The Fall of the American Consumer
How much lower can consumer spending go? The malls are like mausoleums, retail clerks are getting laid off and AOL recently featured on its welcome page the story of a man so cheap that he recycles his dental floss–hanging it from a nail in his garage until it dries out.
It could go a lot lower of course. This guy could start saving the little morsels he flosses out and boil them up to augment the children’s breakfast gruel. Already, as the recession or whatever it is closes in, people have stopped buying homes and cars and cut way back on restaurant meals. They don’t have the money; they don’t have the credit; and increasingly they’re finding that no one wants their money anyway. NPR reported on February 28 that more and more Manhattan stores are accepting Euros and at least one has gone Euros-only.
The Sharper Image has declared bankruptcy and is closing ninety-six US stores. (To think I missed my chance to buy those headphones that treat you to forest sounds while massaging your temples!) Victoria’s Secret is so desperate that it’s adding fabric to its undergarments. Starbucks had no sooner taken time off to teach its baristas how to make coffee than it started laying them off.
While Americans search for interview outfits in consignment stores and switch from Whole Foods to Wal-Mart for sustenance, the world watches tremulously. The Australian Courier-Mail, for example, warns of an economic “pandemic” if Americans cut back any further, since we are responsible for $9 trillion a year in spending, compared to a puny $1 trillion for the one billion-strong Chinese. Yes, we have been the world’s designated shoppers, and, if we fall down on the job, we take the global economy with us.
“Shop till you drop,” was our motto, by which we didn’t mean to say we were more compassion-worthy than a woman fainting at her work station in some Honduran sweatshop. It was just our proper role in the scheme of things. Some people make stuff; other people have to buy it. And when we gave up making stuff, starting in the 1980s, we were left with the unique role of buying. Remember Bush telling us, shortly after 9/11, to get out there and shop? It may have seemed ludicrous at the time, but what he meant was get back to work.
We took pride in our role in the global economy. No doubt it takes some skill to make things, but what about all the craft that goes into buying them–finding a convenient parking space at the mall, navigating our way through department stores laid out for maximum consumer confusion, determining which of our credit cards still has a smidgeon of credit in it? Not everyone could do this, especially not people whose only experience was stitching, assembling, wiring and packaging the stuff that we bought.
But if we thought we were special, they thought we were marks. They could make anything, and we would dutifully buy it. I once found, in a party store, a baseball cap with a plastic turd affixed to its top and the words “shit head” on the visor. The label said “made in the Philippines” and the makers must have been convulsed as they made it. If those dumb Yanks will buy this…
There’s talk already of emergency measures, like making Christmas a weekly holiday, although this would require a level of deforestation that could leave Cheney with no quail to hunt.
More likely, there’ll be a move to outsource shopping, just as we’ve already outsourced manufacturing, customer service, X-ray reading and R&D. But to whom? The Indians are clever enough, but right now they only account for $600 million in consumer spending a year. And could they really be trusted to put a flat screen TV in every child’s room, distinguish Guess jeans from a knock-off and replace their kitchen counters on an annual basis?
And what happens to us, the world’s erstwhile shoppers? The President recently observed, in one of his more sentient moments, that unemployment is “painful.” But if a pink slip hurts, what about a letter from Citicard announcing that you’ve been laid off as a shopper? Will we fill our vacant hours twisting recycled dental floss onto spools or will we decide that, if we can’t shop, we’re going to have to shoplift?
Because we’ve shopped till we dropped alright, face down on the floor.
Barbara Ehrenreich, the author of Nickel and Dimed (Owl), is the winner of the 2004 Puffin/Nation Prize.
Copyright © 2008 The Nation
Just telling my husband about this. We don’t make anything in the US anymore. When we get our “economy-fixer-upper” checks, they’ll all be going from our bank accounts to China via Walmart, which will do nothing to help our economy. If you get one of those checks, may I suggest you go to a fair trade store and buy something? Even if you don’t need it? At least it won’t be going to China…and a sweat shop, er, offshore manufacturing corporation.
” We don’t make anything in the US anymore.”
Of course we do. In fact, with the weak dollar, our exports are up substantially, lowering the trade gap. Why do so many people parrot this?
What do you mean, we do not make anything in America anymore? How about war, munitions? Bombs,missles,tanks,guns,bullets ect.
That too. The point was that it’s not very smart to repeat cliches that just aren’t true.
The US builds more prisons. Those are made in the USA.
Jakenewton, have you actually tried to shop US only for everything you buy? ‘Cause this is how I shop — daily. Canadian label first choice (because I live here) and US second — for the carbon footprint factor. It’s hard enough to find Canadian, harder still to find US. Or maybe your stuff just isn’t coming to Canada (despite exports up, trade gap down) . . . and I live in a large urban centre.
Because Americans confused their responsibilities as citizens with consumerism and didn’t analyze the propogranda to spend themselves out of security, they are unprepared to handle the reality of being responsible both in their citizenhood and in their consumerism. I still remember the man standing in line saying he needed an iPhone. You need food, water, air, shelter, not a piece of equipment that duplicated other things you have. Better to stand in line to protest what the government is doing to you.
The US makes even more weapons than prisons and the weapons get exported to the highest bidder, irrespective of whether or not those weapons will be used against the US military or US citizens.
jake is right. The U.S. has a booming export industry in death and debt. Ride the wave.
What were they thinking? –That we could keep doing this indefinitely? Globalism, deregulation, free trade — inevitable? There was a radical discontinuity: The industrialized countries had relatively stable populations, while the “developing world” had burgeoning populations. Of course they would work for less. Of course business would go for the lowest cost production. The bugaboo was “isolationism”. So here we are.
And don’t remind me that we consume so much more than they. That is of course because they don’t have (haven’t had) the money to consume like we do. No, we are going on SEVEN BILLION people and counting, on a planet that has a shrinking land area. Think about it.
“…this would require a level of deforestation that could leave Cheney with no quail to hunt.”
I thought Cheney bags lawyers.;)
Just to be nit-picky: Quail thrive in tall brush, not in forests. Ms. E. is an experienced journalist (who I admire) and should have known better than to toss that line in without knowing anything about it.
Hell, last I heard we were doing a booming bid’ness in exports of shitty movies, poorly programmed computer software, “grey graph-paper brained” (as Jello Biafra once put it) music and overheated jingoistic rhetoric.
Oh, and small arms, like the ones used in last Thursday’s massace in Israel.
So, you see, it’s not all black and white! It’s more technicolor, like the technicolor yawn I want to make every time I think of what Bush & Co. has done to this country.
Just this morning there was a segment on NPR about how Caterpillar Corp. is doing extremely well thanks to exports of American made heavy equipment. Guess where they’re going… mostly to the mining and construction industries in third world countries. Yes, we’re doing a great job of exporting the tools of deforestation and environmental degradation. Three cheers for global capitalism!
US Bureau of Labor Statistics definition of manufacturing:
http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oessrci.htm#31-33
scroll down to
NAICS 722000 - Food Services and Drinking Places
We do manufacture hamburgers; I don’t know that we export them though.
An elderly lady wrote an insightful letter to our local paper pointing out that the recent interest rate cuts (unjustified as they were due to real inflation) will actually do much toward discouraging retail sales. She pointed out that all of her discretionary income comes from interest on her bank CDs (the case with many many seniors), and now that the Fed is sharply cutting her income that she will necessarily be cutting back on her shopping. She plans to put her “stimulus” payment tightly in the bank.
I wonder what the disaster capitalists are thinking? It’s not a tsunami, hurricane, or civil war, but a paucity of shopping. I get solicited by Capital One through the mail everyday. They’ll keep up the push for every consumer to mortgage their future at subprime rates. Wait and see how big the next crash will be. Maybe this is what it’ll take to build a sustainable economic system in lieu of a planet-raping one.
jakenewton opined “Of course we do [make stuff]. In fact, with the weak dollar, our exports are up substantially, lowering the trade gap. Why do so many people parrot this?”
Oh, gee, I dunno. Must be those 200,000 factory workers… err… I mean, former factory workers in Ohio who don’t have jobs anymore. Or all those former factory workers in Flint, Michigan who don’t even show up on the jobless reports anymore because their unemployment benefits have run out. Or maybe it was the 63,000 people (net) who got pink slips last month. Given that the economy normally needs to add about 150,000 jobs per month to stay even with population growth, that’s a shortfall approaching a quarter of a million jobs. In one month.
