For OpEdNews: Vi Ransel - Writer
Protectionism. Capitalists were all for it before they were against it. When manufacturing took place in America, when they paid workers enough to buy the products they produced, adding a tariff/tax/fee on to the cost of imported goods made by these same manufacturers' competitors overseas, was fine. It just made sense. It was good business to prevent your domestic market from being flooded with cheaper goods from overseas, because that would lower domestic manufacturing's ability to make enough money to stay in business. And this is exactly how the British and the Americans built their global empires.
But when "free trade" was elevated to the god of the marketplace, when American manufacturers had the ability to locate manufacturing overseas in order to take advantage (and I do mean take advantage) of "cheap labor platforms" - that is, to stand on the backs of poor people in other countries who had no choice but to work at a rate far below American workers, who, after all, were Americans and had come to expect a "fair" share of the wealth they created with their labor in the form of wages - well then, all bets were off. And the downsizing of American industry and the outsourcing of American jobs were off to the race to the bottom in order to fatten the bottom line.
American industries became multi-nationals. They built their manufacturing plants in many countries with all the "cheap labor platforms" they could find to use as scaffolding. They lost the ability to think of themselves as American manufacturers, except when it came to branding their products (produced outside America via foreign, "cheap labor platforms") as American, reaping the benefit of American manufacturing's reputation without actually selling American-made products. Thus, many American manufacturers were American nationals in name only. There were transnationals, manufacturers without a country, since they stood over/across - trans - all countries to make their profits. And in the process they abandoned America, Americans and their own American-ness. They abandoned loyalty to their own country and transferred it entirely to money.
(snip)....
But this still isn't enough. It wasn't enough to close plants in American and move them and our jobs overseas. It wasn't enough to bankrupt us with medical bills and foreclose on our houses. It wasn't enough to "extend" us "credit" to subsist on since our wages are insufficient. Oh no, no, no, dearie, no. "American" corporations need more.
"American" corporations, transnationals, dontcha know, discovered H-1B. No. Not H1N1. H-1B. They claimed that they couldn't find enough qualified American workers to do those high tech jobs that weren't so easy to outsource. And there is an entire industry... OK. Maybe not an entire industry, but a niche, a nit-brained, immoral niche of law/consulting firms that do little but make sure "American" corporations do not find any qualified Americans to do these jobs. Enter H-1B, a visa that allows these "American" corporations to import labor, thus displacing even more American workers, who are now competing with other out-of-work Americans, those "cheap labor platforms" in other countries, the labor scaffold transnationals are constructing out of "illegal" aliens, and legal aliens on H-1B visas brought to America specifically to take more American jobs. Pretty soon we're going to have to cross the border to look for work in transnationals' Mexican maquiladoras. Oh, wait, some "American" corporations planning to relocate overseas will allow you to keep the job you've had for 20 years if you're willing to relocate. To India. Whatta deal! (...continued)
http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/Class-War-in-America-the-by-Vi-Ransel-090511-980.html
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