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Biden-Harris and the Progressive Movement in an Uncertain World

News & Views
#24

You know trade liberalization is a one way street, don’t you?

Deregulation goes one way, basically treaties require the continuous one way abolition of rules and limits on global corporations. So don’t think that for example, the things Trump is doing would be reversed by a Democrat or Republican, in the future.

Say in 12 years as you imply.

How could they give corporations new property and then take it back from them?

Our country is heavily behind the increasing of competition.

Read up on World Competition Day.

Efficiency gains. At Amazon’s subcontractors, to give an example, incoming employees are paid much much less. Amazon’s subcontractors do this a lot, many of the firms hail from Africa, some of their managers are very well educated. Even from Oxford, for example, they stay for a few years to earn a sum that seems awfully low considering how hard they work, and then go back home. This is basically the future of work. Big multinationals that move employees, even low paid ones, all around the world to save money.

See ~https://incsoc.net/world-competition-day/

A big shift in terms of employment to parts of the world where wages are the lowest. This is more profitable.

Global value chains. Small businesses are highly inefficient. Look at how many people must do jobs that automated would require nobody.

Its much cheaper to have global firms come in and do all the drudge work. The economics of scale favors huge firms and global work forces.

This is the future. This will not change in 12 years.

We “won”?!

Or not, (//sarcasm)

More on Competition Day 2020 and healthcare

~https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gQDlgrJGFU

#26

It’s good of you to share this information here. Perhaps it will help to educate those of us who now expect a garage in every chicken and a pot in every car - or whatever is the fantasy du jour - now that “Orange Man Bad” is gone.

Ah, but for Kool Aid … .

Perhaps this is the poetic justice of us (Americans) paying scant attention - if any at all - to what exactly funds our collective existence and how we are able to afford our lattes and Pilates classes based on useless associate degrees in Gender Studies and Mass Communication.

God forbid that one day we might actually have to work for a living, like the Indians, Chinese and Vietnamese, et al.

Spare the rod and spoil the child and all … .

#27

Americans do work for a living.

~https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/employment/oecd-employment-outlook-2017_empl_outlook-2017-en#page210

Its just that wages for workers around the world vary a lot, and that gives low wage countries a significant advantage, especially when it comes to jobs requiring a lot of training. We’re going to have a hard ride in the next few decades under services liberalization. There seems to be a consensus that countries need to provide safety nets for people whose careers are heavily impacted due to liberal reforms. But I don’t see us stepping up to the plate, do you?

Services liberalization includes provisions like GATS Article 1:4. That’s going to mean large changes.

#28

By saying that, Biden probably was alluding to GATS which is changing a lot. For one thing its liberalizing services irreversibly, which will mean a lot of job loss, because we’re simply much more expensive workers than subcontractors from foreign countries are. Its not personal, its just that given the choice between hiring engineers for $35/hr and $9 hr, many companies who need engineering services would likely pay less. The same goes for teaching, nursing and dozens of other professions that are highly vulnerable to cost pressures. And the change will be impossible to reverse because its in a treaty.

It may mean the middle class as we know it will change globally, becoming much smaller than it is today. Its clear that thats the plan, despite the lip services they are paying to helping the Least Developed Nations that the money is all going to go upward, both here and in the developing countries. Remittances from immigrants to the US will fall, as well paid workers are replaced with ones making much less. Most of that money will go as profits to body shop firms, not workers.

#29

Few Americans live the kind of life you describe now. Maybe one in four American children goes to sleep hungry.