Is The White House making Americans poorer to compeat with China?

First thing im not American but this post probably applys
to most of the west as well.

I came across this post on business insider about how US
income has droped in real terms and how this is going to
help the economy compete with cheap labour in the east.

So rather than pay chinese a decent wage just make the
workers in the western world worst off.

TextIn the US, it’s the opposite. Since 2000, real wages (adjusted for inflation) have declined. The White House even touts this horrid statistic in its paper, Investing in America: Building an Economy That Lasts. Clearly, the paper is not intended for the rank and file. It outlines how current policies are making America competitive with low-wage countries like China. And one of the principal strategies is ... lowering wages. Graph from the White House paper:

BUSINESS INSIDER

So what this means is a race to see which country can offer
the cheapest workers.nice one mr president good to see that
the little people are getting looked after and not the corporations.

INVESTING IN AMERICA PDF

And lets not forget that UK inflation been well above pay rises as well
making us all a little bit poorer in blighty

Makes sense. Manufacturing will become viable again. Only thing is the workers will be the ones who suffer. While a few and will get huge gains.

But if it hinders the Chinese and brings manufacturing home, isn't this a good thing?

People have been getting paid to much over here for some time. Look at the UAW for example........why pay workers over here when you can pay foreign workers far less?

reply to post by DAZ21


Yes there a lot of over payed people in the west but that is mostly
in the public sector.

Daily Mail Chinese Working Conditions

I really dont want to see a race to the bottom where people on minimum
wage have to work 60+ hours to get by.Do you think because a company
is american that it wont try to lower cost by any means.





This video about 1920s working conditions in america where getting
home with all your limbs after a hard day was the only bonus you
got from the boss.now google how many workers are killed in china in
mines and factories.

Looking after workers very uncompetitive you know.

reply to post by skuly


You've hit on it exactly. TPTB seem to be on a course to create global slave labor. The Chinese people work under communism and do as they are told. Communism is not capitalism and slave labor is not free enterprise. The mega corporations need to be run to ground before the free men of the west can reclaim their sovereignty. The stewardship of mega corporations has been shown amply to be anti-life with the bottom line agenda of enslave them all. Reminds me of a poem by the poet laureate of Latvia, loosely translated, "We will not be slaves; not in the morning; and not in the evening."

reply to post by luxordelphi


The future of capitalism is not necessarily in commerce and trade, but in Ideas.

But sadly, its a paradigm many fail to see-- or to accept, not least on account of many not seeing the wood for the trees; such are the distractions of policies, and the stories spun on late-night current affairs shows.

America couldn't possibly be undermining its populace--,BUT Bilderberg, Bohemian Grove, Trilateral policies must obviously be in operation, but not for the reasons we assume to be.

The old lakeside talks, the stuff of legend from the Grove, are clearly in affect. And why wouldn't they be?

The Bush, Kissinger, Rockefeller Patriarch's are all in the mid-80's, so to those fellow Brits with a view of things akin to mine, such Patriarch's are either making a reach for something...

Or...

They're in the throes of a final cling to something they're losing...

POWER

reply to post by skuly


Low-wage countries will continue to draw jobs away from the US. The numbers couldn’t be clearer: in 2011, the trade deficit with China hit another record north of $320 billion. People are just commodities at the end of the day.

Good post BTW.

Originally posted by DAZ21
Makes sense. Manufacturing will become viable again. Only thing is the workers will be the ones who suffer. While a few and will get huge gains.

But if it hinders the Chinese and brings manufacturing home, isn't this a good thing?

Back in the 70s hong kong was a sweatshop economy with slum
housing.in the 90s hong kong was rich off the back of this and used
china as the sweatshop.

now china is wealthy (for some anyway) and wage bills go up chinese company are looking
to africa to open factorys where there are slums and people willing to
work for next to nothing not america or europe,

Sorry but corperations will just go to wherever its cheapest to set up.

How low a wage are you willing to work for?

reply to post by skuly


It sounds harsh but that's the way it works unfortunately. When some economies boom others have to bust.

One day the Chinese and African nations will be outsourcing work in the west here in Europe and the US where we will work for peanuts wether we want to or not.

reply to post by DAZ21


A painful irony, my friend.

Here in England. we get the 19th Century still-rammed down our throats with yet-another Dickens adaption for TV; or yet-another Jane Austen film...

The irony I speak of is how one of the major TV shows of the now is Downton Abbey, a stiff period piece that people seem to accept, despite the modern-day descendants of those upper-class types at the time, are the very people tearing this country apart with Tory policies.

So on the wider scope, the Dickensian work-house WE thought was history-good-for-serious-drama, is what we've made out of India and China... so yeah, it probably would be accurate to say the reverse could soon be true.

I only hope history doesn't repeat too much, or else, all such Equal Rights in Employment, Womens lib, Health & Safety in the Workplace, and so, so much more, would all go out the window...

reply to post by skuly


China's average wage is increasing rather quickly. America's is stagnate in most regions .... declining in some.