Or maybe you yourself put your finger on the issue. If the dollar amount of exports increased because those dollars aren’t worth much anymore, did those exports really incease? So let’s see… even though the trade deficit was up in January ($58.2 billion as opposed to 57.9 billion in December), our exports did increase from $145.9 billion to $148.2 billion. Are those in adjusted dollars? The “dollar index” peaked at around 78 in December, but peaked around 77 in January. That’s about a 1.25% decline, which, you know, kinda eats into the “increase” in exports.
Of course, the dollar index at 77 was the good old days. It now stands at about 72. Hey, but the dollar losing, oh, 8% or so of its value in 3 months shouldn’t really worry anyone. After all, China’s currency is pegged to ours, so we can keep buying cheap stuff at Wal-Mart no matter how badly our currency tanks.
But then again, buying stuff is only half the issue. The other half is getting back and forth to the mall. That’s getting kinda expensive…
Let’s do some math. A trade deficit of 58.2 billion per month translates to an annual deficit of just under $700 billion. That’s a little less than $2500 per person in the country. So my little family of three’s share of the deficit is about… umm… somewhere over $7000. Per year.
Sent to China and Saudi Arabia.
I think about this stuff. You should too.
When Obama or Clinton (on second thought, not Clinton) bring up and show beyond any reasonable doubt, how the Republicans have destroyed, and are continuing to destroy, the middle class, McCain will scream “TERROR” and be elected presdident. Uncle Sam can get rid of his red, white and blue top hat and replace it with one of those baseball caps made in the Philippines with the plastic fece on top and the word SHITHEAD across the front.
It’s the terrorists’ fault. Bush told us to go out and shop after 911, and we didn’t do it.
About buying “made in the U.S.A.” goods, don’t bank on that actually being true. I read somewhere recently that companies such as Walmart label goods as “made in the U.S.A.” when they are actually made somewhere else. Knowing how dysfunctional our government is (especially under Bush), I’m sure there’s no enforcement mechanism for ensuring that such labels are truthful.
Question:
Is there anything that you progressives DON’T bitch about???
First you all bitch and bitch about how we are all over-consumers and we have an overindulgent, wasteful lifestyle. Now that we have to cut back you bitch that we’re destroying the economy by NOT spending!
The economy is cyclical…get over it!
Thanks for the reminder. Sounds like, “Wellstone’s Dead! Get over it!”
I’ll never get over it, you miserable rat! And if you were nearby….
None of this would be happening if the march to free trade hadn’t been undertaken as a unilateral move by the US. And if American labor got a better rate of return than capital.
Henry Ford, no progressive, understood that if his workers couldn’t afford his product he was screwed. He paid them well enough that they could by a Model-T and he made money hand over fist as a result.
Had wages kept pace with dividends and interest there wouldn’t have been a “slowdown.” Bad policy has consequences.
There was a fairly fascinating (to me anyway) program on UCTV (University of California Television) on how for a number of reasons the “average consumer” has fewer and fewer options for economizing … the most obvious being shrinking discretionary income and new “essentials” (particularly in the face of flat real wages for a decade.
Most folks have nothing the “cut back on” … so they are forced to “do without.” One of the points made was that Chinese (and other) imports have resulted in such low prices for things like clothes and electronics (compared to where these items would be priced in real dollars adjusted for inflation) that this gradual loss of discretionary income has been hidden, there’s has been plenty of cheap stuff to buy permitting the shopping habit to continue. But, in reality, there’s been less and less “give” in the average budget which is now routinely gobbled up right off the bat by things like mortgages, gasoline, telephone, taxes, health care contributions and co-pay — y’know “necessities” if you can afford them at all. (part of that two tier economy as well, there are plenty who can’t afford them or don’t qualify or aren’t eligible).
I’ve been facing quite a bit of that myself … I buy almost nothing new (and haven’t for well over a decade)… but food prices are rising and I won’t eat packaged prepared food … what to do?
None of this will change soon. Obama and Clinton if elected will keep the warm-hearted sympathies flowing while they pander and faun over the corporatists and financiers who elect them.
That’s why I’m voting Nader again. It may take one or two more big losses to Republicans and one or two more decades of crushing decline of the “middle” class to get it. Oh well.
I highly recommend a 20 minute video called The Story Of Stuff.
It talks about our consumer culture and the damage it does.
http://www.storyofstuff.com/
We aren’t just consumers. Time we started voting for people who talk about us as *people*, as employees, as workers and concerned citizens of a world facing terrible consequences if we don’t *stop* gobbling up everything in sight. Yes, Obama has no solution, just more of the same.
I picture Cuba and their 60 year-old cars. Soon the dollar won’t be worth the paper it’s printed on and with everything purchased from overseas-including replacement parts-we better make sure we keep all those inscrutable tech manuals handy. Then we can send the kids out to the landfills (family values fun!) to scrounge up some of the stuff we’ve been tossing every time a new improved model hits the market and the few old timers with long unused skills can be useful again when the Fed repeals SS.
i think the Reverend Billy has it right….”STOP SHOPPING.” reduce, reuse, recycle. recreate. we’re certainly in for some interesting times…
“Jakenewton, have you actually tried to shop US only for everything you buy? ”
No
“Or maybe your stuff just isn’t coming to Canada (despite exports up, trade gap down)”
I doubt that. $190 billion in 2004:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_United_States
$230 in ‘06, these figures don’t include services:
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/2089.htm
Another thing that America has been making since bush went into office is enemies around the world.
He’s so good at exporting hatred.
“former factory workers in Ohio who don’t have jobs anymore. ”
How do you know they didn’t find other jobs? And how does this support the idea that “We don’t make anything in the US anymore.”? We do. Now if you want to say that the manufacturing sector in the US is *in decline*, say that. Parroting extreme exagerations isn’t very smart, think about that.
I live by the railroad tracks in a town about 75 miles east of Los Angeles; the BNSF main line to the east. There are lots of trains every day and almost all of them are containers on flat cars carrying names like Hanshin, China Shipping, Hyundai, etc.
Very few box cars go by any more, carrying things that we make here in this country. I recently made a long trip by train and it was eye-opening to see how many sidings have been torn up, sidings to buildings that used to have a factory or assembly plant (and workers) inside.
Sad what is happening to our country in the name of globalization, “free” trade and the corporate bottom line.
If some foreign power was to devastate our cities like some American corporations do, we would probably declare war.
What can we do politically? Vote for Change? Experience? 100 more years of war? The choices are divorved from the reality of our situation. I know! Ralph Nader, who actually addresses these problems, but no…I don’t want to be called a spoiler…
Oh, and jakenewton…I’m sure some of those former Ohio factory workers did find jobs in the service industry. The good paying union job that dad to support his family is gone. He is now working in a tire store selling Korean tires and Mom is now working (she didn’t before) in a fast food joint.
Dad used to make $22.00/hour with benefits.Now the 2 of them together make $16.50/hour with NO benefits. Hope one of their kids doesn’t get sick or break a leg.
But, oh the wonders of post industrial capitalism! There are now two jobs where there was only one before.
We just have to accept that manufacturing is in decline!
I agree, arpedkedarki. I haven’t gone shopping in so long I’ve forgotten how. I put ten bucks in my gas tank once a month, with a buck tip for the poorer than me person pumping the gas - of course being retired, I can get by doing this. I make one trip to the grocery store a week for the few things I really do need, and to the allergist for my shots once a month.
I stay home and watch a little of my (cheapest) basic cable TV, which is mostly religion, paid programming (nice name for hour long ads), and commercials, and I’m going to have to give it up before long if I want to keep buying those necessities; and I work in my garden, weather permitting. Oh, I do sit here at my budget dial-up connected, ancient-as-me computer to learn what’s happening in the world.
“What do you mean, we do not make anything in America anymore? How about war, munitions? Bombs,missles,tanks,guns,bullets ect.”
Actually, some of that stuff is made in China …
Sad …
But our corporations are happy - they are making record profits because of the weak dollar.
If the workers fail to unite on this one, I think all our children are about to learn first hand about sweatshop labor paying pennies per day.
