Help me understand all of this…

Have any of the so-called economic experts thought any of this globalization is good for America stuff through? I don’t think so. As evidence of that, I keep seeing article after article by the supposedly learned men in Washington and on Wall Street pontificating about how the consumer must lead the country out of this recession and expressing disappointment that consumers seem to be holding back. How can these ”experts” not realize that the laissez faire, global capitalism of the Clinton and Bush eras has almost completely destroyed the consumer base that they expect to lead the country out of the recession?

We have shipped most of the high-paying manufacturing jobs overseas under the rallying cry of the global economy. Instead of factory workers making $20-30/hour, we now have lots of retail workers and service industry workers make $10-15/hour. Who among them will lead us out of the recession? The people making the real money these days are in China or India or the Philippines and they’re working in the factories that make the goods that are sent to our retail stores. That’s what the global economists said should happen – move the labor-intensive jobs to the cheap labor countries. And, by the way, get the added benefit of not having to comply with U.S. standards for product or manufacturing safety.

That was all great for the management of those companies. But what of the 6 or 10 or 20 million U.S. factory workers who were displaced by all of this? Well according to the theories of the learned men who espoused this capitalistic transfer of labor-intensive jobs to the cheap countries, they were all going to get retrained and somehow get good paying jobs in the technology or health care or services industries. The fact that there was and still are no funded programs to retrain those workers escaped their notice (or they just don’t care). The fact that the services industries jobs pay about half (or less) than what these workers were making was of no concern, until, UNTIL, they started to realize that there are fewer and fewer consumers for their products. If there are several million people less who are directly involved with making cars or parts for cars, guess what? There are now several million fewer Americans who can’t afford to buy the cars! Well, DUH! The consumers who have rescued the economy in the past are now standing in the unemployment lines and losing their homes to foreclosure. Ship that to China!

Now I’m seeing articles in the papers and magazines about a reset economy, how there will be a new normal after this recession. Excuse me. Long time readers will note that I have been using those terms for over a year and have published several posts using the reset button graphic. Have the so-called experts finally caught on and caught up? I don’t think so. I’m also seeing slick ads on TV that show people who were displaced from good jobs starting up their own businesses – neighborhood shops and even small manufacturing companies. These ads tout this spirit of small business entrepreneurship as the savior of our country and our way of life. None of the ads look at the statistics about how small business start ups fair, especially in a depressed market. None of them talk about the difficultly businesses of any size currently have getting any kind of financing. None of them is realistic; just feel good pabulum being fed to a public that is hungering for any good news.

I would love to have one of these learned men or women, who defend the global economy and what is taking place because of how companies are reacting to it, go on TV and explain to the nation how the loss of our manufacturing base is good for the country and good for the people. Maybe if they take it real slow and use little words, instead of the mumbo jumbo often heard at Congressional hearings, maybe I’ll understand it then. I’m waiting. In the mean time, I’ll be at WalMart talking to an ex-factory worker who has one of those great retail industry jobs as a shelf-stocker about his plans to lead the economy out of this recession by buying a $200,000 house that I have listed. Oops! He just told me that used to be his house, before it was foreclosed.