Tapsearch Com EditorFree Trade trashes human dignity
July 7th 2008 21:09
By Ray Tapajna based on reports in 1992 with much of the same happening today if not worst. Main source is Catholic Workers report from 1992
Globalization and Free Trade trashes human dignity in the workday.
In a world where "bigger is better" the human person simply becomes another resource, an oject to be used in whatever manner is most cost-effective. The result is a situation of economical apartheid as many people of good will live in a cruel unknowing bubble.
Let's first go back to 1992 before the NAFTA and GATT trade agreements were passed. This shows that not much has changed for the better. In fact for most , things are getting worst. Even the rich are suffering a vast loss in their real estate holdings. The money changers are finding it even difficult to make money on money.
Our political leaders act as if Free Trade is still something new. ( On our other posts at Bizarre Politics we trace Free Trade back to 1953 as being driven by the U.S. Federal Government itself. )- By 1992, the auto industry had already layed off more than 400,000 auto workers and workers in related fields. General Motors axed 30,000 jobs at the same time GM was experiencing record profits. The lay-offs left the local communities economically devastated. It has yet to recover.
Where did the jobs go. The auto plants were moved to Cuidad Juarez, Mexico where workers were paid only $8 a day. The plant managers lived across the border in the comfortable suburbs of El Paso, TX where the cost of living is roughly the same as in Cuidad Juarez, while the Mexican workers live in desparate poverty. Today President Bush says the Mexican workers come to the USA to take jobs, Americans will not take. He fails to mention the fact that more than 4,000 U.S. factories were moved to Mexico and apparently there are jobs in Mexico, that Mexican workers will not take. They refuse to work for $8 a day and rather come to the USA where they can get more than $40 a day and even more.
Capitalism is supposed to make it easier to be good but in the reign of Free Trade, our prison population keeps breaking records. The Free Enterprise system is supposed to only use money as a medium of exchange and where human beings are not used as commodities. The TV sound-bites hide the realities of Free Trade. The financial pages in the newspapers discard the problems of workers as something mundane. The honest good face of TV commentators say very little about the human cost involved in Free Trade as they report the power of making money on money. Oil is now considered the new gold standard but we can argue the cost of labor is a standard of value too in controlling paper values in currencies and stocks.
It is not difficult to identify the winners in the Globalization drive. They are the large transnationale corporations mostly based in the USAA, who are guaranteed the devaluation of the labor force in the U.S. and Canada where new working poor classes have been established, and in Mexico, more and more workers will be forced to work for less in the Maquiladora factories.
The above comes from data in 1992 - but you would never know if I did not tell you.
Those of us who are trying to restore the Free Enterprise system find it an almost impossilble task in our times. The Free Enterprise system is not a complex one. It is based on growing or making something and adding a margin over costs for an owner to enjoy a decent living while at the same time providing the similar living wages to those they use in their businesses. There also should be enough profit to help others in their local societies who are not making a living wage. Local value added enterprises must be harnessed to the needs of all of the community for the sake of stability. If we do not follow this path, Capitalism will be rejected as a relic of the past just like Marxism was.
There is no universal solution. When any human activity is centralized for the sake of the whole, we need to know all the bad that was decentralized now is centralized too. During the mid 1990s, foundations like The Feinstein Foundation sent out petitions to pass onto President Clinton and the Congress. The Foundation found that 35 million people in the U.S. were going hungry and unsure of when they will eat their next meal. The homeless are now forgotten and nt even considered as a form of our culture. President Clinton and Congress ignored this petition. They still do the same today. The cruel unknowing world continues with the economic diseases affecting more and more. Labor and work remain the stepchidren of philosophy and religion.
Globalization and Free Trade trashes human dignity in the workday.
In a world where "bigger is better" the human person simply becomes another resource, an oject to be used in whatever manner is most cost-effective. The result is a situation of economical apartheid as many people of good will live in a cruel unknowing bubble.
Let's first go back to 1992 before the NAFTA and GATT trade agreements were passed. This shows that not much has changed for the better. In fact for most , things are getting worst. Even the rich are suffering a vast loss in their real estate holdings. The money changers are finding it even difficult to make money on money.
Our political leaders act as if Free Trade is still something new. ( On our other posts at Bizarre Politics we trace Free Trade back to 1953 as being driven by the U.S. Federal Government itself. )- By 1992, the auto industry had already layed off more than 400,000 auto workers and workers in related fields. General Motors axed 30,000 jobs at the same time GM was experiencing record profits. The lay-offs left the local communities economically devastated. It has yet to recover.
Where did the jobs go. The auto plants were moved to Cuidad Juarez, Mexico where workers were paid only $8 a day. The plant managers lived across the border in the comfortable suburbs of El Paso, TX where the cost of living is roughly the same as in Cuidad Juarez, while the Mexican workers live in desparate poverty. Today President Bush says the Mexican workers come to the USA to take jobs, Americans will not take. He fails to mention the fact that more than 4,000 U.S. factories were moved to Mexico and apparently there are jobs in Mexico, that Mexican workers will not take. They refuse to work for $8 a day and rather come to the USA where they can get more than $40 a day and even more.
Capitalism is supposed to make it easier to be good but in the reign of Free Trade, our prison population keeps breaking records. The Free Enterprise system is supposed to only use money as a medium of exchange and where human beings are not used as commodities. The TV sound-bites hide the realities of Free Trade. The financial pages in the newspapers discard the problems of workers as something mundane. The honest good face of TV commentators say very little about the human cost involved in Free Trade as they report the power of making money on money. Oil is now considered the new gold standard but we can argue the cost of labor is a standard of value too in controlling paper values in currencies and stocks.
It is not difficult to identify the winners in the Globalization drive. They are the large transnationale corporations mostly based in the USAA, who are guaranteed the devaluation of the labor force in the U.S. and Canada where new working poor classes have been established, and in Mexico, more and more workers will be forced to work for less in the Maquiladora factories.
The above comes from data in 1992 - but you would never know if I did not tell you.
Those of us who are trying to restore the Free Enterprise system find it an almost impossilble task in our times. The Free Enterprise system is not a complex one. It is based on growing or making something and adding a margin over costs for an owner to enjoy a decent living while at the same time providing the similar living wages to those they use in their businesses. There also should be enough profit to help others in their local societies who are not making a living wage. Local value added enterprises must be harnessed to the needs of all of the community for the sake of stability. If we do not follow this path, Capitalism will be rejected as a relic of the past just like Marxism was.
There is no universal solution. When any human activity is centralized for the sake of the whole, we need to know all the bad that was decentralized now is centralized too. During the mid 1990s, foundations like The Feinstein Foundation sent out petitions to pass onto President Clinton and the Congress. The Foundation found that 35 million people in the U.S. were going hungry and unsure of when they will eat their next meal. The homeless are now forgotten and nt even considered as a form of our culture. President Clinton and Congress ignored this petition. They still do the same today. The cruel unknowing world continues with the economic diseases affecting more and more. Labor and work remain the stepchidren of philosophy and religion.
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