Bush’s recent visit to India started me thinking about the prospects for my own children and grandchildren in this new age of globalization that Bush touts for us.There are several things that point toward a diminishing return for people in the more advanced ( read higher cost) countries and a transfer of wealth to the lower cost countries.
The first such sign for me was the implosion of the auto supply industry with the major automakers following suit.GM and Ford are now gasping for breath and it is merely a matter of time before they either declare bankruptcy or are merged out of existence.The collapse of that industry is already setting off alarms in the Midwestern States.
I believe that the automotive industry is likely to follow the precedent of the steel industry which went through similar gut wrenching changes just a generation ago.Many previously prosperous communities in the Midwest were reduced to poverty and destitution.
In their place, a new global player, Mittal Steel, has arisen that owns nearly 50 million tons of steelmaking capacity in a far flung empire from Kazakhstan to Trinidad.When, as expected, Mittal Steel completes the acquisition of Arcelor, a Luxembourg based steel maker, it will own fully a third of the world’s steel making capacity.Mittal Steel expects to serve the booming economies of India and China with steel made in the low cost mills it owns.
A similar prospect looms on the horizon for the automotive industry.Both India and China have their eyes on this industry as their economies want to move up the global food chain.They have the entrepreneurs, knowledge base and access to vast amounts of capital that has soured on our high cost labor force.Expect another Mittal Steel to arise in the automotive business within the next decade.It will further dim the prospects for anyone contemplating a future in this country in the automotive business.
It is in this context I have realized that, even education, at the university level, may not offer the security that we seek for our children because there is going to be a glut of highly educated people from India and China flooding the world markets.Engineers, lawyers, accountants, doctors, what have you are emerging out of the many fine institutes and universities in these countries.As those in the IT industry already know,corporations simply relocate their facilities in these countries to gain access to the vast pool of highly educated labor.Along with the relocation of manufacturing facilities, such a drain on our service jobs will devastate the future for our children, education or no education.
There was a time when we used to pity Mexican farm laborers for having to move north to pick berries and lettuce in the farms of California or Oregon.That day is dawning for our technical professional class who may have to take drastic cuts in income and migrate to parts unknown in search of a living.Many Ph.D s in the social sciences are already living such existence moving from school to school as adjunct faculty with no benefits and no security doing the equivalent of menial chores for the highly touted professorial class. That is likely to become the fate of many highly educated people in industry as well.
Who could have predicted a generation ago that a Ph.D will land you among the glorified migrant worker class in the global economy?
I think all of this was inevitable. When owning the most marbles (money and power) is considered the ultimate goal of life, and competition is the main modus operandi. what else could be expected? Those most driven by greed will do anything, and I mean anything, to win.
The need to gather the most marbles will always trump any and all other human principles and values. Concepts like having an authentic democracy, or shared committment to the common good of all don’t even stand a chance, and get trampled into the dust real quick. Add to this an addiction to violence and war, (which of course benefits those at the top the most) and here we are, now seeing it all play out on a global scale, not just within out own borders.
This free market thing is backfiring like hell all over the place, if you ask me. But if you ask those with most of the marbles, they’ll teel you it’s working out just fine.
great diary.
Great diary. I think this situation was inevitable; the US was the lone superpower intact at the end of WWII and the fact that we’ve been able to economically ride that horse for 50 years before it petered out is about pretty typical in the history of the world. The Europeans went through exactly the same thing in the last century as they lost their empires and the concentrations of wealth that went with it. As our situation spirals down, we’re on a flight path to end up like Europe if we act prudently, or like the former USSR if we try to fight the inevitable.
For the reasons you mention, plus climate change, plus the loss of freedoms under BushCo I’ve consistently encouraged my sons to seriously consider emigration to Canada – as a nation that welcomes technically trained immigrants, has more enlightened social and geopolitical policies, and natural resources to spare, I think their star is on the rise for the next century. I’d go myself, but I haven’t convinced Mrs. K.P. to leave Knoxville. BushCo and the far right may do that for me yet, though. 🙁
I know neither of my daughters and their fmailies will leave the US, nor will I at this atage of my life. Nor will anyone else I know who lack the kinds of resources such a move would require. I can most certainly understand those who choose to, and if I were young myslef, I’d be considering it. But it is as it is, so my attention turns to how to live right here, whatever comes down, with some sense of safety, and security. The ONLY was I can foresee for us to insure any of this, is to come back together, and abandon the indiviualist, materialistic lifestyles we’ve been progapandized to see as "the American Dream".
