My Thoughts on Free vs. Fair Trade
Juan Bernardez is an IT Professional working and writing out of New Mexico.
Juan Bernardez
May 17, 2005
http://www.americanchronicle.com/art...?articleID=488
Being a skilled laborer is not a bad thing for an individual or our overall economy. Skilled and unskilled labors make up the majority of our workforce. This section of the labor market created the Middle Class that we see disappearing. Given the state of today’s economy, without organized labor collectively bargaining employment contracts, this skilled labor market is seeing a drop in all areas of their compensation, such as lower wages, more expensive healthcare benefits, longer hours, and less overtime pay.
The "free trade" brought about by NAFTA, and now CAFTA, has created an environment that allows many skilled and unskilled jobs to be exported to other countries. (Remember that "sucking sound" that Ross Perot heard?) This is about jobs in manufacturing, steel, and textiles -- and in some cases farming/agricultural jobs. These are the brick and mortar or backbone jobs of our nation.
Corporations send jobs to these countries to avoid meeting the contract terms of unions, regulations, OSHA, EPA …. you name it -- in order to maximize profits. This is truly the free market capitalism that benefits corporations over people. I would prefer fair trade where our workers are negotiating for their jobs on an even playing field with foreign workers. This means comparable compensation, regulation, and environmental concerns. In the case where these parameters are not equal, we need to put in place effective trade balancing policies (tariffs or restrictions if you will) that will keep the market level and fair.
Corporate vs. Workers Rights
There are many examples in the news each day that illustrate how the rights of corporations are being held greater then the rights of individuals. For example, we see United Airlines pilots and mechanics taking pay cuts while the corporation is bailing out on their pension fund responsibilities that will leave about 150,000 people lacking part or, in some cases, all of their pensions. A judge in their bankruptcy hearing allowed this. Where corporations can still seek bankruptcy and corporate welfare/relief from our government, bankruptcy options for individuals have been severely restricted by our current administration.
Corporate law, as I have read it, only requires the corporations to maximize profits and increase stock prices. It does not require them to take into account the well being of the rest of the society. We as individuals are required to moderate our actions and behavior with respect to the rights of the rest of society. Government regulations keep corporations in line in this respect as our laws keep the individual in line. With our current move towards greater deregulation and the movement of corporate manufacturing to foreign countries, the corporations have gained an excessive amount of power and rights over the individual worker.
Rich vs. Poor
There is no way to put the disparity between the rich and poor better than the way Bill Moyers did in a speech he presented at New York University on June 3, 2004:
Astonishing as it seems, no one in official Washington seems embarrassed by the fact that the gap between the rich and poor is greater than it has been in 50 years -– the worst inequality among all western nations. Or that we are experiencing a shift in poverty. For years it was said those people down there at the bottom were single, jobless mothers. For years they were told that work, education, and marriage are how they move up the economic ladder. But poverty is showing up where we didn’t expect it -– among families that include two parents, a worker, and a head of the household with more than a high school education. These are the newly poor. Our political, financial and business class expects them to climb out of poverty on an escalator moving downward.(
http://www.inequality.org/moyerstranscript.pdf)
Money and Government
As John McCain said during his Presidential run in 2000, elections today are nothing more than “…influence peddling schemes in which both parties compete to stay in office by selling the country to the highest bidder.” This is just down right unacceptable in our society. The power of our government is brokered in Washington by lobbyists and special interests to the detriment of the citizenry. Instead of being a government “Of, By and For the People” it has transferred that focus to “Of, By and For the Corporations.” The why’s and how’s to explain the theft of people’s rights are many. But it comes down to unwieldy, ineffective campaign finance laws and a lack of sufficient term limits for House members and Senators. These “public servants” have failed to serve the public and instead are serving themselves and the corporate power elites that finance their campaigns.
Conclusion
If you take a look at all of these issues you will see that they are interconnected. Problems in one area lead to problems in another. Less corporate control means less worker rights; this leads to greater corporate profit giving them more influence in legislation furthering the separation of the wealthy few from the many poor. The power and governance of our nation is slipping to a select group rather than being distributed among the total citizenry. This is not the definition of a Democracy but, rather, of an Oligarchy.
My Thoughts on Free vs. Fair Trade
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