Friday, February 17, 2012

No Middle Ground: China's Way---or the Highway?

Author David Sirota asseses the conundrum faced by the US: "President Barack Obama admitted it when in his State of the Union address he said jobs are returning because “it’s getting more expensive to do business in places like China.” Economists at the Boston Consulting Group underscored it when in August they said employment growth is happening because rising Chinese wages are “eroding China’s cost advantages” while the United States “is becoming a lower-cost country” as American wages decline. And GE Consumer & Industrial CEO James Campbell reiterated it when he recently told the New York Times that “making things in America is as viable as making things any place” because domestic labor costs are now “significantly less with the competitive wages” — read: far lower wages — now accepted by American workers...Now that this consensus is finally out in the open, the real question for America is simple: Do we accept an economic competition that asks us to emulate China?"

Six-day work weeks, no environmental or workplace regulations, extremely low wages... or if, "alternately, we reject this dystopian future, then it requires us to more seriously consider things like tariffs, industrial policy, tax incentives for domestic investment and Buy America laws for government procurement. In other words, it requires us to declare that access to the American marketplace is no longer free — that corporations who want to sell things to Americans must play by our wage, environmental and human rights rules no matter where they make their products."


As Mr. Sirota explains, at this point, there ain't no other way. Read the full Salon article "Is China Our Future?"  here