Shared living. Relearning how to live "in communuty" with others. Pooling resources and skills. Bartering services for goods, goods for services among ouselves, rather than thinking this can only be done with money, and through corporate owned businesses. Discovering the wonderful concept of "enough"
Many of us poor people have already learned that life outside the American Dream Scene can be really pretty wonderful, and I, for one, wouldn’t never want to go back to chasing that lonely dream.
Seeveral years ago, I had the opportuinity to vsist Sweden along with a few colleagues from the corporation I was working for at that time.In Stockholm, perhaps the most civilized of all European capitals, I was stumped when some of my colleagues started complaining about how boring Swedish food and life was compared to our own.Our hosts, very polite and civilzed men and women, put up with our boorish behavior and let the facts speak for themselves. While we were having coffee at an open air cafe, who should pedal by except the King and Queen of Sweden! While we Americans gasped,the Swedes took it as a matter of course and that told me the whole story of our unwarranted egotism and refusal to think other people may have better ways of living and sharing.
In the years ahead I believe that a way of life as civilized and nurturing of the mind as Sweden’s will become the norm.If that indeed comes to pass, I will envy my children and grandchildren.Here is hoping!
I think our militarism and vanity are hastening the day of inevitable reckoning.If we give up the twin obsessions, there is a prospect that we can share global resources with others and lift all boats.That is not likely to happen.The world is simply tired of American violence and ravenous appetites.
What this is is end-stage predatory capitalism, some are calling it “disaster capitalism”. Capitalism is not the “enemy”–it is the predatory nature of this uniquely American brand of capitalism that has been developing in a teleology of disaster since Columbus first set foot in this country. William Greider, in his 1996 One World–Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism addresses some of these issues, with a very detailed description of differences between the social fabric resulting from a “social market” capitalism (in most of Europe) and the predatory capitalism in this country (differences which I know first hand from having lived and worked in Europe for nearly ten years, 1980s). It is good that Greider has archived these things, because the socio-economic fabric of many major European countries is so rapidly adapting to the “manic logic of global capitalism” that Europe will soon resemble these dis-USA. (It’s one main reason I don’t bother packing my bags to go back; I would have the resources to do so–including the language skills and an entire network of friends and colleagues “over there”–why bother? If current trends continue, it’s going to look pretty much the same as this in ten years anyway).
Already in the 1970s, Chomsky laid this out quite clearly:
In a comment on the Nazification thread yesterday, I described predatory capitalism as follows (riffing off the the “know your isms” posted here).
It is this whole dynamic that I have been harping on for years–since before I left for Europe in 1984, and all the more after my return to this country in 93–after having seen with my own eyes that you can indeed have your Mercedes Benz and you don’t necessarily
need to tell the poor people to eat cake to get it.
I think the mistake in attributing these things to “corporate capitalism” is that this ONCE AGAIN provides an outlet for denial–the implication being that these cutthroat competitive mentalities are restricted to the assholes at the top, the CEOs and B*shCos: they aren’t. They’re EVERYWHERE.
While browsing on this subject last night, I saw a comment that said st to the effect that, under predatory capitalism, you stand in a vehemently competitive relationship with everyone, right down to the paper delivery guy. And it is true. There are very few individuals and very few business entities who are exempt from this kind of thinking and it is reflected in business practice and everyday personal interaction (any wonder I don’t get out much anymore?)–just try observing “human” behavior in the line at the fucking grocery store and you’ll start to see what I mean!
In the publishing industry, in the translation industry, in academia, in social service industry and non-profit grantmaking agencies (No, NLinSP you are not imagining it!)–I personally am being TROMPED by this shit all the time. All the time. Tromped. Despite possession of PhD (with attendant student loan debt to “prove” it), despite enough overtheedjumication to make your head spin, despite a fairly “prestigious” network of friends and colleagues. It is a constant struggle for “supremacy” which I refuse to engage in, so I tend to get trampled a lot. Fine. Let the elephants learn to live with themselves. I will not concede to this crap.
What I find so alarming is that, in most cases, my dealings are with individuals and businesses where one would expect, by virtue of their “liberalism” and “progressivism”, these predatory principles would not apply. But they do. It has indeed come down to “survival of the biggest bastard”–in liberal and progressive communities, the difference is that the bastards have to find a better “cover” for being a bastard–they have to pretend they’re being a ‘nice guy’ while they are (often subconsciously) pulling the rug right out from others in order to get their own next ‘magic carpet ride.’