There is something wrong with an economic system in which saving and recycling are considered a crisis. We have turned the wisdom of our founders (”Waste not, want not” and “A penny saved is a penny earned”) on its head!
Yes, as others have written, we peddle weapons and death. We arm Ethiopia to attack Somalia, Colombia to attack its neighbors, Israel to atack Palestinians and Lebanon, Iraq to attack Iran (oops, that’s “ancient history”), Turkey to attack Kurds (who are oppressed within Turkey), Pakistan & India, and arm kingdoms, dictatorships, and democracies-in-name-only to oppress their citizens and maintain their power, because they are friendly to multinational corporations. See the film, Lords of War to see the effects of our exports in a small nation.
Oh, did I mention crappy films(somebody else did), Coca Cola, and the pushing of tobacco cigarettes?
tlcs_3 -
I am going to take my bribe, er, I mean “tax rebate,” and buy some seeds, garden supplies and start a garden so I will be able to grow my own damn food.
The irony is that our infrastructure is crumbling and there SHOULD be plenty of jobs fixing bridges, roads, and public spaces. There should be plenty of jobs taking care of children and the elderly and the sick — oh, right, there are plenty of those jobs, they just pay dreadfully, often have no benefits, etc. There should be plenty of jobs in our new “clean energy” growth industry… but they’re still largely “in the future” … There should be plenty of jobs for teacher’s aides, teacher’s assistants, and in the schools to try to bring our education system out of the hole it’s been in for years — there are SOME jobs, but again most pay dreadfully, many are part time, offer no benefits …
We’re “paying” for not paying …
“I’m sure some of those former Ohio factory workers did find jobs in the service industry. ”
Don’t tell me, tell Helix. And tell Helix I’m still looking for *real* support for the statement “We don’t make anything in the US anymore.”.
anne faith -
Yes, items made in the Mariannas Islands, specifically Saipan, do qualify as “Made in the USA.” Does it matter that the workers are basically Chinese slave laborers? No, it didn’t matter to Tom Delay when he went on vacation there .. I mean, went on “official” business there to help give breaks to the companies that have crap made there.
” ‘ We don’t make anything in the US anymore.’
“Of course we do. In fact, with the weak dollar, our exports are up substantially, lowering the trade gap. Why do so many people parrot this?”
I think your line is as simplistic as the one above it. Exports have been up in nominal dollars each year over the last 13 years. Imports have increased faster. But when you compare the increase in imports to personal expenditures, you see that much more personal expenditure is probably going to imports than previously to domestic production. From ‘93 to ‘07, personal expenditure increased 117%. Imports increased 227%. Exports did increase 152%. Exports of services increased faster than goods, but goods still made up more than 60% of the increase.
I think the dollar falls because we manufacture less of what we want in the US. Of course, as you point out, this makes our exports cheaper, but because we import a lot, it makes our prices higher. Eventually, the dollar may go so low that it is too expensive to import so much. Perhaps then we will start to make those products here again, or just buy fewer of them. Perhaps we will lay off our Indian customer service agents. Who knows?
It is an interesting angle about how lower interest rates affect the elderly. I suppose they consume more of their principal, with all that entails.
btw, the numbers for import/export are calculated from the census bureau report and the numbers on personal expenditure are calculated from the BEA tables, both current for 2007.
“Eventually, the dollar may go so low that it is too expensive to import so much. Perhaps then we will start to make those products here again, or just buy fewer of them.”
That’s how these things tend to happen, we’ll see.
In WWII, we had this little reminder on the radio many times every day:
Use it up.
Wear it out.
Make it do.
Do without.
That’s because most adults were in the armed services or doing esssential work to keep our country functioning.
We’re now in another kind of emergency brought on by Bush and his appointed minions of very little brain…
How can we buy American? Buy pizza! That’s where all those people went when they lost their manufacturing jobs. You can stand right at the counter and watch your product being made in the U.S.A.(out of sauce made from Mexican tomatoes and cheese made from plastic by-products from India).
Pfek-lar - If you think we all bitch too much, how come you love hanging around us so much?
So far for me I have been careful with my spending. I do own a car, and have a house. My house is modest size and could use a new kitchen an bathroom. One of my consumer hobbies is electric trains LIonel which prided itself on “Made in America”. Now they along with other American Model Train Manufacturers make there products at Sanda Kan Industries in China. A locomotive that sold for $400.00 when made in Michigan, still cost the same made in China. So where is the cheaper goods? In the pockets of the greedy corporate heads.
The consumer economy is, I hope, shrinking permanently to it rightful place in the economic activity of our country. The power elite wanted to kill the middle class, but they forgot who was paying the bills.
I’m done buying crap. My jeans: Carhart (because of durability). My shoes: mostly Crocs, when I wear any (by the way, they have what appears to be a nice recycling program going on). My socks: well, I think I still have some. My shorts: Carhart. My beverage: tap water (okay, I do have a filter pitcher). If any company wants me to wear a garment like a hat or tee shirt with their name on it, they better plan on giving it to me, I won’t do free advertising. The economic term of art “durable goods” better by god apply to all goods as far as I’m concerned.
Out.
I hate to say this but I look forward to malls and stores going out of business. The sickness of unregulated American-style Capitalism is a malignancy that’s going to destroy the entire planet if it’s not brought down by a consumerist collapse.
And anyone who denies that the US has bled manufacturing jobs at a massive rate is delusional.
And Ohio has lost close to 2 MILLION jobs, NOT 200,000 since the Bush Junta took power.
Wow, I work in IT and it’s hard to get a steady gig–the competition for the full time jobs out there is fierce. There are lots of short term contract jobs and temp work, but hardly anything steady enough to keep you in bread and butter; you need to have a second job on the side.
A lot of the contract work is hardly worth it, when you factor in the miles driven and cell phone minutes used (all on your bill). My wife lost her job three times due to outsourcing, and went back to school twice, only to find that most of the work in those professions had been outsourced too!
Jake is right, though, many of those who got axed from their manufacturing jobs are no doubt enjoying new and meaningful work in the restaurant, retail, and janitorial professions.
The price of imported merchandise is subsidized by cheap transportation. As fossil fuels become more expensive, local production will resume.
Meanwhile…
Even the military hardware is being outsourced. The Air Force’s new tanker contract just went to a AirBus and an American partner. The planes will be assembled in Alabama, but the parts will be built in England, France, Spain, Berzerkestan…
And…
Bill Gates is testifying to Congress today on the need for more H1-B visas It seems that importing 60,000 “guest workers” a year just isn’t enough for Microsoft and Silicon Valley. If they can’t export the work to India, they’ll import the cheap workers here.
Makes me want to vote for Ron Paul.
According to the Loonitay Decider, we must shop (and visit Disneyland) in order to show our support for the troops and his illegal invasions and mass murders and massive theft of our future.
So, if most of us can no longer afford to shop and visit Disneyland, does that mean none of us are troop-supporting Patriots anymore?
Gates does not want to hire American workers, not because they are not qualified (as he claims), but because they are too expensive. Also, he is quite concerned about aids in India. Microsoft is certainly not the most saintly of companies.
Goner: It’s ‘whom’ I admire. Object of verb and all that.
Oil just hit $110/bbl.
There isn’t any way to beat the corporations. The best that we can do is slow them own. But in doing so , we hurt the small stockholders, where in some cases dividends are an important part of their income. So what is left? People have to learn to do with less, recycle, ignore fashion advertising and in other words, CHANGE our lifestyles. This might happen whether we like it or not.
Thanks to “Peace Coup” for the Story of Stuff web site.
Goner (March 12th, 2008 12:01 pm), Cheney hunts quail wherever he wants since they aren’t wild birds but stocked and released so he and his buddies can feel like ‘real’ hunters as they kill. Like everything else about Bush/Cheney, Dick’s hunting parties are as phony as fishing in a trout pond so overstocked that you can see the fish jumping over each other for food, and then displaying the photo of all the fish you caught for your friends. Real hunters have a word for people like Cheney — ‘wussies’ with a ‘P’.
Pfek-lar (March 12th, 2008 1:16 pm) wrote: “The economy is cyclical…get over it!”
