http://www.examiner.com/article/globalization-the-american-economic-suicide-model-of-capitalism
Globalization: The American economic suicide model of Capitalism
November 15, 2009
William Pfaff is the originator of this idea that Global Capitalism, as practiced by America, is little more than national economic suicide. If only those in power making decisions had considered some of his idea's. The Corporate defense against the needed changes to save this nation are that we would be engaging in protectionism. To which someone might reply so what, why shouldn't we protect our economic base?
Paul Krugman had it right when he said the philosophy behind jobs creation can be summarized as, " If you grow it they will come." In short Obama has no jobs policy. Krugman noted, he has a GDP policy. The theory as stated is that by stimulating economic growth companies will create jobs.
If that is your arguement you would be absolutely right. What hasn't been admitted is that when we attempt to stimulate economic growth it doesn't necessarily mean that the investment in new plants and jobs will be in America. In a global model based on cheapest wages our investments actually stimulate job losses not jobs creation in America.
The companies have taken the money from bailouts or tax cuts and have used it to lay off Americans because they can find cheaper labor elsewhere. So our investment is in essence suicidal from an economic stand point because in the end it costs American jobs and a growing debt burden that will hasten the economic collapse of this nation.
This is what is causing economists to scratch their heads as economic signs in the economy improve but job losses keep on happening and the Middle Class continues to be destroyed. Our economists fail even yet, to grasp what the real effects of Globalization are as opposed to the theorhetical models on paper in some universities economics department.
William Pfaff points out that the original stated intent of Global Capitalism begun under Clinton, was that it would benefit some of the poorer nations of the world by drawing them into the Capitalist system. Again the naive assessment that all Capitalism is good or that there is only this model and that this is it and we must adapt without even questioning the basis for the assumptions made.
The irony if you can call it that in Global Capitalism is that as it is benefiting the poorer nations it is impoverishing the richer ones. That idea should have been obvious since we live on a finite planet with finite resources but we seemed to have been gullible enough to believe the fiction that everybody would make out well suspending common sense when we should have been asking how this was all going to work in reality.
Capitalism with its emphasis on the amoral goal of profitability as the only valid goal of business impoverishes the richer nations by economically destroying the Middle Class. While the Middle Class is the strength of Democracy, it is inefficient by business standards because of having control of wage demands. Loss of control of the value of their labor is the mechanism that enables Global Capitalism to increase profits by forcing competition to be about labor costs not labor skill or productivity.
In Globalization, just as in the Industrial Revolution, technology has enabled changes that disempower the work force vis a vis capital. Technology has been employed to destroy national boundaries and existing national and international regulations to control and mitigate some of the worst aspects of Capitalism.
This allows the Corporation to become an ungovernable law unto itself. Deregulation is also the means to return labor from a condition of being an investor, investing the time, effort and expertise while capital invested the money to produce a product, to being nothing but a cost of production a commodity or at best a resource of production. To the extent that government aids in this, a nation such as the U.S., is being economically self destructive.
This was accomplished with the lie that the benefits of Global Capitalism would trickle down to the work force. Also that losing the ability to manufacture didn't matter because with more education the work force would be ready for the high wage high tech jobs of the future.
The actual fact of Globalization is that it exploits a given work force until it drives wages down below a subsistence level so that it can't survive and then Capital moves to the next exploitable work force. There are no real benefits to any but the ultra rich and instead of an engine of growth, Global Capital is like a parasite living off of America while sucking the economic assets right out of us and into some wealthy corporation such as Goldman Sach's bank vaults.
The whole process of globalization is what I would call a suicidal economic ideology. We destroy our own economic base. Allow global capital to control our government with the fiction of privatized campaign finance so that our government initially aids and abets the destruction of our nation economically. Ultimately the wealth of America will be stripped and we will have neither a Middle Class nor a functional society. But we are supposed to be O.K with this fiction because it is all in everyone's best interests including ours as long as Globalization is being discussed in theory.
We have a very real choice at this time in America. We can continue to commit slow economic suicide by continuing to believe in this fiction of Globalization. Or we can take our country back. To do that we need to revoke every trade treaty ratified since Clinton was in office. Then we take what is left of the assets of this nation and begin to rebuild our manufacturing base because America is first and foremost a nation that invents and makes things and develops the technology to lead the world.
We can then negotiate trade treaties with nations that are based in our core values such as democratic governments, reduction of green house gases and protection of the air and water, protecting workers rights to a safe work place with fair wages, ending child labor, and nations that respect the democratic principles of peoples participation in deciding the laws that affect their lives. We can restore the priciple that we have a right to protect our own self interest and that our citizens should come first. Or we can relegate America to the historical scrap heap by destroying ourselves with Globalization.
