02.16.11

Not Made in China: Economic Treason

Posted in Made in China, Permanent Fail at 12:49 pm by George Smith

UPDATED

Now dumbly obvious, from CNN Money:

One major pull on the working man was the decline of unions and other labor protections, said Bill Rodgers, a former chief economist for the Labor Department, now a professor at Rutgers University.

Because of deals struck through collective bargaining, union workers have traditionally earned 15% to 20% more than their non-union counterparts, Rodgers said.

But union membership has declined rapidly over the past 30 years. In 1983, union workers made up about 20% of the workforce. In 2010, they represented less than 12%.

“The erosion of collective bargaining is a key factor to explain why low-wage workers and middle income workers have seen their wages not stay up with inflation,” Rodgers said.

Without collective bargaining pushing up wages, especially for blue-collar work — average incomes have stagnated.

International competition is another factor. While globalization has lifted millions out of poverty in developing nations, it hasn’t exactly been a win for middle class workers in the U.S.

Factory workers have seen many of their jobs shipped to other countries where labor is cheaper, putting more downward pressure on American wages.

“As we became more connected to China, that poses the question of whether our wages are being set in Beijing,” Rodgers said.

Finding it harder to compete with cheaper manufacturing costs abroad, the U.S. has emerged as primarily a services-producing economy. That trend has created a cultural shift in the job skills American employers are looking for.

Replace “services-producing economy” with “services and virtual goods of little to zero social value” — like Wall Street financial instruments.

Closer to home, the “services producing economy” includes the likes of HBGary Federal, Palantir Technologies, and Berico, spying firms whose products are pitched to attack private citizens critical of big money America.

A DD reader posted in comment, a link to this post at a blog written by a another journalist targeted by the US Chamber of Commerce and the three corporate spying/security firms.

That post is here and it mentions a subject I discussed last week. The use of software and methods developed for the war on terrorism against private citizens.

That’s part of the “services economy” as the employees blithely discussed payment splits — 2 million dollars and/or 200,000/month — in this post here yesterday.

At the bottom of the CNN story is a quote from a Wall Street analyst, and a most disingenuous one, at that:

“I think it’s a terrible dilemma, because what we’re obviously heading toward is some kind of class warfare,” Johnson said.

Wrong bucko. There has been class warfare and it’s been the uppers that have mercilessly waged it against the middle.

And the dirty-tricking unethical behavior as a “service” to be sold to law firms, Bank of America and the Chamber of Commerce is just one small direct example of it.

Another even larger example is the Republican attack on what remains of unionized labor — state and federal middle class workers who need to be either downsized or have their benefits hacked.

This brings up another issue that’s nagged your host.

If Mark Zuckerberg’s marvelous Facebook was allegedly what catalyzed volcanic systemic change in Egypt, why doesn’t it work here where the populace has much greater access to social networking tools?

Rhetorical, obviously.

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Via Digby, quoting from ThinkProgress, coincidentally one of the organizations to be attacked through the machination services of HBGary Federal, Palantir and Berico:

ThinkProgress has been following both Gov. Scott Walker’s (R-WI) recent “budget repair bill,??? which would effectively eliminate state workers’ right to collectively bargain, and his coinciding threat to deploy the National Guard to stop a walkout. Yesterday, the Super Bowl champion Green Bay Packers criticized Walker, saying that collective bargaining is “fundamental??? to the middle class.

Approximately 13,000 peaceful protesters flooded the state Capitol yesterday, including nearly 800 Madison East High School students who left school to protest Walker’s bill. Democratic lawmakers listened to testimonies from citizens for more than 20 hours, stretching into the early morning. Many people who hadn’t yet gotten to speak pulled out sleeping bags.

Responding to his inappropriate threat to use the National Guard against resisting workers, Walker said last night on Greta Van Susteren’s On The Record that the National Guard has contingency plans for natural disasters, and a worker “walk-off is part of [the] contingency plan???:

Wednesday afternoon, momentary TV check, Fox News in high gear hysterically attacking the Wisconsin protesters, teachers, the IRS and assorted middle class federal workers.

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