Pfek-lar, you should take a tour of all the Rust Belt factories falling into decrepitude that closed years ago, the high-paying manufacturing jobs shipped first to Mexico’s ‘Maquilladora’ and then to sweat shops in Asia. For that matter, why not inform a bunch of unemployed auto workers in person that their high-paying jobs are coming back as they scrape by working at low-paying convenience store jobs? Tell them to ‘just get over it!’ This economy is indeed ‘cyclical’ — in the sense that a flushing toilet is ‘cyclical.’
Jakenewton is right — we are making a ton of money from our exports. Take the case of a friend who recently worked at a company where they repackaged Chinese products in boxes labeled in English and shipped them out to Japan. (Products in boxes featuring English are very big in Japan, although many Japanese have no idea what the words mean.) The company was considered one of the state’s largest ‘manufacturers’ and most of the workers made as much as a dollar over minimum wage. That’s how we’ll get our economy back on its feet!
At the local ‘Tar-zhey’ it is impossible to find anything manufactured in America — the closest thing would be “Assembled in the USA from parts made in …” And the racks of fancy new electronic games, laptop computers, DVD players and plasma TVs? Gathering dust — for the first time, the latest gadget inventory isn’t selling out as soon as it hits the shelf.
Excellent point, sdw917 (March 12th, 2008 3:26 pm), and the same sort of thing is happening in this country with undocumented workers, although their sircumstances are not quite as grim as those of the Marianas slave shops.
Chessgames56 (March 12th, 2008 4:06 pm), I have heard a similar tale from four different people I know who work in IT or software design, and it’s not getting any better.
Frank1569 (March 12th, 2008 4:18 pm), the Patriots cheated to win and then lost the big one.
Adam Smith’s Valley
Yea though I walk through the valleys of greed
Yea though I walk through the swamps of need
Yea though I walk through oceans of inequity
I will fear all evil
And I will savor my fear
For fear is what feeds us
It’s the shadow that needs us.
My consumption is anointed with oil
My enemies color up the soil.
Yea it’s hard work:
It’s hard work…….., Coloring up the soil
It’s hard work, plodding through this valley,
While, I wear the ‘thou’ on my flag,
While, I wear the ‘thou’ on my flag.
I tired of empty hope words.
For I know my dollar is my virtue that comforts me
And the biggest stick with a loyal staff, are my Mayflower spritzer rod.
For I know pretty soon selfishness will breed equality
There will be a trickle down somewhere.
For I write the history of this valley.
The table is before me
Surrounded by those I smote.
And I will dwell in the shining house
red or blue for four more years.
It’s hard work in this valley of ‘thou’
Yea it’s hard work in this valley of ‘thou’
Yea though I walk through oceans of inequity,
I will fear all evil,
And I will savor my fear
For fear is what feeds us.
and consumption is what needs us
You’ve heard of the long hot summer?
Well, while George Bush is fiddling the tune of anti-terrorist savior, Americans are dying at home due to crime, drugs, poverty, and oil. An American is more likely to be killed by a local problem than by any terrorist.
Think about it. The summer is coming and my teenagers and their friends can’t find jobs. Any fool, meaning me, can predict that this summer will see crime, deaths and poverty in the United States at its highest levels. The terrorists have won the war because YOU elected an idiot based on his lies and fear tactics.
The economy is falling and hasn’t even seen the beginning of the worst. The Feds are bailing out themselves— afterall the FED is made up of Bankers and they are using taxpayer money lent, no given to them so they can lend it to themselves, charge their organizations a fee, pocket this free money, bail themselves out, while the rest of us poor sap pay the the bill.
When will someone ask, where did the FED get 2 billion? Who is the FED and aren’t they just giving taxpayer money to themselves in exchange for the bad loans they made?
America the home of the brave is now America the home of the fool.
And please you flag waving yokels and patriots, don’t harp on me. Instead put on an f’n uniform and fight for this country or send you kids to die for Georgie porgie and his sidekick darth vader Dick-head.
Or, better yet, find out the answer to the questions I raised and then check your behind to see if it has been recently used.
Barbara:
I wonder how long it will take for the 70% MAJORITY Common Population to realize that only the corporate DLC’s 20% NEW minority Professional Class and the 10% minority Elite Capitalist Class are the ONLY classes and cultures that will be allowed to have the EUROS in order to shop in the new EURO ONLY STORES. People seem to be totally blind to the fact that the 70% MAJORITY Common Population aren’t provided a way to transfer their dollars over into EUROS, only chosen stores and chosen populations. The majority population is going to be left out.
When the corporate government converts to EUROS nearly 30% of the upper population and enough stores to protect those two classes, the Elite Capitalists with the help of the NEW DLC Professional class will be able to easily control the 70% MAJORITY Common Population because the 70% MAJORITY Common Population will not be able to purchase anything. Think about that. No EUROS — No Purchase. That’s when Marshall Law that the conservative right has set up through the Bush administration will be put into effect, because people are not going to be happy, and it won’t be pretty.
It is time for the 70% MAJORITY Common Population to get a clue as to what is going on in the United States before it is too late.
“Take the case of a friend who recently worked at a company where they repackaged Chinese products in boxes labeled in English and shipped them out to Japan. (Products in boxes featuring English are very big in Japan, although many Japanese have no idea what the words mean.) The company was considered one of the state’s largest ‘manufacturers’ and most of the workers made as much as a dollar over minimum wage. ”
Could you provide more detail on this please, such as the name of the company? Thank you.
I spent $198.00 for garden seeds. Most are for food. If wages are not increased in the US this is the tip of the iceberg on recession. The money for the empire will be gone too. I am sure the rest of the world will not take revenge on us in our weakened state because of the brilliant foreign relations of Bu$h the inferior, especially our very popular role as liberators in Iraq.
Pfek-lar, you sound like an obtuse moron when you accuse progressives of first bitching about too much consumer spending and then, in Ehrenreich’s column, ‘bitching’, to use your fine language, that we aren’t spending enough. It is like you are a complete moron because Ehrenreich never suggested we should spend more, she never hinted that we aren’t spending enough. Like most conservatiave morons, Phek-lar, you make up your own baloney and then you sling it and pretend you have made sense.
Ms. Ehrenreich, I am no fan of yours. I think Nickel and Dimed was a facetious, manipulative, fake expose. But this column, it is fantastic. It is so well written it resonates within me like poetry, it reeks of kindness and caring and it makes fantastic points.
I have actually lived below the poverty line. I still do, as a matter of fact. I have been homeless, I have gone without food because I had no funds. The stories you told in Nickel were not good representations of what it is really like to be pool. The framework you used to set yourself up to write that book was manipulative and extremely unconnected to reality. It sounded so pathetic, reading, in Nickel, about you struggling to pay the motel bill and struggling to get crap jobs but the whole time you had access to a way out. Most real poor people would never have made the choices you made in your research, pretend-playing at being poor. You kept yourself completely insulated from the realities of being poor and then you spun it to sell books. The problems of poverty deserve a whole lot better.
But this column, f’ffing awesome. Good on you.
PFek-lar
Yes, it would seem that the economy is cyclical…
Reagan-Bush tripled our national debt and raped Social Security (there was a surplus).
Clinton was actually able to create a surplus..paying down the national debt.
bush the much less has basically doubled our national debt, reducing taxes on the wealthy, more than quadrupling the price of oil (isn’t his “Base” happy) and is borrowing like mad.
Yes, it does certainly appear to be cyclical.
“I highly recommend a 20 minute video called The Story Of Stuff.
It talks about our consumer culture and the damage it does.
http://www.storyofstuff.com/”
Agreed.
The final point of this video, however, is that it is up to us as individuals to change our consumption habits. If we complain about the state of things without changing our personal lives, then we truly are just bitching. I wish Barbara Ehrenreich had concluded with this point.
“$175,000,000,000,000,000,000″
LOL! Now *that* is funny.
Relocalize.net
This suggests an interesting quandary. When it gets to the point where people can no longer afford to feed themselves and revert to theft, what will the state do with them? The prisons are already full of incarceratees for non-violent offenses (most states seem to release the sex offenders, but hang onto druggies for absurd lenths of time). Think this is a joke? Look at historical precedent going back for at least the past couple of thousand years.
It’s a hard rain’s a’gonna fall. Truly.
Oh - I nearly forgot. Buy Guns. Lots of them. Lost of really great guns are still made in America instead of someplace else by cheap, unskilled labor! You may need ‘em.
