[Jewelry making - Article 00242] - Re: [Orchid] Handmade vs mass-produced

[Lee Einer]

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    I have to agree with Will Denayer that unions are not the problem.
    Only perhaps 15% of the jobs in this country are union, and they do
    not exert a noticeable upward pressure on wages for the balance of
    the work force. Moreover, the jobs aren't leaving to go just
    anywhere, as they would if the problem were one of artificially high
    wages in the US-- the jobs are going in most cases to some of the
    most desperate, oppressed and impoverished areas on the planet. It
    is no coincidence that many of the places to which our jobs are
    moving have considerable issues with human rights. 

    What we are looking at here is simply the fact that our captains of
    industry  have figured out that they can make a greater short term
    profit by exploiting the plight of workers in third world countries.
    Their best case scenario is that they can do so while simultaneously
    stealing the natural resources out from under the feet of those
    people, as is being done with water rights in India. This has the
    added bonus of putting workers in this country on the defensive, so
    even those US workers who keep their jobs are scared into accepting
    stagnant wages, benefit cuts and union busting. 

    This is  called globalization, or neo-liberalization. It is aided
    and abetted by organizations such as the WTO and IMF, and by
    regulations such as NAFTA and the FTAA. It is bad not just for
    workers in the US, but for everybody, save a few fat cats. With
    roughly 8 million people unemployed in this country,  2.7 million
    jobs  gone overseas under the present administration, and the stock
    market stagnant, the forty richest people in the US got 10% richer
    last year. 

    For a good basic primer of globalization or neo-liberalization and
    it's ills, I reccommend Greg Palast's book, "The Best Democracy
    Money Can Buy." 

Lee Einer
Dos Manos Jewelry
http://www.dosmanosjewelry.com


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