This is what I mean when I say that this country is sick–and most of the people don’t even know it. When you try to tell them, they stark flogging you in denial.
That is the problem.
I hear you. I’ve come to believe I’m not very good at capitalism since I don’t have the right mindset. Since every aspect of your life is judged on a money scale; if your not good at making money you risk being labeled a failure by this society. Our leaders have to prove themselves in the market place before they are allowed to lead. I think with that kind of prerequisite we are missing out on a lot of people with a lot to offer our country.
Money has come to occupy almost a religious importance in our society.No value is possible unless it is somehow connected to money.Thus, teachers, nurses,artists whose work is essential for this society to function are not held in high esteem simply because they do not make as much money as some lawyer or stockbroker.
That obsession with money is what many people around the world have come to dislike about Americans.In my other post, I mentioned how liberating I found my short trip to Sweden where even the monarch pedals by you without anyone giving it a second glance. When I told my Swedish hosts that this will never happen in our country, what they said was very appropriate: “What is your President afraid of?And I thought America was a democracy!”
There is enough food so that no human goes hungry except by the voluntary and conscious decision of another human.
While some natural occurrences may not be controllable by man, the consequences are. There may be a bad crop in Malawi, but there are airplanes and plenty of technology to get food to those affected.
With a fraction of the money that the US alone spends on its wars alone,leave aside maintaining client states, low-grade occupations and other accoutrement of neo-colonialism, every person on earth could have food, housing, and medical treatment, and basic education.
So much of the world’s resources in so few hands is unjustifiable, unconsciounable, and unsustainable.
There will always be haves and have nots. There will always be greed. But being a have not does not have to mean not having housing, not having food, not having medical treatment. It may mean not having a mansion, it may mean not having caviar and champagne, or a big screen TV or a closet full of designer clothes.
And greed can be checked, it can be limited. When it is not, the current situation is what you get.
The policy of spending a dollar to kill someone else’s child in preference to a dime to care for your own, is not only unsustainable, it is not compatible with the continuance of human life on earth.
This goes beyond any ism or anti-ism. This is just common sense.
The true meaning of globalization is not another reframing of slavery, not another method of exploiting the poor to make rich men richer.
The true meaning is that we are all, the entire world, a community of interdependent people. What I do affects a Japanese housewife, a sheep farmer in Pashtunistan, an astrologer in Kolkata, and a wine merchant in Hungary. And what they do affects me.
Technology has not created that reality, it has made it impossible to avoid, and inexcusable to distort and degrade and dehumanize.
We cannot create a perfect Utopia. Nor can we be perfect people who never make typos, or mistakes in work, or cooking or gardening. That is no excuse for not doing the best that we can, and the best that we can, as a world, might sound like Utopia by comparison to the hell on earth that life is for the majority of the world’s people, maintained so that a tiny fraction might live in luxury.
By reducing only slightly that luxury, we can cease to be a world in which only half the children have childhoods.
How many modest but clean and safe dwellings can be built for the cost of dropping one bomb? The US could indeed be “Number One,” it could be a super-power in a much truer sense, be the nation that brings life to the most people instead of the one that kills the most people.
How many doses of penicillin and malaria medicine can be purchased for what one wealthy person spends on one necklace? Could she not buy a more modest, and probably more beautiful and tasteful necklace for a few hundred dollars instead of a few million?
She will still be wealthy, there will still be plenty of people who cannot spend several hundred dollars on a necklace.
Some will say, these things are pipe dreams, they are not possible, it is human nature.
There are many aspects of human nature that until we evolve as a species, we must control, check, limit, or there will be no more human nature due to the lack of humans.
I’m not going to risk going off on another 7,000 word or so tangent, just say
RIGHT ON
Why is it so hard to get this simple, simple message through?
It is nothing that ancient, tribal, indigenous peoples have not known throughout time and nothing they have not been seeking to clarify to the these predatory capitalists (who in my view, are anything but “natural”, predatory capitalism is NOT a natural human impulse–I refuse to believe it; the planet would not have sustained human life for as long as it has if it were).
In just 500 years, the predatory capitalism of Amerka has managed to bring us to the verge of planetary catastrophe. That is FAST seen from the perspective of all of human history, not just the history of so-called western “man”.
If predatory capitalism were a “human” propensity–this planet would have imploded thousands of years ago.
John Lennon was trying to tell us 30 years ago.
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one.
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one.
