There is a controversy (at least to some) brewing on the “buy American” provisions of Obama’s economic stimulus plan.
The “buy American” provisions would require major public works projects to favor U.S. steel, iron and manufacturing over imports.
This is essential to force consumers of infrastructure projects to buy American — it is an American stimulus bill. America does not have enough money to stimulate the entire world. For decades, U.S. corporations have been exporting jobs and importing products from around the world. This has resulted in unemployment, followed by more unemployment.
Multi-national companies, like IBM and hundreds of others, are not American companies. IBM has almost 70% of all its employees outside the U.S. and routinely lays off U.S. workers and hires abroad. It is false to call IBM an American company, just because its headquarter is in the U.S. Likewise, for Exxon, General Electric, etc. Halliburton actually relocated its headquarter to Dubai and receives $BILLIONS every year from U.S. taxpayers — moving their headquarters is a rare example of Halliburton being honest.
Without the “buy American” provision then the stimulus bill will be stimulating businesses in other countries and motivating multi-nationals to lay off in the U.S. and hire abroad. Watch the Republicans scream and yell that it is “protectionism”. Yes, it is. So what! It is about time that the U.S. started protecting its own citizens. Hopefully, Obama and the rest of the Democrats will not cave and remove the language. Let the rest of world protect their citizens. Dump NAFTA and the hundreds of other trade deals that are not in the best interest of ORDINARY Americans.
Remember — do not be misled into thinking protectionism brought on the Great Depression. The U.S. is already in a Depression and has been the biggest advocate of free trade in the history of the world. It has not helped and if the U.S. continues to be a “free trader” things will get much worse in the U.S. Let’s redefine corporations based on how many employees they employ in the U.S. If we require that 2/3rds of the employees be in the U.S., there will be very few, if any, large American corporations. Think about it — and try to name one!
America is doomed.
As the Postal Service campaigns to cut one day of mail service per week, why not consider cutting five days of mail service per week. Really, how many people would suffer if they only got their mail once a week. Already, virtually the only mail I get is junk even with my best efforts to stop it. On a rotating basis people could get mail once a week. That is got to save the Postal Service a little money. It would also encourage businesses to stop sending snail mail. A few more million people would be out of work but those are not good jobs anyway. Alternatively, the displaced postal workers could be redeployed into other areas, e.g. staffing all those unemployment offices.
America is doomed.
How could the Republicans make themselves more irrelevant? Perhaps, they could continue to fight the newly elected, and widely popular, President Obama and try and prevent the stimulus bill from passing? Maybe Republicans could campaign for more and bigger tax cuts which have not worked in four decades and have only put the country into more and more debt. Perhaps, Republicans could continue to defend highly paid executives who mismanage companies while using taxpayer money to pay extravagant bonuses. Maybe Republicans could go on the media and complain about minor contraceptive programs in the stimulus bill — they don’t understand that preventing unwanted children from being born might be fiscally easier on the economy and struggling families.
As Obama continues to try and be bipartisan the Republicans will have none of this and keep preaching their tired old nonsense of the last four decades. In a clever though not subtle move, Obama is likely to appoint Republican Senator Judd Gregg to Commerce Secretary so that a Democrat could be named to replace him and give Democrats the veto-proof 60 in the Senate. Expect the Republicans to go a little crazy next week trying to get Gregg to decline the position. Even after only 10 days in office, it is becoming clear to Obama (a very smart guy) and most of the rational part of the country, that Republicans don’t much care about the 11 million unemployed. Instead, Republicans only care about being able to claim that Obama failed for the next elections.
This observation results is the most basic realization. Even if Obama “fails” to revive the economy, he is going to spend a boat load of money to stimulate it. America will understand that Obama has done everything he can and, even if the economy continues to struggle, America will conclude that the country would be even worse off without Obama’s initiatives. Further, there will likely be more unemployed and the unemployed will be much more vocal in two and four years. Translation — Republicans will lose more seats in Congress in two years, counter to decades of statistics regarding mid-term elections. Further, Obama will easily be reelected in four years. Somewhere along this journey, the Republicans will finally understand they are irrelevant and have to be more populist and even socialist.
On the lighter side, what do you call a large group of white people? — Republicans.
For the time being it will be politics as usual but as the economy continues to falter, even with the best intention of the Democrats, more and more Democrats will be created and fewer and fewer Republicans. A 100 year study in the U.K concluded there are more suicides when conservatives are in power. This is hardly surprising because conservatives always want to promote the rich and screw everybody else. The unofficial motto of the Republican Party: “I’ve got mine, go fuck yourself.”
