The new trend in books seems to be economics. That is why economists Thomas L. Friedman and Steven D. Levitt have best sellers. We read them because something strange is going on in the world, we know it has to do with economics and maybe these men can explain.
But it is this book by Gabor Steingart that gives us the real lowdown and it more than the others is the one that should be a best seller.
Much of what he writes about we have already observed. It is something that we didn't see coming, but it rained down on us like pieces of a major plane crash. Americans are in shock. Just what did happen anyway?
In the late 1980's and early 1990's , during the reign of George Bush the first, the Iron Curtain came down. It was a marvelous historical event and we all thought that the era of Pax Americana had come. The United States was left standing and the only super power left.
Why shouldn't this be great news for us? During the Bill Clinton years we relaxed in an era of prosperity. The stock market soared. We bought houses, cars and maxed out our credit cards. Sure some jobs were being outsourced, but even when we were being laid off, it just didn't seem to really affect us. There were other jobs. We were young and carefree. So what if we had to work fifty plus hours a week at two jobs. We had money jingling in our pockets and we had a pocketful of credit cards.
But factory jobs were already disappearing. We turned to service jobs. We worked in call centers and at lunch counters. But then the call centers started moving to India. What was up?
It's called “Coca Cola Colonialism” and it doesn't stop with exporting our jobs. Our know how goes with it and if you want lots of facts and figures and examples to back that up, read Steingart's book. The situation is worse than you can imagine even if you are sitting on an unemployment check as you read this.
From page 167: “One-fourth of all U.S. doctoral diplomas in science and engineering are handed out to Chinese students. More than half of these graduates return home to China to devote themselves to the development of new knowledge centers for biotechnology, genetic engineering and nanotechnology.”
Steingart claims that the next Einstein will come from China or India.
The author goes on to write about how China is not only taking our jobs and our technology, but also taking over our companies.
The RCA brand name, for instance, still exists and I bet you thought it was still an American company. Hitachi, a Japanese company, sells its television sets, DVD players and other electronics under the RCA brand.
There are human costs all over the world. Eastern and western companies that set up shop in China or India avoid paying union wages and they can not only work people at fifty cents a day, but they can force them to work long hours and they can put children in the factories. Imagine the horrors of these sweat shops.
One thing not mentioned in the book, but that I will mention, is the Global Poverty Act introduced by Senator Barack Obama of Illinois. It earmarks 0.07 percent of the the U.S. Gross National Product to stamp out poverty in countries like India and China. I have nothing against a war on poverty, but American tax payers should not be called upon to subsidize the very people who are stealing our jobs.
The book fails to detail the pain Americans feel, but it gives a clear story about how China, India and other superpowers have grown into mega giants ready to eat us up. And it gives some details about why the U.S. dollar is still strong despite our imports doubling and our exports shrinking.
This is a must read for Americans who may soon find themselves as a third world country.
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Comments: 25
The politically correct term for slavery today is human trafficking and it's a live and well on planet earth in India, China, many of the former iron curtain countries and Africa- the US too. It's all rooted in poverty. It doesn't matter if you are talking about labor slaves or sex slaves it all comes back to poverty.
We have to help our neighbors first. Better to put that money into a national health care system or intoi Social Security.
nicely written.
I think Ken K. made a good comment, and I think more places need to do what he says is happening in Buffalo -- focusing on creating a sustainable future for their community, not wishing for a return to the past.
I'd also like to comment on your information about the Global Poverty Act. I've read the text of the bill and it doesn't say anything about an earmark of "0.07 percent of the the U.S. Gross National Product to stamp out poverty in countries like India and China."
The Global Poverty Act is about creating a strategy to significantly reduce the number of people in the world living on less than $1 a day. It has absolutely nothing to do with subsidizing "the very people who are stealing our jobs." Personally, I have my doubts about whether such a strategy will work, but I certainly don't condemn those who are willing to try, and I wouldn't mind kicking in my share (less than $20 a week) to find out.
We shouldn't be sending money to countries which allow the oppression of their working class. We should be refusing to buy products made by those countries.
Sadly, what we haven't realized is that our actual wage value has been steadily decreasing for a long time now, and what we are making now is worth about 60% of what it was worth in 2000.
So people have been refinancing their homes to inflated levels to make ends meet, assuring themselves that things will get better, and the new mortgages actually LOWERED their monthly expenses (they did, because they were paying interest only on a loan which was adding other fees to their mortgage balance, and leaving them with a totally unmanageable balloon payments years later).
It's a tragedy, and I don't know if there's a way to reverse course now. If we are lucky, at very best we might prolong status quo for a while longer, but sooner or later we are going to have to reduce our expectations and learn to live within our means, and that our means are not near the affluence we expect for ourselves...
Thank you Mary Ann. What I especially liked about this post, although only a fragment of a larger sentence, is:
"...Americans who may soon find themselves as a third world country."
Even though it is a terrifying thing to contemplate, the possibility doesn't get raised often enough (which is basically, not at all)!