I have particularly liked Bill and Melinda Gates’s project to bring clean potable water to every man, woman and child in India over the next few years. That project has the potential of eradicating many of the diseases that ravage people in the villages of India who are untouched by the globalization hype.And it will endure, unlike the corporate profiteering ventures.
It is very similar in concept to the Grameen Bank which makes micro loans to individual women in villages freeing them from the usurious lenders.That has proven out to be more uplifting than all the huge loans dealt out by the World Bank and the IMF to the countries in Latin America enslaving people with debt service they cannot possibly repay.
We need to identify technologies that serve local needs utilizing local talent.Keeping such enterprises small should be a basic requirement.If we do this, we can turn away from the death dealing mega enterprises and make life sustenance the priority it ought to be.
While I will agree that this is international capitalism as it is intended, and believe somewhat in the theory that lifting the poorest of nations up eventually lifts the wealthiest, that is not the way things feel at the moment.
I was raised as the child of a UAW family in a suburb of Flint, MI, my father and grandfather both having been in the auto industry.
I went to college on the backs of my parents and the short-sighted nature of UAW contracts. For this, I am unapologetic.
Our cars have become too expensive to produce for a number of reasons, labor being one. But one can not disregard health care and pensions. GM is perhaps the best example of how the increase in life-expectancy, combined with a huge retired community and ever-increasing costs of health care can tie the hands of a company in a competitive marketplace. It’s true that this is a side effect of ‘labor’, but this cost is not directly related to the actual manufacture of a vehicle.
But GM, Ford and Chrysler all played the hand they were dealt, as did the workers in the UAW. But the game is still overseen by the larger economic table put down by the government and its regulators and policy-makers.
From my perspective, GM and the like are suffering today for some reasons they thrust upon themselves and for reasons thrust upon them.
Health Care, for example, should not be left to the individual, who is forced to seek assistance from their employer. With health care costs inexplicably rising 18% a year while inflation runs far less, no one can keep up, including huge international companies. It is only natural for them to seek labor outside the USA for both wage AND benefits cost relief.
But the government lets this happen. They stand aside and let “market forces” dictate the cost of health care and let insurance companies decide to whom, how much, and how costly their coverage will be extended. When Clinton was in power, the evidence was already there, but the labor market was tight and times were good. With Republicans in complete control, they purposely stand by and push other topics like Iraq and terrorism as a distraction. The Republicans, especially Bush, allow the power of labor to be undercut in order to help extend the reach of their own power and increase the likelihood of their own reelections. It is a win-win for them. The insurance companies that help fund them make more and more money and give more contributions, the drug companies the same. And the more unions like the UAW can be pushed to the background, the less contributions are likely to flow to Democratic opponents.
There is no silver bullet. But like many things, the long road to some semblance of stability and a reversal of the most dangerous portions of this trend can only start by returning labor-sensitive Democrats to power at all levels of government.
Outsourcing contributes strongly to my fear, which is, by the way, for sale.
It is my belief that health care will not be immune to the globalization phenomenon in the next few years. There are now many fine hospitals fully staffed and ready to take on patients in India. They are catering to clientele in Europe and Japan who fly to these centers and get their procedures done without wait at a fraction of the cost in their own countries. As our health costs go through the roof, this is an option that has attracted the attention of many of our own HMOs and insurance companies.The trickle of patients reported on 60 minutes a few months ago will become a flood in the next few years bringing health costs down dramatically. Many medical centers are also experimenting with remote diagnosis with a doctor in India reading EEGs, MRIs, XRays and other diagnostic
procedures.
My concern is not with the costs of these procedures per se but with what they mean for our children’s livelihoods. I am sure that the income levels of our specialists is going to take a hit as they find themselves directly competing with doctors in India.As I say education is not going to be a panacea and security blanket in the years ahead, as the internet and satellite communications make possible things that once could only be dreamed of. Even remote surgery using robots guided by doctors from India or Australia has been demonstrated.
Oh, believe me, I’m not thinking that an education is protection from unemployment. In some respects, a higher education can be more of a burden, though it isn’t yet a scarlet letter.
Being a computer dork (wife’s description of my career choice) leaves me especially open to global outsourcing. I already work on a team w/ about 40% of it’s employees in China, communicating entirely via phone and internet. For now, there are still certain skills that are both unavoidable and unfillable by overseas talent. And so, for now, I cling to that, aware of the reasons I should worry. For now.
Where is our California?
Mars? Or the Moon.
Our California will be to embrace the change and welcome our poor brethren from other parts of our planet as our equals and see the opportunity for ourselves in becoming their equals.This would require a new paradigm that shuns American superiority and hegemony .That means we must choose life over death,cut our bloated military structures and invest in life sustaining pursuits.
