Re: DOLLAR COLLAPSE NOW IMMINENT

On Fri, 16 May 2008 09:01:18 -0700, BobR wrote:

>> > So now lets change the view for a moment and YOU have a business and
>> > you are the employer.  Should YOU be forced to hire without the
>> > ability to determine who and without having a choice of how much to
>> > pay?  Is every employer a Robber-Baron
>>
>> Examples include: all the companies that did mass layoffs to offshore
>> their jobs, all the companies that did employee "replacement" projects
>> (local guy trains cheap immigrants), all of the companies that did
>> arbitrary wage reductions (this happened in the 1870s in the USA and
>> caused mass strikes...its in the history books). And, all the
>> companies that do bad things to employees not because they are having
>> difficulties but to increase an already adequate net profit bottom
>> line (one WSJ article listed many companies that had good profit
>> re****ts but the executives were only interested in more and so
>> initiated draconian further pressures on employees).
>>
> 
> Hey, I was working at one of those cor****ations that did mass layoffs
> and outsourced a substantial amount of work.  I didn't like it one bit
> and still don't, but I can also understand the business decisions that
> made it almost impossible for the company to do anything else.  They
> are in competition on a global basis and in order to survive, they
> must remain competitive on a global basis.  I am not so naive as to
> believe that my job, no matter how good I might be at it, can't be
> done by someone else far cheaper.  It might take two or three Indians
> to do it but when they earn less than 10% of what I earned, it still
> remains a huge bargain for the cor****ation.

The mentality is perverse.  Over the last 100 years the economics
"profession" has been a stalking horse for the rich to a greater extent
than ever before.  The installment of "the firm" and the "entrepreneur"
as the horn of plenty from which all good flows has been a mask to hide
the despots that control money and natural resource rights.

If "the firm" serves only the owners of the means of production with no
regard for the benefit of the greater society then what good is "the firm"
to that greater society? Much of the profits realized from shortchanging
the American society through outsourcing of jobs to foreign societies must
be captured and redistributed if the gains from "comparative advantage"
are to be realized by those other than the current owners.

It is a fine thing to say that the current owners deserve to profit from
their self serving intelligent actions.  But the current "share" of the
gains from such actions to those who are disenfranchising the most of us
in their lust for more power and wealth is simply too great.  And the
proper cure for this malady is, in fact, a greater degree of (Martha! Hide
the Kids) socialism.  In this we do not speak of state owner****p of the
means of production.  Nor do we speak of a "command economy" as opposed
to a market economy.  We refer instead to the state providing better
social insurance systems and perhaps more control of the elected
government over the Financial industry.  This is a chicken and egg sort of
change in that the current government is corrupt and so the defense will
say that only a crazy man would want to give the corrupt government more
control.  The "crazy man" would agree.  The fix starts at the action
described at my web site (follow the link in my signature).

We got where we are through the deliberate destruction of our democratic
institutions.

-- 
"I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers
of society but the people themselves; and
if we think them not enlightened enough to
exercise their control with a wholesome
discretion, the remedy is not to take it from
them, but to inform their discretion by
education." - Thomas Jefferson
http://GreaterVoice.org/extend