And let me state clearly that I am not anti-business. I have
been in business for my whole life and over the years have done quite a bit of
it with the people down there in NW Arkansas. Walton was in my opinion a brilliant
guy. Over the years his company has done much damage to small businesses and small
towns themselves, but I do not see the big W, where Hillary Clinton once sat on
the board of directors, as some
combination of child labor camp overseers and punitive robber barons. Many of
the regional retailers that Sam competed with and eventually drove from the market
were too sleepy and complacent for their own good. All of them, I am sure,
would have followed the same path and developed the same business model if they
were smart enough and visionary enough to have done so.
That being said there are many areas of concern and this is
where government and the press has a role to play. Conditions in some factories are and were atrocious.
There has been more than adequate reporting on that. Business people of all
stripes without regulation look to cut corners and increase profits. That is
their reason to exist. Increased profits mean more opportunities for workers,
more wealth for shareholders, and a better standard of living, both for
consumers who have benefited from the low cost of good as well as the workers,
especially in China which is where I have a lot of experience.
There can be little doubt that the standard of living in
China has benefited greatly in the past 20 years, and that some of that has
come at the expense of American workers. But there also is little doubt that
were it not for China some other low cost country would have developed the manufacturing
base to meet the needs of a worldwide market in search of low cost consumer
goods. The idea that America would continue to make 90% of all the manufactured
goods in the world while two countries with a billion people were each waking
from decades, centuries really, of feudal oversight is patently absurd. Through
better education and investment—government and private-- America needs to pivot
its manufacturing base to new technologies where it has a tremendous capacity to
lead, not try to recreate something that is long gone. In my view both the left and right have the
argument about half wrong on that.
That does not make the argument for better working
conditions in those factories any less powerful. I have been in dozens of factories
in China and have seen the good and the bad. I have worked with many, many Chinese business people, and I like a lot of
the people I have met. A lot. Many with their
kids and their school woes and so forth have so often reminded me of the
commonality of aspirations for people everywhere. I have heard their stories,
but also seen their recognition that the cost of business is improvement
conditions and worker safety. These are not American wages of course, but in their
country and their culture they provide food and other non-essentials and the
country has been transformed. There is an increasingly large middle class who no
longer survive from meal to meal, and so look and seek from their government and
business leaders cleaner government. There is growing environmental movement in
China. Here the right considers environmental regulation some sort of commie
plot. What would you call those in Communist China who advocate for similar goals.
There is still much corruption, and the human rights record is still stuck in
many ways in feudal times, but there is an increasingly vocal and active press.
Progress has been too slow, and the media spot light is as
important as ever in bringing the truth to the world. Millions of yuppies are
poorly informed about the troubling conditions in the Foxconn factories where
their iPods and X-Boxes are built. That being said those who think
protectionist measures or currency controls are going to bring back the days
when Mattel made most of their toys in the US or most of the shoes in America were
made in factories in New England are sadly mistaken. There is little doubt the
Chinese are holding the value of their currency down to maintain the
astonishing levels of exports. And there is little doubt that some factories
are not doing the right thing by the workers in those factories, but I know
from experience the efforts of many good people to address those concerns both
here in the US at the companies and outside organizations, and in China and other
manufacturing countries. Ironically, the free market, and as importantly a free
press, have done much to benefit the efforts for improvement. Whatever the
right says WM competes in the free market and people who believe their consumer
goods are produced in factories with slave conditions will quickly go
elsewhere.
So, no I do not hate business, big or small. And no I do not
think our President is a Marxist, Socialist, Commie whatever. But I do think
over these past twenty years the country has seen carnival of de-regulation and
tax policy that has greatly tilted the playing table. The middle class and the
working poor (notice I said working) have gotten screwed and are coming up short
as a result, really short. Meanwhile,
conservatives act as if millions are happy to live off the dole. Unemployment
before Bush got hold of the economy was 4%. Does Gingrich really believe that
all those people who worked when jobs were available really want to live off
food stamps? Do you?
Obama has tried to do some things and I recognize the right
sees most of those efforts as something verging on revolutionary class warfare.
But the rich get richer and the gaps between them and the rest of the country
grows at a staggering pace. If there is a war between classes I’m hard pressed
to suggest the rich aren’t doing really well at it. Far from reigning in Wall
Street, bonuses and other compensation are back to all-time highs and there can
be little doubt Obama will raise hundreds of millions there for his reelection bid
this fall. Rhetoric is one thing, but lots of people on the Street do not see
Obama has the enemy. I’m sure you’re aware that Obama has up until a month or
so ago raised more money on Wall Street then the entire Republican field combined.
I hold the river boat gamblers down on Wall Street and the government
regulators who looked the other way whole they mortgaged and the country’s entire
financial future directly responsible for the calamity of 2008. As with the elements
in the US Government that approved and sustained torture and rendition policies totally
contrary to our laws I believe there should have been prosecutions. In both
cases Obama chose to let sleeping dogs lie. I did not
agree, but the right responds as if to some alternate history.
Still, I have heard what you have been saying. The disconnect
between the perceptions of right and left is deeply troubling. I worry for my
country, and the bitter dialogue that now envelops us all. Not because we are
going Socialist or because Capitalism is the root of all evil, but because the opportunity
for reconciliation and compromise and real solutions to real problems seems nearly
impossible. I write about that in the blog today. I hear you, brother, but I
suppose I will have to disappoint.
No comments:
Post a Comment