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Obama's Comments Reflect *gasp* Reality
I work in an industy selling and servicing industrial manufacturing machinery. Been doing it for 15 years. In the early, mid 90s, boom times, we put a lot of machines in American plants. In late 90s, following passage of NAFLA (the North American Free Labor Agreement) we saw many of these companies move these machines just over the Mexican border. The US managers down there live in the US, make US wages, commute daily over the border. The workers in Mexico make pennies on the dollar to what the now unemployed US worker made. Now, the machines are moving to China because the Mexicans cost too much.
How does the politician in rural PA or any other Rust Belt dying town rally votes? Guns, God, and gays. That's what Obama is saying. Washington has abandoned the middle-class, the blue collar worker. All that Washington offers economically to the middle class is the occasional drip from the trickle down tax cuts that make the fantastically weathly another 20 percent more fantastically weathly. Politicians drum up votes by concentrating on these sideline, phony "issues" and unfortunately many Workin' Joes buy into these arguments and cast their votes on this basis, even against their own economic self interests. I know guys like this. Apparently, Obama recognizes this behavior.
Obama's statements aren't a slam against the working poor but an expressed realization about the f*$*ing Washington is giving to the working poor and the middle class. Why mention to the proletariat that the world's richest man, Warren Buffet, has a lower tax rate than his secretary or that the Columbian "Free Trade" Agreement will reward a country that has seen 2500 union activists assasinated during the last 10 years when we can instead argue about whether two loving, consenting adults of the same sex can be married?
Obama takes the conversation to a depth the two other candidates won't dare to dive to (Hillary) or don't have the intellect (McCain) to discern. This level of thinking and expression is what we need for the next eight years.
Comments (6)
So what is it Obama is offering these people? Empty words. His campaign says it is about "politics" not "policy". How does this help anyone find a job? "Hope" don't buy beer.
April 13, 2008 4:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Honesty.
At least we can hear now what things are like. And if we can start a discussion - we can find a resolution to the problem. But if we insist on saying how cheerful people are - well, there is no problem to solve, is there?
My husband is an engineer/designer. A major company has been making him for last 6 months implementing their production in China. It's not going well. It will never go well. The Chinese don't have the right attitude, the right skills, the language and they keep screwing up the product. These problems will continue throughout the life of the product - it is going to be hell. Now, there is a company here, in the States, that has been making this product all along. Their price is competitive, there are no problems with the production, they are highly innovative and their turn around is fast not to mention fast delivery (vs. 6 months from China). So what is the problem? Why does this major company insist on production in China? Well, they are worried that they don't have a presence in Chinese manufacturing. That is the only reason why they are doing what they are doing. Because the other companies produce in China.
Just changing the discussion, refocusing it on what matters here - the loss of small towns in US is not something we should just ignore or cheer... when township falls - civilization falls, haven't you heard? Talking alone can make many companies change their attitude. That alone can change us back into successful country.
And finally 'these people', my dear, are US.
April 13, 2008 7:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
This post is spot on. Nobody is denying that America's manufacturing base has been eroding. Heck, a lot of people celebrate the fact.
Except that nobody has come up with a way to provide comparable livings for our manufacuring workers. Nobody. Job retraining just implies that people should change course after a few classes and it doesn't promise that a new service or information technology job will provide the opportunities afforded by the lost manufacturing job. What's worse about retraining is that the whole concept doesn't even consider what the worker, now out of a job because of our trade and economic policies, wants to do with his or her life.
What's sad, though, is that the Republicans have sold these people on a divisive, angry politics that does nothing for them financially and focuses their anger on irrelevant issues like gay marriage and abortion when their anger really should be directed at the American C-level executives who make tens and hundreds of millions per year even while they fire the rank and file or keep them on with reduced wages and benefits.
April 13, 2008 6:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sometimes it's not the little kid who speaks up and says, "the emperor has no clothes."
Sometimes it is an adult, running for the Presidency no less, who speaks up and says it.
For that, people are shocked, shocked (to mix literary-cinema lines).
Good post. We're in for an adult-level administration for the first time in too long. For that, I'm certainly not bitter!
April 13, 2008 8:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
He said that people go to church and own guns because they're bitter.
If he'd have said that people are bitter over the outsourcing of their jobs or the decimation of their communities due to trickle downism, nobody would even notice.
He said that people in small communities generally are racist (antipathy..) and the S.F. crowd laughed heartily at the expense of their country bumpkin cousins.
In small communities everyone knows everyone and judges one another by the "Quality of their character not the color of their skin." It's insulting to them to color them as rubes and racists.
It won't matter that much in the primaries, but the repubs are all giddily excited over this.
April 13, 2008 9:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
The free-trade infatuation of conservatives is just stupid. The natural model, from any kind of living entity, is to have boundaries, and only let in what is needed. We gave up protection for our manufacturing, and golly, exchange rates killed us.
Mexicans were not working more efficiently, only getting paid in pesos for what would be sold for dollars. That is not economic success, or increased productivity, it is a shell game. Imported food uses pretty much the same inputs of labor, water, land, and fertilizer, but costs less because of exchange rates.
There are exceptions; one can't be completely categoric, but free trade has never helped the country, only the owner class.
So here's a policy---import duties on manufactured goods like cars, electronics, and clothes. Then add a strong minimum-wage law and much higher marginal tax rates.
After that we will be back to the 60s, in terms of trade and taxes. And we have good engineers who can make competitive products if they are protected from mismatched transfusions of foreign-currency-based goods.
April 13, 2008 9:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
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