchased with their earnings as labor workers, their stock holdings are relatively miniscule, as are their dividend payments compared to the top 10 percent of capital owners.
What historically empowered America’s original capitalists was conventional savings-based finance and the pledging or mortgaging of assets, with access to further ownership of new productive capital available only to those who were already well capitalized. As has been the case, credit to purchase capital is made available by financial institutions ONLY to people who already own capital and other forms of equity, such as the equity in their home that can be pledged as loan security––those who meet the universal requirement for collateral. Lenders will only extend credit to people who already have assets. Thus, the rich are made ever richer, while the poor (people without a viable capital estate) remain poor and dependent on their labor to produce income. Thus, the system is restrictive and capital ownership is clinically denied to those who need the dividend earning it produces.
This will address the fact that productive capital is becoming more productive and increasingly responsible for the production of society’s products and services, not labor, whose relative input is constantly being diminished by the substitution of the non-human factor of production.
As binary economist Louis Kelso asserted: “The problem with conventional financing techniques is that they address only the productive power of enterprise and the enhancement of the earning power of the rich minority. Sustaining or increasing the earning power of the majority of consumers who are dependent entirely upon the earnings of their labor, or upon welfare, is left to government or governmentally assisted redistribution of income and to chance.”
Second, to reinvigorate “Make It In America” and “Made In America,” the government should create financial incentives and tax provisions to reward American companies that bring manufacturing back to the United States from abroad, promote manufacturing investment, and incentivize more investment by foreign companies, all with the condition that the employees will share in the ownership benefits generated by the new capital formation projects. The result will be more broadened employee ownership and in-sourcing of jobs created by the new capital formation projects, and make America self-reliant.
The government should impose robust import levies and tariffs (tax) on particular classes of imports that are determined to be manufactured outside the United States and exported back to the United States that do not qualify as “Fair Trade” and unfairly undercut an American-make equivalent. At present, American business corporations are increasingly abandoning the United States and its communities to invest in productive capital formation outside the United States, particularly in China, Mexico, India, and other parts of Asia. As a result, America is experiencing the deindustrialization of America. This has forced policy makers to adopt a redistributive socialist solution rather than a democratic capitalist one whereby democratic economic growth of the earning power of the citizens would flourish simultaneously with new, broadly-owned productive capital formation investments in the United States. Such overseas operations have the advantage of “sweat-shop” slave labor rates relative to American standards, low or no taxation, supportive infrastructure provisions, currency manipulation, and few if any environmental regulations––which translate to lower-cost production. Thus, producing the same product or service in the United States would be far more expensive. For most people, economic globalization means a growing gap between rich and poor, technological alienation of the labor worker from the means of production, and the phenomenon of global corporations and strategic alliances forcing labor workers in high-cost wage markets, such as the United States, to compete with labor-saving capital tools and lower-paid foreign workers. Unemployment is high and there is an accelerating displacement of labor workers by technology and cheaper foreign labor, resulting in greater economic uncertainty and unstable retirement incomes for the average American citizen––causing the average citizen to become increasingly dependent on government wealth redistribution programs.
We need a policy change, which assures truly “Fair Trade” and that exponentially reduces the exodus of our manufacturing prowess and invigorates America’s entrepreneurial exceptionalism and competitive spirit to create products and services in the spirit of “the best that they can be.” We need policies that will de-incentivize American multinational corporations and others from undercutting “American Made,” while simultaneously competitively lowering the cost of production through expanded capital worker ownership. At present, the various incentives in place do not broaden capital ownership but instead further concentrate ownership.
http://www.nationofchange.org/companies-creating-american-jobs-we-ve-seen-dance-1372600328#comments
