Downward Spiral

I need to review another beer. But not tonite. I hear about globalization, and I hear about the economy. The economy is bad. So why does it seem like a good idea to move all of our good jobs offshore. Why do we shop at places like Wal*Mart, where we transform the self-respecting film store owner into Robin William One Hour Photo man? Wal*Mart sucks the life out of your town. In so many ways. It takes decent jobs and trivializes them, micromanages them, and undercompensates them. It takes the value your home has worked for, the grease, the foundation, and moves it somewhere else. This has been happening for quite some time, not just with retail stores, but with products, and of course we all own a radio from Japan (or a Playstation2!), but now the actual jobs are moving across the world, fully commoditized. And, of course international trade is natural, if not fundamental.

Your job as a commodity. It comes down to columns of numbers, and can be traded, removed, made redundant, bought or sold. The thing is, Americans aren’t the players on this market. We are too expensive. We need to pay American prices for food, water, land, and work and health standards. We have remarkable Laws which support and enable those with disabilities, or minorities.

This is a problem. If we stand for these values, we need to enforce them. We can’t stand tall and righteous, all the while making whoopee down the street. A large number of companies have decided that they need to save on labor. Bring the dollars back to the top, just like the good ‘ole days of robber barons, railroads, and Bush’s. This article discusses the issue of which I speak, that of the globalization of this portion of our economy.

I am all for companies saving money in their hires, but there need to be checks and balances. There need to be incentives for employers to continue employing the people who are members of our society, to enable and encourage the great fairness that we are working towards. Tariffs are a possibility. Significant tariffs on human resource exports should be implemented, and that money should go towards programs that encourage healthy work environments, train people for new careers, and educate those who need it.

One of the greatest problems with this outflow globalization, and one I alluded to at the beginning of this article, is that it is displacing the employees who are the customers. We remove the purchase power, we remove the need for the product (or at least the ability to acquire it through the white market) , what do we have left? Sure there are many links in there, but this is the direction we are sending ourselves.

Businesses can’t just stop sending jobs and our acquired value (which is becoming dearer and dearer) overseas. They couldn’t compete with the ones that don’t stop. One thing that I have observed is that there is very little consumer conscience in this land (human nature, or America the free). We need our leaders to step in and guide us through laws. This is a democracy, not a capitalism.