The process of Globalization reared its ugly head around the late 20th century when the world become more competitive and the market became increasingly more global. In certain sectors of our economy, companies can display profits that rival the national budgets of many small countries. This isn't possible simple because companies sell under strict copyright laws to a global market. This is possible mostly because manufacturing costs have been greatly reduced by localizing production on countries that are willing to maintain a low wages policy and which laws are intolerant of workers unions. As a corollary, I'm constantly reminded of one recent ministry of finance over here in Portugal that once had the gall to say that Portugal should be attractive to foreign investment due to its general low salary.
Remember Mitt Romney saying people are only poor if they want to be poor? Following that logic, the Chinese workers deserve to be mistreated. It's their own fault they're where they are. In fact, the employers should be commended for giving them slave wages!
By his logic it's also Americans fault they lost their factories. And, as a consequence, his own fault. Unfortunately we've had several millennia to build societies based on government principles that increasingly reduce population movements against their rulers. Democracy is the latest fad on a new logic of "better make them sleepy than crush them with our military. We need the tax money".
It's very hard to sympathize with anyone who feels we are entirely responsible for our condition (poor or rich, we have the ability to chose, he says). Especially when he's addressing millions of former workers who didn't own the factories from which they were fired from.
[
]I just thought of something interesting. Fender, the guitar company, still has factories in the US. The US and Mexico factories are, so I'm told, about a mile from each other near the border. They must be one of the few hold-outs!
Conversely, Apple used to brag it was a 100% American company.
I think American workers are better off making American flags. Apparently, The FMAA
has been successfully reverting a tendency of the country to import american flags from china since 2001. Now, there's a job with a future. Certainly beats being an Apple factory employee on today's USA. And Romney will never blame a poor underpaid American if he's making a national symbol.
