Remember when they sold us the idea that the original NAFTA would create a middle class in Mexico. Instead it is one part of the equation the multi nationals used to weaken our middle class.
And yes I am about to say this: remember back in the day...
Years ago we had a more diverse wealth base. There were many manufacturers, different retail companies, food was a bit more local and accessible through real farmers markets, shops and local butchers, unions protected the rights of workers, people earned enough to live within their means and products worked. If not, you took them to a local repair shop. Clothes were made of natural fabrics like cotton and wool. Shoes were made of leather and there were shoe repair shops. And there were multitudes of local businesses from restaurants to dry cleaners to barbers to carpenters to plumbers to much more. Utilities were considered safe stocks and you owned them to have dividend income. Mutual funds helped the middle class save and Wall Street didn’t control the entire business world.
Over the last fifty years all that has changed and not one bit of it for the common good. Sure a few people are extremely richer, yet you make less comparatively and goods are sold cheaply with no expectation that they are going to work.
You go to one of the few retailers left to buy a vacuum cleaner made of plastic from labor extremely underpaid from across the world so the profits can be higher for the few. And the vacuum cleaner may work two years, maybe. You can buy some type of insurance that will protect you in case something goes wrong because things are so cheap and they make so much money from making and selling them that replacing this crap with an insurance policy, that makes someone else fantastically richer than you, is cheaper than manufacturing something that will last or if it doesn’t they could maintain a repair shop to fix it so you can keep it for ten years.
So instead of more people engaged in the whole of society with the production and maintenance of products, the multi nationals found a way to consume competition, throw American labor under the bus, and do everything in their power to weaken to destroy the American middle class so they won’t rise up and elect people to prevent them from this economic oligarchy. And unfortunately we let them do this to us.
So the Trump supporters who want manufacturing to come back to America and want jobs for Americans are correct. This would be good. There is more to this than just than this conjunction, but that is the base of the base thought.
So they are right, but completely wrong. We cannot live in the past. The struggle is to bring jobs back to Americans, but not through isolationism.
It is through embracing the 21st century and new technologies and industries. And by doing this we should simultaneously rebuild local economies. We need more competition within America. We need to bring back many of the service industries to local ownership to rebuild the wealth throughout America.
We live in a global world and that will not change. The change is how do we as Americans rebuild our economy for the 21st century. How do we rebuild a large middle and working class, support the local businesses so the upper middle class prospers in their community instead of being corporate lackeys making a higher salary than everyone else? Yes earning money can be good, but if you are only being offered a bit more than others then you are only a serf with more stuff, but you do not have real ownership or control of your life. You may lie to yourself that you do because you have a stock portfolio, but you do not. You are still at the beck and call of your corporate overlords. Think not, then why are you answering emails at 10 pm? Why do you let your work life so permeate your home life that there is no difference?
It is one thing to own a family business and work many hours to help it flourish. It is another to work excessive hours that allows a very small percentage of people to make extraordinary amounts of money and your job is dependent on their whims. Sure we do need many people to work in upper management because with globalization we will have some large companies. That is part of our lives, but it not should be the dominant part of our lives and our economy.
When wealth is more diverse, when more people are invested into making their local economy strong, when they have a say in local politics much more is done for the common good. When your life is dependent on people you have no connection with, when your livelihood is so disconnected from your environment, you have less interest in your local environment, you become disconnected from the whole of your local community and hence have no desire to become involved. When the plant you work for is local or when the CEO of your company is someone you know or can access or when most of your goods and services comes from within or near your community you pay more attention to what affects your community.
Is this idealistic? No, right now though it is a struggle to bring to fruition. And so when the Trump supporters say we need to bring back manufacturing to America they lose sight of what that means in the 21st century. They need to allow change, not prevent it. They need to become more involved with change in their community and supporting the growth of bringing back home the basics of life. The reliance on multinationals from agriculture to simple products such as vacuum cleaners has hurt us in more ways than one.
There are some things that will need large corporations. Cars for example would struggle in a local economy. Even manufacturing of most house hold products would struggle in a local economy, but if built here with quality or even overseas with quality, but the product was supported locally it helps the local economy. We still have car dealerships and car repair shops and people do well in these businesses so why can’t we apply this to all manufactured goods?
Anyway a household good built with quality in mind where workers are paid a decent wage use to happen in America and things were good. And this could happen again if the right people decided it could happen. We would need to change who represents us, we could use a major infrastructure overhaul to repair what needs to be repaired and to stage what the 21st century will bring us in needs, and we need to change our attitudes towards moving forward rather than sitting around waiting for the next catastrophe. We got one now so it is a good time to plan for what our country will look like afterwards. The one thing we don’t need is billionaires and elitists telling us and our Congress that if they don’t make more billions then things are bad. Quite frankly a few hundred million is not a bad thing, so why do they need more. It is their misconception of their worth to society and their greed that hampers society.
And I could use a well built vacuum cleaner and I will pay extra for it, because outside of changing the belts or cleaning a clogged tube I cannot do much more and I am tired of buying this crap every couple of years or being forced to spend inordinate amounts of money on some type of product insurance. Give me the damn quality over this crap. Convenience can be good, but at most points a little effort is better.
For a side note here is a human interest story. I knew a person who flew bombers over Germany in World War II. Eventually he became part of the upper middle class as a pilot flying commercial jets. He settled down and had a TV. He would take it to the local repair shop. The person that ran the shop was a young man in Germany in the 1940's who survived the bombings of the pilot. There could have been a reason for hate, instead they became friends and had mutual respect for each other as human beings. And each of them was a contributor to what worked for this country economically. This is the America we should live in, where people of all walks of life know each other, engage with each other and respect each other. Support your local worker and your local business and you will do more to support America than the lies of corporate America.
Cheers
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