Cybro4__You have it dead on right. Our country was in good shape after Clintons eight years and the consumers were doing just fine. If the voters had been smart enough not to put in a religious moron with a war agenda, we could still be doing ok.
We cannot change what has happened to our country, but we can stop all the foolish fighting over trifles and make sure we get a change of administration by knocking Bomb Bomb McCain
out of contention.
If we can get enough voters determined to get a change, it can be done despite fixed voting machines and other tactics to steal the election unless we have a new terror to make war on.
Exports are down throughout Western nations because of Free trade zones and slave labour in the third world.
Right-wing governments have catered to the corporate sector and instead of raising the standard of living in the developing world we are lowering our standards to match theirs.
Globalize unions. Fight for the right of Brazillian auto workers to get a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s labour. Only then will the Fords you drive be made in Detroit and not in Brazil. What’s more, Brazillians will then be able to afford to buy the Fords you make.
Looking after workers, no matter which class of worker we are discussing is looking after yourselves. Help yourselves by demanding global fairness. It’s the only way.
jakenewton, Is your real name Rumsfeld?
djwolf: I have waited a long time to hear someone else say this. It is an indication that maybe I am not the only one who sees the obvious.
Thank you.
As bad as things may be in good old US o A, it does not compare to the living hell that has been inflicted upon the hapless citizens of Iraq and Afghanistan by American leaders and its willing citizenry.
Anyone who thinks our manufacturing base is fine, well, never mind.
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts02112006.html
Between 2000 and 2006 “US manufacturing lost 2.9 million jobs, almost 17% of the manufacturing work force. The wipeout is across the board. Not a single manufacturing payroll classification created a single new job.
The declines in some manufacturing sectors have more in common with a country undergoing saturation bombing during war than with a super-economy that is “the envy of the world.” Communications equipment lost 43% of its workforce. Semiconductors and electronic components lost 37% of its workforce. The workforce in computers and electronic products declined 30%. Electrical equipment and appliances lost 25% of its employees. The workforce in motor vehicles and parts declined 12%. Furniture and related products lost 17% of its jobs. Apparel manufacturers lost almost half of the work force. Employment in textile mills declined 43%. Paper and paper products lost one-fifth of its jobs. The work force in plastics and rubber products declined by 15%. Even manufacturers of beverages and tobacco products experienced a 7% shrinkage in jobs.”
Manufacturing is only 12.4% of GDP, compared to 28.3% in 1953. Of course, manufacturing GDP today is inflated with hedonic adjustments. For example if cars made in the USA are sold at the same average price and in the same numbers, they say the value due to quality impovments has increased by 10%, and so GDP is boosted accordingly. Real GDP is also inflated by manipulating CPI to keep inflation adjustments low.
Moreover, last year an economist, Susan Houseman, discovered that the reliability of GDP has been impaired by offshoring. Houseman found that cost reductions achieved by US firms shifting production offshore are being miscounted as GDP growth in the US and that productivity gains achieved by US firms when they move design, research, and development offshore are showing up as increases in US productivity. Obviously, production and productivity that occur abroad are not part of the US domestic economy.
The US now has fewer manufacturing jobs than it had in 1950 when the population was half the current size. We may still produce more than any other country, much of it on weapons, yet we had a huge advantage that has gradually been diminishing due to globalization, and soon China is expected to overtake us, and China was a 3rd world nation 20 years ago.
So what does the future hold?. Think 3rd world economy, a police state to crack down on rioters who protest over food shortages and poverty. Those border patrols will be to keep you in, and not the illegal immigrants out. Of course, someone will have to do the work the illegal workers have been doing since they will move back to Mexico and default on their sub-prime mortgages, credit card debts and collect their social security checks (Totalization agreement). As Stalin said, those who don’t work don’t eat. And so it shall soon be in Amerika.
We make LOTS OF THINGS in the U.S! We make Humvees and Bradley Fighting Vehicles. We make F-22 “Raptor” jets for 350 million a crack! We make million and millions of small arms weaponry that we export throughout the world. And of course we make nuclear weapons which can be delivered to anyone’s doorstep faster that UPS can say “BOOM” by land, sea, air and even space! It’s just that we don’t see those things on the shelves of WalMart or Home Depot. Try going to arms bazaar sometime if you’re worried about lower American productivity and you’ll soon realized that we’re number one!
Shucks, We make something nice in the part of America I call home. We grow beautiful Sinsimellia and Indica. I suppose God makes it and we only help, but….so sweet.
I went three days and nights w/o food once, I could/can not heat my small apt.
My overweight shopping-loving Amerikans are part of the problem. Budget getting tight? AAAwwwwwwww. Sell your SUV and get a Specialized Mountain Bike.
Time for the 7/24 eating-marathon to end? sosad.
And nice posts too, empirePie, nice your art I say.
This article is editorial… it’s art. I like art, even if I don’t always get it. In fact, if I don’t get it, that’s my first indication it might actually BE, art. I like humor too. Sarcasm and other subtleties… are a fun way to de-stress and deal with frustration and despair.
Some people don’t “get” sarcasm or exaggeration, nor any other such subtleties. These people have “concrete thinking.” It’s a mental health issue.
Jake’s a troll. If you do his research for him and answer his little rhetorical queries adequately, he’ll ignore you and go on to someone he thinks he can whip.
Wall Street is shaking in it’s Guccies. A 2 Billion bailout of the financial system is just another naked attempt to rescue business. (selective socialism in action) People are broke and prices must tumble to be affordable, but will they tumble? Nope, prices are going up. The criminal enterprise we call the U.S. Government is useless.
The judicious application of money is a necessary survival skill. However, as the Dollar falls it might be best for now to make the necessary repairs to important things like your water heater, furnace, plumbing and roof before the dollar buys even less. Once your biggies are fixed begin fixing the small things or replacing them with good used items.
Don’t forget your disaster kits.
http://www.redcross.org/services/disaster/0,1082,0_3_,00.html
MiMicCS — Please read the links. We need to understand the missing piece that ties it all together. We really really need people as yourself to paint the BIG PICTURE and raise the torch high so that others can see for themselves
From another thread:
Alex Nosal — the way to get it back is not clear, but certainly advancing our understanding of how they seized control is important to fighting back. The odds are ~ 4:1 in our favor, based on estimated numbers, but the plan is to adjust that ratio very soon. The true depth of evil is beyond normal pessimistic and ranting crazies ability to conceive of.
One almost needs to be a very experienced mental health professional to wade through the material, but believe you me, it will be worth knowing! This is about cutting edge psychology that has been suppressed, by you can guess who
Beside individuals cleansing themselves, we need to get the balance of free thinkers to realize how the psychopaths do it.
You will be shocked, and then it starts to make sense, in a twisted disgusting manner. The reason so much of America is drop dead dumbfounded is a gradual co-opting of our innate competitive culture (over a 100 yr arc) into shivers down the spine immoral acts (condoned by majority).
Essentially they’ve re-made America in their own images, and made it necessary for most to act psychotically to keep their heads above the water.
Cee Miracles March 12th, 2008 SAYS READ
Read WITHOUT CONSCIENCE, The Disturbing World of The Psychopaths Among Us” -
Robert D. Hare, Ph.D., before the Psychopaths among us not only
continue disturbing the world, but maybe destroy it.
At least we’ll have some understanding of how this all happened as we’re being blown away.
Where are you, Rambo?
Cee Miracles — You’re so terrifyingly right!
I’ve just finished the web version of a similar book:
This is ALL about the formal study of evil, was initially killed for
US distbn by Mr. Zbigniew Brzezinski in a very cunning way, but the
author re-wrote the whole document.
The psychopathically flawed Polish Communist structure and
mechanisms of Stalin provided the raw material for this important work
of the causation of our current situation of how geo the inferior has
stolen the farm out from under US.
A very excellent web site is stocked with much of the crucial material, for free, including excerpts from Hare’s research and
The link to Political Ponerology … is in the upper left column of links
Namaste
… … … … … Mahatma Gandhi … & … ML King … … Inspiration … … … … …
« We must be the change we wish to see in the world »
« There is a sufficiency in the world for man’s need but not for man’s greed »
« We adopt the means of nonviolence because our end is a community at peace with itself » — MLK
Mendaciously, the playfully valiant ranger arrives to douse down the fire—-let us give him a name: amen, jakenewton.
