Watching Rick Santorum on television last night, I felt that I was watching a satellite transmission from Htrae. I was struck especially by Santorum’s explanation of why manufacturing jobs have gone overseas: “It’s because government made workers uncompetitive, by driving up the cost of doing business here.” And then: “When Republican purists say to me ‘Well, why are you treating manufacturing different than retail?’ I say ‘Because Wal-Mart’s not moving to China and taking their jobs with them.’” Wal-Mart: keeping jobs on Htrae!
Browsing around this morning for santorum and wal-mart, I found this page. Suddenly the Iowa caucuses seem to make sense:
[A reality check: in June 2011, Time reported that the average manufacturing wage in China is $3.10 an hour. In the United States: $22.30. According to Time, rising wages in China are driving manufacturing to Cambodia, Laos, India, Vietnam, and the United States.]
comments: 6
Yes, Wal-Mart's keeping their jobs here - those $10/hour jobs with unaffordable health insurance that everybody wants so badly. Meanwhile the company that used to drape itself in the red white & blue sources most of its products from cheap-labor countries overseas. Wal-Mart is indeed causing the loss of American jobs, and for Santorum or anyone else to pretend otherwise is blatant dishonesty.
I remember when “Made in U.S.A.” was a Wal-Mart mantra. No more. I can’t believe that a majority of American voters will fall for Santorum’s pitch, or for Romney’s “100,000 jobs.”
Given that the current administration has given grants to Finnish car companies, the rebuilding of mosques in the Middle East and more, I think the argument rather a sad one.
Cheap labor for lower end work has been the way in which a middle class was at one time built. The problem with "made in the USA" is that GM and BMW are both made here, one through the union shop mode and one in the states which are right-to-work. The argument of the union is much the same as the argument about cheap labor globally.
And yet, once one comes to conclude that there should be tariffs and forced unionization, the end game is that prices will rise significantly for all.
I don't shop at WalMart nor do I have a BMW, and certainly no Ipad. But I refuse to condemn those who do, for whatever reasons they choose. When the labor in China demands its better wages and becomes consumers, that economy might have a chance to succeed, as has the American economy. But it all comes about when people are free to choose whether as shoppers or shippers.
Once the door to freedom begins to close a little, it can close a lot and quickly.
I don't give a fig for Democrats or Republicans, for they all have indebted the nation illogically and to the benefit of the few over the many. Santorum or Obama, they all are feathering their nests first, and for this globalization will not be stopped as long as those on the top continue to dine well at the expense of the middle and poor classes. And they do dine well, don't they?
The majority of voters have fallen for multiple pitches, and the one thing that party politics cannot explain away is why debt has risen under every president, every Congress, every large state governor and every big city mayor for the last sixty years and more. The majority of voters have voted for this, and as such one might conclude de Toqueville was correct in his foresight. Sadly correct.
Party loyalists, Democrat and Republican, have their candidates around whom to rally. I have none, for I see them from this vantage point of mine as the old non-identical twins, Happy and PeeWee. It's all just a green pean soup.
Anon., you seem to be commenting on everything but the point of the post — the absurdity of holding up Wal-Mart as an example of a company that keeps jobs in the United States, when so many manufacturers have set up operations abroad so as to meet Wal-Mart’s price points.
Sorry for commenting on "everything."
Here's a nutshell: I happily complain with you about WalMart sending jobs overseas. Will you complain with me that the past two administrations in Wahsington do the same darn thing?
Anon., I think you should start a blog.
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