America is doomed.
First, it was Timothy Geithner, the newly confirmed Treasury Secretary, claiming that he made a careless mistake when he evaded $32,000 in taxes. Only when it looked like he would be nominated did he do the right thing and pay all the back taxes. Further, Geithner lied in his testimony to Congress when he claimed it was just a mistake. This man is a high powered economist and wants America to believe he cannot do his own income taxes. This is an outrageous lie.
Now, the HHS nominee, Tom Daschle, has a tax problem and only recently paid over $128,000 is back taxes and fees. Daschle, like Geithner, claims it was all just a terrible mistake. Again, this is the height of riduclousness that Daschle wants America to believe he just didn’t know better.
Both Geithner and Daschle are crooks, maybe, small letter c crooks, but crooks nonetheless. Why can’t America find people who can hold high level office that have not compromised themselves? Why does America have to settle for people who are liars or are incompetent? Excuse me, but I don’t believe either of these men claiming it was all an innocent mistake. Both tried to get away with something and only when it was apparent that it would impact their appointments did they come forward to correct the problem. This is not even close to ethical or high character and certainly does not meet any minimum standard for cabinet level jobs.
America is doomed.
It is a poor argument to claim that a business cannot pay people a living way because the market doesn’t support it. This is an important and critical point. All Americans are the market. If some business cannot pay their employees a living wage, then it is not a valid business. It doesn’t matter if the owner of that business makes a living wage or not. In fact, it is unethical and immoral for a owner of a business to make a living wage on the backs of exploitation of others. Thus, the “fake” business should either raise their prices so they can pay employees a living wage or cease to exist. If the market doesn’t support raised prices then there is, in fact, no market for the product. Once the business ceases to exist, the previous consumers of the business will have to find alternatives to the business or be willing to pay a higher price for the service. In which cases, a new business will emerge that can pay employees a living wage.
American capitalism loves to extol the greatest of the “free enterprise” system and I would agree there have been some success. However, when the system is not capable of creating enough LIVING WAGE jobs for its citizens then the system has failed. It has to be replaced with another system that can sustain the population. It matters little that even a majority does well with a failed system — it has to work for everybody.
America has lots of resources and lots of capability. There is plenty of food to feed the population. There is plenty of land where people can live. There is plenty of creative people who can create jobs to employ others. There is a great university system were people can be trained with new skills. However, even with all these good things about America, the current capitalism system doesn’t work any more. There are many reasons for this. Let’s just consider a few.
- The political system has rewarded some and dismissed an ever increasing number of people, e.g. 11 million people are without jobs, 20 million people are underemployed. Millions and millions of people who have full time jobs cannot support themselves. The middle class has been and continues to be decimated. American capitalism cannot function without a large middle class with considerable disposable income. Who will be buying the products or services that the businesses produce without disposable income? For many years, Americans have used the artificial wealth of “homes” and easy credit to spend. That is over, forever.
- Technology is causing massive job destruction and this trend will continue. It is generally a good thing to make society more efficient but the efficiency has a cost to humans which must be adjusted to and corrected. Think of any new business and it will generally involve using as much technology as possible because it is cheaper than human capital. Businesses created today will employ a small fraction of the people that same business employed a generation ago.
- The private system cannot provide basic services to the population. For example, nearly 50 million people have no health care and another 30 million people have very poor health care.
- The U.S. government is going broke trying to sustain the current failed system. This will result in a destruction of the U.S. dollar and a lose of purchasing power in terms of gold internationally. Ultimately, this will require nationalism where America has to figure out how to sustain its population at the expense of other countries. Other countries will do likewise.
Ultimately, a capitalism system like the one in America will implode. The only alternative to implosion is to kill all the excess people that cannot be supported. As the market gets more and more efficient there are fewer and fewer people needed and you have to eliminate another group. In the end, there will be few remaining.
Magical thinking, about god or some equivalent bull shit, will not solve the problem either. There is no god that is gong to come down and save America or any other country on earth. It is irrational to think otherwise — it may even be a mental illness. Pray as much as you want but without an income in America you will have to rely on the kindness of other people to survive. There is no god around to save you.
American capitalism is dead — it just hasn’t been buried yet. There are still too many people running around thinking that it can be revived — mostly people who have benefited from the current system. These people will not be successful and American capitalism will be replaced with a new system that can sustain the population. It is going to take a while.
America is doomed.