Ranger Newton, matching cliche for cliche–clearing out the truth for the befuddled–he asks (trying to sound falsely befuddled himself), “I don’t know why people try to say this, or that, what is it today, that I, am acting the fool to make others look foolish for? Huh?”
Huh! Ranger Newton, on the scene, fire-hose in hand, squirts on another day in the sake of emptiness. And he still does not know why “they say it,” but in amongst himself he may more often wonder why he said it? For what does Ranger Newton have to lose? Only if God truly is on the right side—-his virginity.
See ALSO:
The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard
A 20-minute animation of the consumerist society, narrated by Anne Leonard, to view online or download. Includes footnoted script, credits, blog, …
www.storyofstuff.com/ - 7k -
also on the web at: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9153550196656656736
shakker March 12th, 2008 8:31 pm — good idea
twoblueday March 12th, 2008 3:58 pm - echoed my sentiments
TreeFitz March 12th, 2008 8:43 pm
thank you,
i read ehrenreich’s book and felt exactly the same way as you did. your description summed up my feelings nicely.
i also have lived at/below the poverty line my entire adult life, i find a large amount of commentary about poverty patronizing, it just doesn’t express the true feelings/situations of the underclass.
—————————
if you buy something, discard something. it’s an easy rule that decreases a persons desire to acquire useless objects.learn new ways to adapt to situations.
words like voluntary simplicity and minimalism are powerful, if these ideas were practiced by just %10 of the population - eagerly w/ optimism and understanding (2 concepts that often escape me), we would literally save the planet (remember 100th monkey). one way we-homo sapien sapiens adapt is by sharing creative coping mechanisms w/ other monkeys. 2 tools (books) that helped me understand,
youre money or your life
(www.yourmoneyoryourlife.org/)
Recipes for Disaster: An Anarchist Cookbook (http://www.crimethinc.com/books/)
…peace…
Remember March 19th, folks. SICKOFITDAY. No work and no shopping.
This is a little off-point, but, despite being on an extremely tight budget, I still go to Whole Foods. I decided long ago that I’d divert my spending to ensuring quality food. So, I drive 1/2 an hour once a week to go to a “locally” grown organic produce market which has the cheapest organic and freshest produce I’ve ever seen, I buy my beans, rice, etc. from the bins at Whole Foods (cheaper than the grocery store despite being organic), and I make prepare everything I eat from the most basic ingredients. Why drive 1/2 hour to the produce market? While my main concern is avoiding pesticides and getting more vitamins per pound of produce, the produce lasts longer (I don’t see my dollars rotting in my refrigerator any more) and I can buy exactly the quantity I’ll eat since everything is loose and sold by the pound. Of course, by shopping there where the food has more vitamins, I no longer bother to take grossly overpriced vitamins (grossly overpriced in terms of the effect on your body–minimal). Of course, to support this “extravagance” of buying real food, I have to make meals myself and I buy almost nothing else–I haven’t purchased any clothes in a year. Renting $1 movies from the local video store is cheaper (and better) than cable, cell phone was abandoned (I don’t need to pay to give others the convenience of reaching me), and soon when I sell my car (paid for, but insurance is too high), I’ll learn to navigate the bus system and get exercise by dramatically increased walking. Real wages have been falling for years, a major depression is coming (the Fed’s efforts are merely postponing it), but you still can survive quite nicely on less. Once you get over the mindset of working to accumulate stuff to show off to your buddies or so that you can pay others to do the work you don’t wanna do (think house cleaning, restaurants, staying in hotels), life becomes much easier.
A senior, I ran out of heating oil on February 20th this year (it was around this same time last year). I use my space heater to heat with, and put on two sweaters and three shirts to stay warm. There are lots of people who make up this “great land,” who are getting shafted. Too bad our own government is so mean-spirited toward the people it is supposed to serve. The idea of rights for corporations is repugnant, as is “free” market. We live a lie.
It seems to me the companies playing follow the leader and moving jobs to China are shooting themselves in the foot. If a laid off Electrolux freezer builder can’t afford a garage door opener, and a laid off Genie garage door opener can’t afford a new freezer, and neither can afford a Lionel hobbie train… and the Chinese don’t buy ANY of this stuff… Gonna be lots of empty factories in China as well as in the US.
There was a BS article in the Saturday paper by Cokie and Steve Roberts about how wonderful globalization is. They called Clinton and Obama liars about the need to tweak NAFTA…, and claimed the US is the number 1 exporter… Well, we’re #2 now and its mostly basic food products, entertainment, and some high end stuff like aircraft. Everything in the middle is imported, and we have the #1 trade deficit in the world.
Its time for us all to scale down anyway. We can’t keep burning 5 times as much fossil fuel per capita than the rest of the world in a Peak Oil / Global Warming world. Time to simplify, as so many posters said above.
The article opens with the following.
“How much lower can consumer spending go? The malls are like mausoleums, retail clerks are getting laid off and AOL recently featured on its welcome page the story of a man so cheap that he recycles his dental floss–hanging it from a nail in his garage until it dries out.”
IS IT BECAUSE he’s ‘cheap’, or very poor; was this possibility verified? And then there’s the question of where the dental floss is actually made; is it from more offshored U.S. jobs? If yes, then maybe he’s not cheap after all; maybe he’s a “touch” patriotic, caring for the human rights of his fellow citizens (and non-citizens but still full, enough, residents).
Additionally, what’s the floss made from; is it biodegradable, environmentally safe material? I know it’s safe to use in our mouths, but then we don’t apply it there for more than around 1 minute.
Iow, I am not sure the man’s being actually ‘cheap’. His reasons might have nothing at all to do with accumulating wealth. And perhaps instead of saving money, he uses the money he gradually saves from reusing his floss to go spend it where local citizens are employed but in businesses needing some customers in order to keep operating, so employing people [in] the USA. If he’s poor and does this with his meager savings, then it’s better than enriching huge, rich, imperialist-West corporations that offshored MANY U.S. jobs and unemployed MANY U.S. workers, all for the sake of MAMMON. He couldn’t buy more than a coffee or piece of pie, say, but if enough people did this when MANY are stopping, then it might actually work out to save some peoples’ jobs.
She goes on to say:
“Already, as the recession or whatever it is closes in, people have stopped buying homes and cars and cut way back on restaurant meals. They don’t have the money; they don’t have the credit; and increasingly they’re finding that no one wants their money anyway. NPR reported on February 28 that more and more Manhattan stores are accepting Euros and at least one has gone Euros-only.”
MAYBE HE’S ONE OF THOSE MANY VICTIMS; perhaps this is his reason, or one of them.
The author should carefully verify what his reasons are, before trying to mock him worldwide, imo. She’s evidently never known [poverty] herself, and she did not say that she verified why he does this, so I assume she hasn’t verified.
The only people making money from floss sales are the big corporations making this stuff, and they make a LOT more than only this, so even if these corporations stopped making floss, the employees could easily be given other work, instead of unemployed.
He does that, some, if not even many, dig for food to eat out of garbage of other people, restaurants, and grocery stores, the same happens for clothing, etc.; all these abominably CHEAP people, “oh my God, the earth is going to suddenly cease to exist because the poor don’t buy new dental floss and food or clothing when they’re dirt poor”. And we should add the poor who look for refundable cans and bottles in other peoples’ garbage, parks, etc., to try to make a little money for themselves. I had to do it, and based on the author of this article, I should be condemned to perdition and worldwide ridicule; just because I was this poor and only due to the mammon imperialist-west worshipers offshoring jobs in the high-tech industry, and importing hundreds of thousands or millions of foreign “temps” to not fill in a shortfall, but to [REPLACE] U.S. workers. Doesn’t matter what my reasons may be, I should be condemned for eternal ridicule anyway; according to the author of this article.
When our prejudices kick in, then it’s always a good time to start by [questioning], both our views and morals, and the subject we’re passing judgement on, FIRST. We can then be surprisingly ENLIGHTENED to a whole new understanding of [reality].
