http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-vietnam-tpp-economy-20151008-story.html
Workers account for about one-third of costs in labor-intensive sectors, which is the case for Vietnam and others countries in that region. In fact the monthly wage of a Vietnam worker is in the vicinity of $90 to $M150. In China it is roughly $150 to perhaps $200 a month. But now China’s economic expansion is now focused on investment in new productive capital machinery with capita investment spurred by China’s state-controlled banks. This is now what Vietnam and others developing countries in the Asian region want to achieve, and build substantial tech investment with majority OWNED foreigners.
Vietnam is part of the 12-nation Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), which effectively will result in further concentrating ownership of future productive capital asset investment among a tiny minority of present-day wealthy capital owners. Referencing 19 serious pre-NAFTA economic studies projecting zero net job loss if NAFTA were to pass, President Bill Clinton estimated the creation of 200,000 U.S. jobs within two years, and 1 million within five years, based on a projected export boom to Mexico. Twenty years after Clinton signed NAFTA into law, Global Trade Watch reports a 450 percent increase in the U.S. trade deficit, resulting in the export of almost one million jobs, and downward pressure on wages.
Our previous trade agreements, of which the TPP is just another one, have been disastrous for working families, as these agreements have lifted the tariffs on imports and other stipulations to protect American industries. They’ve been written in secret by corporate America. As a result of the previous trade agreements, since 2001 60,000 factories have been closed in the U.S. and production relocated to low-wage countries, where also due to a lack of humane and environmental regulation, production costs are significantly lower. Thus the loss of millions of decent-paying jobs. And the loss of tax revenue otherwise due from American corporate investments and workers who now no longer have jobs.
Three is no way that the American worker at a minimum monthly wage of $1,500 to $2,400 per month (at $9.00 and $15.00 per hour, respectively) can compete against people all over the world who are making pennies an hour.
To compete, America must engage in an all-out initiative to extend insured, interest-free capital credit to ALL Americans to acquire viable private, individual ownership portfolios in corporations to expand American-made productive capital capabilities. Such investments can be accomplished using commercial banking insurance and Federal Reserve reinsurance, with the loans paid back out of the future earnings of the investments. Building personal ownership participation in the formation of future corporate capital assets is the ONLY way to shift from a wage-dependent work force to a capital ownership class where EVERY child, woman, and man is productive through the individual participation in the ownership of America’s future technological prowess.
We desperately need to rebuild America’s industrial foundation simultaneously with the creation of new capital owners and decent-paying jobs. We need to produce everything that we possibly can in America for Americans.
To reinvigorate “Make It In America” and “Made In America,” the federal 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, Vietnam, Mexico, India, and other parts of Asia, supported by American consumers who cannot afford pricier American-made products.
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 in more efficient technological invention and innovation. At present, the various incentives in place do not broaden capital ownership but instead further concentrate ownership.