Considering how easily we have been dragge down by our home grown imperialists in the past few years, I wouldn’t hold my breath.
We had to leave California last December in order to live in Oregon so we could live more like Californians.
Now we can AFFORD to eat non-toxic food and shop at organic grocery stores and co-ops and have more choices for supplies than Wal-Fart or Target.
Thank Dawg for Oregon.
Northern Californian is getting VERY UGLY and downright dangerous for a Liberal to live or try to raise her children.
I escaped from California and LOVING life in Oregon.
I was speaking this week with a large shareholder of a leading Indian auto manufacturer. According to this well-placed source, the policy decision to move into the US marketplace has already been made. At the moment they are strengthening their global capital and market share position as preparation for the move into the US, including getting listed on the NYSE. They recognize that the initial costs of entering the US car market as a player are enormous, and they don’t want the cost of entry into the American market to leave the rest of their operations capital-starved. Although they have yet to set a specific target date for entry into the American market, it is in the “medium term” (my friend reads 5 years +/-), they have made one firm policy decision: initial pricing will be set at 70% of the list for comparable Japanese models.
Interesting.
Will be interesting to see the percentage of labor they are interested in utilizing stateside. 0 is not possible. Someone has to sell the product, transport it around the country, service it, wash it, take it off the ship, etc.
But whether that number is 5 or 10 or 15 or 40 or even 1, it will pull prices, profits, and labor itself, lower.
Listing on the NYSE will just be to secure capital and give the stockholder class a piece of the action and help get them to play along. Beyond a meager dividend, profits will go back to India.
I had not heard this, and had never thought about it, but it makes perfect sense.
or do we?
Here at home, there still is this “time,” although, obviously, the words “pity” and “Mexican” are not constant or accurate.
Not to say I don’t pity “PhDs” who have to work 12 hour days in the sun, and use a ditch as a bathroom without access to clean drinking water while they breath pesticides, but until the day arrives when everybody values everybody equally, and our economy reflects that concept, this is how it will be: the wealthy will use some of thier wealth to buy power to guarantee they can more easily accumulate more wealth.
And since everybody has a little more wealth than someone else, until we move to a mystical planet where food grows on trees, and clean water just falls from the sky and flows through beautiful, respected land, we are all kind of fucked.
We do live on a mystical planet; food does grow on trees; clean water does fall from the sky and it does flow through a beautiful land.
It is only the respect that is not there.
This is a very well written and thought-out diary, and makes a hell of a lot of sense. I agree with you: the road we are currently on leads to ruin, and it is going to take a lot more than a few electoral victories to change anything.
By the way, it’s Klaatu, not Klatoo.
It is more than fifty years since I saw The Day The Earth Stood Still.I consider it probably the best sci-fi film ever made.Unfortunately, I did not remember the spelling of Klatoo ( or as you say Klaatu).Regardless,Klaatu is a favorite robot of mine that wanted to drill some sense into the people of the earth.For that reason alone he deserves to be remembered.
Thanks for your comments.
I got turned on to The Day the Earth Stood Still (which is by the way one of the finest films ever made) through a rather circuitious route. I am a huge Beatles fan (which you may or may not have gathered from my handle), and back in the 70’s there was a band called Klaatu that released an album that some thought was a “lost” beatles album or a reunion album. The Day the Earth Stood Still was known to be one of John Lennon’s favorite movies and supposedly there were many things in the album art and the song lyrics that were “clues” that the band Klaatu was the Beatles (in the same way that clues to Paul’s death could be found on Beatles album art and song lyrics). The mystique that the band members surrounded themselves in only added to the rumors and subsequently the hype of it all probably ended up driving all of the album sales. I have the record (passed on from my dad) and I can’t see very much similarity. Its pretty trippy stuff.
China is the totally ignored elephant in the room. They recently started the drive toward a larger, more aggressive armed force. They doubled their military budget.
Still the USA is the biggest spender on military in the world. We are the “protection organization” of the world. You know, “protecting freedom” around the world? Say, isn’t that what the MAFIA used to call itself? “A protection organization?” Indeed?
Anyway, this next decade we will see that there is another “protection organization” on the block, China. Okies will have even a ruder awakening then.
China is scouring the earth franctically for sources of petroleum.Sooner or later the Chinese gang is going to intrude into the turf of the American gang.Let us hope that the gangs don’t take the rest of the world with them to oblivion.