Ever carry seven grocery bags of mostly glass (empty but still glass) beer and pop bottles; have any idea how heavy that is to carry on foot for even nearly a mile, how long it takes, etc? And you want to do it all in one trip, for if you attempt multiple trips, then while you’re on one, what you’ve left stashed away behind you someplace might be spotted by another poor person, and then you come back to learn that you spent a lot of time, hours gathering all these refundables so that you can get some food, and all for nothing.
I HAVE!
Sad news though, what’s happening in the retail and restaurant sectors, for these have been, so far, among the last-hope jobs in the USA. If these also GO, in addition to high-tech, etc., etc., etc., then WOW, this ride is a serious one; it’ll be rough. It may do the USA a lot of good in the longer term, but not without CHAGRIN, difficulties, and of third-world kind, though I’ve been gradually becoming accustomed to it for … too many years already; and it’s not easy to adjust to, particularly when we have university ed. and around ten years of experience as computer professionals, etc. Oh, in addition to everyone around you being economically comfy; all in my vicinity, very nearly all anyway, having more than they [need].
Oh well, born in capitalist West, to progressively be killed by it, I suppose.
Maybe dental floss-recycler she refers to is doing this only due to being cheap, but it’s pure and prejudicial speculation, until the real reasons have been verified.
She definitely speaks of the upper middle and higher classes, economically speaking, of the USA, for her use of ‘we’ certainly does not apply to all of the USA.
Many of the sweatshop jobs once were in the USA; my mother and many other U.S. workers, f.e. My father was paid less, due to the state of Mass. being so damn cheap that they had to pay state employees poverty or below poverty wages, perhaps to quiet down the many greedy taxpayers (maybe?); and that was not sweatshop work, for it was not shop work one way or another. He worked as a farmhand and a very experienced one starting on day #1, but the state wouldn’t pay above slavery wages.
Oh, the two working full-time and also each working 20hr a week part-time jobs for several years, this permitted them to finally achieve reasonable standards, after selling their house in Mass. and buying a piece of farmland (formerly that) where the owner was a very generous, humble, … man, and sold the property, around 125×200+ feet, for $2,000 in 1976, after which my father, two of my uncles, and myself constructed most of the structure and all of the foundation, thereby keeping the cost affordable. I grew up child of poverty, but still had a fishing rod, a bicycle, … a pair of hockey shin pads after a few or more years of being hit in the shins with pucks, eventually a helmet and gloves to complete the partial outfit, making our rink ourselves on a swamp; and I got by alright, no problems with this aspect at all. Now if I couldn’t have gotten a fishing rod, then I would’ve been a little troubled about this lack.
PUNISHED they should be, according to the author? I don’t think she means to be understood to this extent, but she sure seems to like to write in terms that treat all USA’ns as very much the same, when reality is that there’s MUCH disparity; including for whities. We are among these whities.
Slave wager my father was, we had to live in the poorest part of Woonsocket, R.I., when I was 4, until one day it was clear that mom had to absolutely get a job. My father came home after work one day and she told him it was cold and the kerosene furnace wasn’t producing any heat, so he checks the can, looks into it, and then looks at my other, while pulling out his wallet and opening it, to say that he could afford to go get some kerosene or food, but not both. And he had to have a car to commute to work given he was working at the Mass. state hospital farm at this time.
She replied that that was that, she had to get a job and help out, to which his ego responded that he preferred she didn’t; he wanted to be able to fend for the family, etc. Next day she told me to be good, she had to leave me alone for a short time in order to go up the street to apply for a job, and promptly returned. And she got the job, which permitted her to help him to finally get us out of that poverty situation; still low, even very low income, but certainly better than before.
I DO NOT THINK the author means to be treating all USA’ns as if we’re all the same; just that she writes in this manner.
Here’s a good way to “recycle” dental floss - clean the crud off of it when you’re done, then go outside and hang it on the branches of trees. Birds will use it to build their nests this spring (if there are any birds left!).
We’re even losing the burger-jobs. Some McD’s are reportedly using operators in India to take orders at drive-ups. At least the “closers” are still needed to insert the food-like disk between the bread-like grease protectors, but how long before that part is fully automated?
A bright note: global depression may buy us a little more time on climate change.
Treefitz please do not be so critical of Nickel and Dimed.
Maybe you skipped the intro. In the introduction the author acknowledges that she has education, income, a body built by a life time of healthy food, medical care and dental care and the ability to bail our at any time to another life. If she had a medical emergency, for instance, she could go get treatment. She knows that poor people are damaged, tired, stressed and trapped in a way she could never be.
Still her book gives voice to situations that poor people rarely have the time nor tools to describe. It exposes the kind of “jobs” that are being created to replace good manufacturing jobs and illustrates the points made by McDee and others above.
Economists count all jobs as the same whether they have good pay and benefits or not, are permanent or temp, and often full time or part time. This type of pig-headed bean counting disguises the recession that has been growing among working people for the last 40 years.
grenat, your last post, while, uh, colorful, is rather devoid of any information. The question I posed to the group, for the sake of clarity, is why do people so often repeat gross, superlative exagerations such as “We don’t make anything in the US anymore.” Perhaps a better question would be if whether the “progressive movement” or any movement for that matter is well served by this practice?
Namaste, one the greatest achievements of ‘evil’ is to pass itself off as being good. The ‘new age’ movement is a subtle promoter of what is deleterious, in that it essentially asserts that God is the creator of everything, including ‘evil,’ meaning there is really no such thing as good and bad.
We also should remember that an iron hand often hides behind a velvet (psychopathic) glove, and that unless we, ourselves, are free of ego, we are a part of it, as when we return hate with hate. It is so close to us, that we often miss it. The implication almost always is that WE are good, while it is THEY who are bad.
“Anyone who thinks our manufacturing base is fine, ”
Who said that?
“jakenewton, Is your real name Rumsfeld?”
No, but I actually get paid by “teh neocons” to participate in this forum. LOL.
“US Bureau of Labor Statistics definition of manufacturing:”
mwb26810, did you even read that document? The line you reference regarding hamburgers is listed under “Sector 72, Accomodations and Food Services”. Ergo, you ar proving that those jobs are in the service sector and not manufacturing. The manufacturing jobs are alearly listed as being in sectors 31, 32, and 33.
At least you tried to post supporting information for your claim, unlike others. Too bad it backfired.
Jake, as you have noted, manufacturing is on the decline, and the influx of undocumented workers on the rise. The vast majority of jobs that have been created (if I have my facts straight) have been service sector jobs. As to whether we produce anything anymore, or exaggerate it in a phrase is really a straw man. There are certain jobs that are not easily exported, such as the production of certain medical supplies, but just about everything else that can be exported is. The reason? Primarily because, even those who wish to remain, cannot compete with Asian sweatshop goods. Ironically, it is foreign companies that comprise a big part of what is left of manufacturing! So I guess in a way ‘we’ still do produce stuff.
The bigger question here is: can any nation indefinitely consume more than it produces?
I’m not sure what you do for a living, Jake, but no job or service can continue or prosper if no one has the funds to pay for it, and the loss of production, directly or indirectly affects EVERYTHING.
Some have pointed that the weapons industry is a booming one, but that can only be true of a world that is in a self-destructive mode, which is world where just about every country lives in fear of its neighbors. Additionally, have you noticed that we often wind up fighting our biggest arms customers? Definitely a win-win for the military industrial complex.
“As to whether we produce anything anymore, or exaggerate it in a phrase is really a straw man. ”
I disagree. There are many on these boards and ones similar who are not very informed, and when the lies or exagerations are repeated enough they particularly are susceptible to just beleive it when the truth is otherwise. Then they go out and vote maybe. We *do* have manufactoring in the US. Near me are automobile, specialty metals, pharmacutical, and clothing factories. McDonalds jobs are *not* counted as part of the manufacturing sector, as I just proved.
jakenewton March 12th, 2008 11:27 am
“” We don’t make anything in the US anymore.”
Of course we do. In fact, with the weak dollar, our exports are up substantially, lowering the trade gap.”
Do your own homework Jake. Go to the store, Target, Wal-Mart or another of your choice. Ignore the American brand names and look at the country of manufacture. Here’s a clue, go to Target. They have a row of about ten different coffee pots, all with U.S. brand names but only one is made in the U.S. As for your claim that exports are up, I’m sure some of those U.S. named manufactured in China items are exported for sale to other countries. Maybe good for the corporate bottom line but does nothing to create high paying manufacturing jobs here.