The combination of Corporatism and Socialism in the United States has created this atmosphere. We encourage people to live off the State thus growing the percentage of society that is in poverty. All the while we create an atmosphere of corporate protectionism by importing workers, be it a Mexican to work a field and clean a toilet or an Indian to program software. Corporations simply don't think Americans are good enough. So we have "hey live off the State it's what the cool kids are doing!" And an over inflated under educated workforce that corporations take no regard of.

reply to post by Rockpuck


Hi friend, lets not forget the notion of technocrats in all this. There was, after all, not one, but TWO technocrats, I believe, installed in Italy recently on account of their massive debt, and the national crisis of Berlusconi's scandalous excesses...

Thus the infringement of capitalist and anti-capitalist arguments raging on each other's turf out on the pavements-- namely with the Occupy Protests garnering increasingly more attention via Youtube-- have already taken flak either way. So it stands to good reason that perhaps more of a technocratic angle might make the large G20 nations sit up and take note of their own worth...

Here in England, its one thing to mock the LibDem/Tory coalition for their current policies, but many forget all to easily that the inter-connectedness of the backroom nature of politics means most politicians are on the same committees, so policy-making and what not, are daily passed before their eyes.

Maybe we're witnessing the making of a new ideology, one forming daily on account of on-going events...

Maybe this will be the making of new a kind of technocratics; and if it happens in America, it'll happen anywhere....

reply to post by skuly


So, you want you cake and eat it too?

You want all the work and the best wages, it doesn't work that way I'm sorry.

Seems a lot of people don't seem to get it.

You see, the alternative usually is to shut up shop or move production elsewhere where it's cheaper (CHINA!), so the labourers who refused to take a pay cut end up losing their jobs because the business has gone bust.

If you're an unskilled labourer,what would you prefer?

Great idea.

I am not sure if we should frame it as USA versus China because that is misleading. It demonstrates that those involved in the process both in China and US benefit from the competition. Not so. It is purely extractive, slash and burn, hit an run.

Small, multinational entities steer capital towards that which produces the most profit. Not nations and not even whole sectors of industry. Rather, that capital is targeted at small groups of desperate/willing people who can provide what is desired regardless of how it is achieved. If it happens to be in China for a while and then Honduras and then where ever, so be it.

If we attempt to bring wages down similarly in the US the become "competitive", there will always be someplace else willing to do it cheaper due to non-existent labor safety laws, environmental laws, finance laws, etc. You have to ask yourself are you willing to give up all the good things around you for a buck today and a cesspool tomorrow? Do you want to play their game? Or can we maintain those things which keep us safe and clean but still provide income?

If these multinational entities work in a legal neutral environment, why do we need to follow? What is so wrong with some protectionist framework in place in the US to return manufacturing? No need to go over the edge but we are not competing on an even playing field. Other governments do not give a damn about their people; I would like to think we are a little better than that. Without manufacturing, we have no economic way-ahead nor do we enjoy long term national security.

This does not endorse the old plan of heavily subsidized, inefficient business models or over paid/non-competitive labor. However, I cannot believe the smart thing is impossible in the US. With regards to details, I would not look to DC as you will find few who are even willing to entertain such craziness, that is not how their bread is buttered.

If, in an ideal world- not necessarily a utopia, but rather just a world in which policies aren't so seemingly unfair to everyone and anyone-- it would be more than apparent that the financial benefits reaped by the bankers have created two extra strata to society...

That of the contained-super-rich, and that of its polar-opposite...

But thats always been there, many say!

Well, no. And why?!?

As Occupy Wall Street vindicates, the noticeability of either sector being 'contained' is that its daily news that plight of one end and the policies dictated by the other.

Thus the real super-rich are well out the way, and the real super-poor are lost amongst the rubble, quite literally.

So if American's are being so radically cheated by the White House-- I don't know, but what I do know is that the parallel argument from a British perspective is how 'Europe'-- the political entity, not the beautiful landscape and ordinary people-- is likewise said to be bad for our interests.

So what, if anything, is REALLY to be gained if our own leaders are taking away the most essential of public funding, yet China, Europe, whoever, are the "Bad Guys"?????????????????/

Well I just got hit with a 4K vet bill because of cheap toxic chinese products.
Do you know how many slightly more expensive but safe American made procucts I could have bought with 4K difference in price? Pretty much everything in the house and yard.

Cheap will always come around to bite you in the end

reply to post by VforVendettea


I feel bad for you, friend. I guess there's no justice for our side of the counter when the companies are complicit in a national policy-- both in American, and here in England, with the one goal few dare speak of during shift-time...

And that's to make MONEY...

reply to post by skuly


Sounds like they are trying to pretend that they are making a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

They don't care a flip about jobs. They are planning to exterminate all the 'useless eaters' anyway.

The oligarchy's goal is to bring the West down to a 3rd world level . . . gotta keep the serfs and slaves desperately needy and groveling so they have a harder time rebelling against their slave masters.

Besides, there's some claptrap about it being better for the environment.

reply to post by Futurcrat1


I'm no longer sure that even their Greed for money is a driving motivator for them any more.

When they are awash in so much money they can't even wrap their understanding around it any more . . .

When they have so much money . . . doubling it or tripling it doesn't add any more to their power-mongering . . .

When it's all so much Monopoly money to them . . . several $trillion here, several $trillion there . . . blah blah blah; yadda yadda yadda . . .

what's the point of more money.

Their lust now is more for POWER.

. . . and massive genocide.