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Peacetrain

(22,836 posts)
Sat Jun 25, 2016, 02:29 PM Jun 2016

Globalization.. the Trade Pacts.. be careful for what you wish..

When I first went to college in the late 60's.. I took classes that gave me information about my reality that just floored me.. The huge country I lived in.. that I thought was the center of the universe had only about 5% of the worlds population.. but that 5% used 60 to 70 % of the worlds resources..

It stopped me cold.. we were this booming (starting to slow down, but still booming) industrial giant.. who used up so much of the worlds resources and left little for the rest.. especially developing nations..

Many politicians.. very left and right and middle.. saw trade as a way to balance the inequities of the world.. to give us trade partners.. export our democracy .. and by globalization erase the need for wars ..

These are very good goals.. but the consequences of globalization affected our workers here in the this country..

Nothing is simple in this world.. and everything we do will have unseen consequences..

I wish I could just throw something out there and say this is it.. and if we do not do exactly this.. the hell with everything.. when it is always so much more complicated..





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hollysmom

(5,946 posts)
1. what we exported was exploitation of workers,
Sat Jun 25, 2016, 02:36 PM
Jun 2016

destruction of the environment, and dictatorships.
the US does not like democracy in other countries,it is too hard to work with independent minds, so much easier to encourage military take overs and then work with corrupt leaders.

I am sorry, I don't see trade pacts as "exporting democracy".

Peacetrain

(22,836 posts)
2. Understand you might not now.. but then..
Sat Jun 25, 2016, 02:39 PM
Jun 2016

it was a very big deal to bring some kind of equity to the universe as it were.. people promoted it .. everything has sides to it we do not see.. till after the deed is done and anything can be manipulated.. and made into something not so good..

Peacetrain

(22,836 posts)
4. true that hollysmom.. true that..
Sat Jun 25, 2016, 02:47 PM
Jun 2016

I guess I have reached that place in my life..where you make the best decisions you can with the information you have at hand.. and sometimes that decision can be totally wrong..because that is all you had to work with.. the information at hand.. I think the best thing any of us can do.. is be flexible.. and when it becomes obvious something is not working..be able to move to another place and not get locked into our politics.. or wanting desperately to be correct..

hollysmom

(5,946 posts)
6. I amnot picking on you for that,I have been in high enough in business and gladly left
Sat Jun 25, 2016, 03:11 PM
Jun 2016

when they gave me a tin parachute, unlike who they really screwed over the other employees. We are supposed to be happy with our little unfairness.
To understand how suckly corporations are, first study boards, etc. poor people don't get on them, they are the same usual suspects who will rubberstamp a CEO's decisions without thinking for 5 seconds. It is like musical chairs the same people move around from board to board. they are usually related to someone rich and high up in business or occasionally they are a politician's wife or husband that they expect favors from. Most of these people know nothing about business or how to really save money,they just know how to manipulate the market through buzzwords because most of their monty is made through stock options and they set it up so only upper management can make money that way -
for example - once where I worked - an employee could and was encouraged to buy stock for 40 a share - I don't think they ever made money on it that way. I was higher in management and could buy stock for 20 a share and I did and made money on it, just not a lot. however the board and the president and other officers could buy stock for 6 a share and they could buy a lot more than I could and they made millions. So in truth all they ever cared for was the next quarter, the rest of the company be damned. another for example - I managed an IT department (one of many, but I had over 100 staff), when we did systems, we were told not to waste time testing the system - which would make it cost less over a year, but to put it in without testing and then just fix data - when I walked in there, they spent 60% of their time fixing data - I wanted to run out and leave, but I needed it because of a long boring story. I got them down a lot but it was extremely time consuming and stressful and required personal involvement since there was no support to teach people how to do things better other than sitting and working with them on how they could do it better one by one. ugh. and I had other fake work things required by my fearless leaders, and status reports on all the projects and managing the staff and their workloads.
Yet what ever buzzword that could spur the market - that was what they loved. So even though I did a presentation that showed the existing workers were 6 times more productive that new H1B visa workers they were hiring while firing employees the management was hung up that employees cost twice as much and hiring H1B spurred the stock price that quarter, so ....

Warpy

(110,900 posts)
5. Back when that 70% applied, pre Reagan, we were about the only industrial power
Sat Jun 25, 2016, 03:03 PM
Jun 2016

Oh, Japan and Germany were gearing up and England had rebuilt, but we were the net supplier of manufactured goods to the world.

After Reagan, that had changed and we were a net exporter of raw materials to the rest of the world, rather than the supplier of finished goods.

IOW, we used to take in those resources and then return them in another form for a profit, but usually not to the countries that had supplied them. That's where that 70% came from. While our living standard was very high at that point, it wasn't that high.

While globalization did provide jobs to the third world, one could argue it was at the expense of environmental degradation and political corruption. However, living standards for those lucky enough to have those jobs has improved.

It's been an unqulified disaster for the first world, the initial benefit of lower prices overtaken quickly by the lack of decent jobs paying living wages. In addition, offshoring basic industries like textile production and auto replacement parts can be seen as a national security issue. Think about surviving a trade blockade for a few years.

The first world is starting to rebel against globalization. The result will be chaos for a long time, Trump and Brexit just being the first muddled salvos in a very long fight.

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