Lobo Gris
Those Asian sweatshops aren’t sweatshops because they want to be, but because the big companies that place the big orders demand it. They force producers to lower their prices until some can barely make it. Some decide not to take those kinds of orders but it is very difficult to find sufficient and steady buyers for products at prices that allow the supplier and producer, including employees, to make a decent living. Of course, there are unscrupulous business owners that are willing to underpay emnployees, but that is in addition to the low-balling coming from purchasers in the US. I live in Asia and have watched first-hand as a friend who has a business has tried to get orders that allowed him to make even as much as a penny profit per item on orders that are usually under 10,000 items, after requiring free samples and last minute product changes with no additional payment. He has not taken these kinds of orders but other obviously have. A possible incentive for shoddy products and defective ingredients? If the buyers would pay a decent amount, then the quality and quality of life would go up and all would benefit. So just remember that it isn’t always and only the Chinese who are forcing the poor American buyers to take the oh so cheap prices, but it often is the other way around.
chessgames56 — You are so perceptive! Yes, we are really POGO’d to the max, and that’s the deliciously wicked trap of their hiding evil so well.
It is sometimes true that “The ‘new age’ movement is a subtle promoter of what is deleterious, … [that] there is really no such thing as good and bad.”
I am having an awakening here, that might clarify how the science of “Ponerology” is consistent with certain of the new age thinking.
I know the above is somewhat sloppy thinking, and only a start, as I’m very new to fully aligning the LAW of ATTRACTION in my own life. But I do know deep down, with a obdurate certainty, that lasting changes have occurred in me. As evidence, anyone who’s been reading my postings in the last month may have also noticed the difference from last year’s postings.
We don’t need all 300 million to envision world peace, but if a committed group of even 1 million would all practiced the “Art of Deliberate Creation” consistently on these issues, I’m certain that the rats would soon find themselves staring at each other in disbelief, as they’re carted off to the new McMansion (with bars). We should be happy that they’ve made so many jails, as we sure do need them now.
Also, the strengthening of laws against Lying and cheating (with immediate hard and binding punishments) is the best mechanism to catch these psychopaths, before they can this type of damage again. Get their scruffy butts’ into the penal system early, and they want be able to get later into public service.
Let’s have a 1-strike law for this, as it really is the only method to separate out the crazies in society before they do massive and hidden evil (blending in so well as they do). Besides, they’re drumber than the average citizen, and only advance through manipulation of those conned into aiding their game. If we branded them with a “P” on their forehead, we’d always know not to trust their words ever again (avoid the trickster).
Namaste
… … … … … Mahatma Gandhi … & … ML King … … Inspiration … … … … …
« We must be the change we wish to see in the world »
« There is a sufficiency in the world for man’s need but not for man’s greed »
« We adopt the means of nonviolence because our end is a community at peace with itself » — MLK
#
jakenewton March 13th, 2008 8:46 am
““jakenewton, Is your real name Rumsfeld?”
No, but I actually get paid by “teh neocons” to participate in this forum. LOL.”
That I believe.
Lobo Gris
The poster who thought that putting “Made in the USA” labels on to Chinese goods was deceptive is mistaken. The labels are 100% made in the USA. It is important to get this right and it is based on “I did not have sex with that woman” which was also 100% legally correct.
This mass consumer market that we have been in should be rethought. People need jobs but how much [stuff] do we really need. When I go to garage sales most people can’t even use their garage’s because they are full of the overflow of [stuff]. Many have resorted to rented storage unit’s. Having looked at some of these, I would say the content’s are not worth more than a couple month’s of the rent they are paying on the unit’s.
Call it socialism or what ever you want, but we need a way to employ people in meaningfull jobs with benefit’s that don’t add to our further inundation with [stuff]
Our resources should be spent on cleaning the place up, making it less toxic. Move towards a more sustainable model. Move towards a more efficient way of housing and moving people to where they want to be. There is plenty of work to be done. Let’s do it smart and put our labor and financial resources to work in such a way that will make us happier and more self sufficient.
Gee, I hate to intrude upon all the talk with fact, but you can find US exports by category online. Here’s the monthly totals for Jan 08. I found this at http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/www/press.html
If this turns out ugly on the web, you can find what’s below there in PDF, TXT or XLS formats
Note the incredible concentration in certain areas. For instance, when I hear “US Exports are up”, I think Boeing. Their selling of big airplanes is what drives a lot of the number under “transportation” which is the leading category and a third of the entire total for the month. Also note the category of “Re-exports” which is about 10% of the total. That’s just us bringing something in from China and then shipping it somewhere else. That creates some jobs loading and unloading shipping containers, but that’s about it.
Numbers are all in millions. So the total in the first line below is 99 billion dollars. The trade deficit for the month is around 57 billion, so we brought in about 160 billion while we were shipping this out. The charts showing trade def by month on the same website show the change in the value of the dollar as that trade def has gone from about 67 billion a month down to about 55 billion a month.
Total 99,355.5
Summary:
Food and live animals 6,255.2
Beverages and tobacco 367.4
Crude materials,
inedible except
fuels 6,133.4
Mineral fuels,
lubricants and
related materials 4,948.5
Animal and vegetable
oils, fats
and waxes 249.6
Chemicals and related
products, n.e.s. 13,546.2
Manufactured goods
classified chiefly
by material ,500.3
Machinery and
transport equipment 36,112.9
Miscellaneous manufac-
tured articles 8,940.9
Commodities and
transactions not
classified elsewhere
in SITC 4,122.5
Reexports 10,178.6
Rather than taking that rebate come Summer and buying a foreign produced product, I would suggest you take $100 and send to a candidate of your choosing who has proposed policy that would address this economic issue along with others that concern so many Americans.
what do we make in the usa?: monopolies, financial derivatives, predatory corporations, corrupt politicians, wars and weapons of mass destruction, and an smug ignorant irrational population.
the american lifestyle is over, “glad” I’m old enough to maybe not experience the whole house of cards fall into a state that will make pre-bush afganistan look good
True, Jake, boards do not always contain factual knowledge, but manufacturing jobs are really going down the tubes. Government figures may reflect some of what is going on, but many of us in trenches know it firsthand.
Not saying we should be a ‘Cassandra’ about it, but lets not delude ourselves either. Without a change in the ‘free trade’ policy, these trends will only escalate, and the ‘we do not make anything anymore’ statement WILL be true even, if as you say, it is an exaggeration at present (which first hand knowledge makes it hard to believe. America may indeed make things, but just not the things I buy everyday at prices my family and I can afford. Tell us what items you buy everyday that are still produced here? We’re listening).
Thanks namaste, and you’re right about the secret. Without self-understanding the fulfillment of desire will not bring happiness; often, it will bring just the opposite. The thrill and excitement of possessing, and gaining possessions cannot bring one inner peace and freedom.
We as a people need to take back what has been taken from us. Its time to kindly escort the folks who have grown fat from ego and greed from there illisionary edifices of power. We start with the K Street Corridor which seethes with a glutinous stench of corporate fascists who have enslaved humanity since time immemorial. The next is the Federal Reserve-the banker who have started many wars to increase profit and who have also enslaved us. The next are the finger puppets of the Whitehouse and Congress. They do the bidding of the puppet masters which I have already mentioned. Its time to be free. Its time for us to take charge of our inalienble rights. Its time to wake up.
I have abbroggated my parental rights to the state by sending my children to an institution that has taught them not to think but to not question authority and to be good consumers/wage slaves. I’m trying to repair what’s been done. Its not easy.
We were given a docuemnt that tells us what to do when un bridled power, ego, greed goes unchecked.
Its time to use it.
Declaration of Independence
When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident:
That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
Jake, you write that clothing is made here. Are there REALLY some textile plants still here? I live in NC, where just about all textile manufacturing was outsourced. I used to work part time security at one of those factories (where various types of fabrics were made), and when I drive by now, I see a dead facility. Ironically, they still have their ‘outlet,’ but the prices are much higher there now, and bargains are rare. You can find better deals at target and wal-mart because the origin of the goods is the same.
My priorities are my computer (for which I learned to make my own repairs, a $150 savings per incident) and my garden which is going hydroponic next month to augment my food supply. I do have a cable modem connection which is actually cheaper for me than a dia