© 2006 Greg Kaiser

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DNews - 21st Century Downsizing, March 30, 2006
Self Cannibalization: The Fundament of American Economy

From the Daily Show:
      Sarah Vowell said, "I cried during Bush’s first inauguration for fear he’d wreck the economy and muck up the air and drinking water. The failure of my pessimistic imagination [to comprehend Bush’s potential for self destructive behavior] boggles my mind."

GM, Delphi and UAW Reach Worker Buyout Deal
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Associated Press
      "DETROIT "General Motors Corp (GM) and auto parts supplier Delphi Corp. announced deals with the United Auto Workers on Wednesday that would help the struggling companies cut labor costs by offering early-retirement buyouts to 113,000 U.S. hourly workers.
      "The deal comes at a critical time for GM, which increased by $2 billion its reported 2005 loss to $10.6 billion last week. The world's largest automaker has been losing U.S. market share but is saddled with labor agreements that make it difficult to close plants or cut workers. The plan also is crucial for Delphi, the largest U.S. auto parts supplier, which is reorganizing in bankruptcy court after filing for Chapter 11 protection in October."

PARIS, March 18, 2006
      "Youths are protesting a law that allows employers to fire young workers in the first two years on a job without giving a reason. The government says it will help sky-high youth unemployment, but critics say it ends crucial labor protections.
      "(CBS/AP) Students clashed with police in Paris, capping off a day of protests that drew about 500,000 people.
      "The controversy is over a new law allowing employers to fire young workers with out giving reason during their first two years on the job."

      In an informal and unscientific poll, ten young job-seekers in America were asked, "Why do you think the auto-workers in America are more docile than the French protestors?"
      Nine out of ten suggested in one way or another that, "Sadly, the French are either smarter or have more balls than we do!"
      Nine out of ten retirees, with secure pensions and GM investments, evaded the question by asserting that the French are savage illiterate criminals who should be rounded up and imprisoned or better yet shot down in the streets like dogs. Some said they fear the example might inspire American youth to challenge their [the retiree’s] imagined possession of the wealth of the American community. One said, "I got mine! To hell with everyone else!" All republicans in the sample said in unison, "Not on my watch!"

      DNews’ economic analyst and unconventional economist Carlos Marques, offered the following thoughts on GM’s buyout deal.
      "GM’s action on America is symbolic of all service economy intent and consequence. It acts on America as Pinochet acted on the economy of Chile. Bargaining to buyout 20,000 layoffs with early retirement is good for American investors in GM, as Pinochet was good for the neo-feudal aristocrats of Chile, who got the land of the peasants who farm it for their [the aristocracy’s] private property. Chile relies on our markets to make the feudal land owners rich and to hell with the people who grow or make the products there.
      "GM is trying to do that sort of thing but such a strategy can only work for the first few corporations that implement it here. For a tide to raise a level in one place it must lower it somewhere else. This isn’t Chile with a big foreign market [our market] to absorb their goods. Like any pyramid scheme or kite, reliance on low wages and downsizing to increase profits will quickly run out of new blood to suck, as the majority of American consumers are impoverished. Our purchases are driving real and imaginary economic activity around the world. Increasing profits through the use of cheap labor deprives US of the ability to buy the products on which the profits are made. It is the measure of the stupidity of the American economists, politicians and MBAs who implemented this absurd fraud. Do you understand? One can’t get the food one needs to walk across the Earth, by cannibalizing the back that supports an ugly, useless head.
      "Yeah, the Chinese and Indians will be the market and buy back the products they make there . . . at a mark up and our service economy of imagination and ideas [empire fantasies] will be sustained. Though in the end, even in the unlikely event of Asian cooperation, all the workers and middle class clerks and managers will starve, the rich need not despair. The neo-cons think they still have the answer. Our investors may maintain control of the world’s economy, if they find a way to keep enough of US alive to fight wars of domination and expansion for them and can borrow enough money from the Asians to keep our military foremost. Sound unlikely? Get this! They’re counting on a bail out by American ingenuity and the engineers who lost their jobs to foreigners, after they committed their knowledge and knowhow to CAD software that could be operated by their lower paid and less experienced replacements. [Aren’t our corporate clones brilliant in their foresight?] How do they measure creative potential, when they don’t know how to create but can only mismanage the works of others for their profit?
      "Has it ever really been any different? No! Then why is it a greater problem now than it ever was? Because the end product of capitalism is looming on the horizon."

Wikipedia ties corporatism to Mussolini’s fascism: "Often they cite a quote claimed to be from Mussolini: 'Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.'"
Corporatism

A DNews Respect of the Past and Current Assessment, by A. G. Kaiser:
"They Thought They Were Free"
      The Germans, 1933-45
      Excerpt "They Thought They Were Free" First published in 1955
           By Milton Mayer - -
      "And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have. . . ."
"It Can't Happen Here"

      The words of Milton Mayer look back on the rise of the Nazis in 1930's Germany. He also spoke of not wanting to think and how dictatorship crept up but states he’s still not sure why they let it happen or if they could have stopped it. What he didn’t note in the pages that I read was the economic conflicts of leading, eminent individuals, that contributed to their unwillingness to protest. Petty and destructive self interest is the reason that reason is abandoned today and I’ll bet it was the same in 1930's Deutschland. The irony is that today the burden of the abstract economy of banking/finance (including insurance and all investment) is growing so disproportionate that it will destroy the ability to accrue imaginary wealth of those who would willingly tolerate totalitarianism for its defense. It was always headed there but the limits to the finite market place, predicted by Adam Smith, loom very large.
      The economic equation can never be balanced as long as imaginary activity dominates and saps the wealth created by real worker/producers. The more money that is made by the use of money the less value money has to purchase the material things that it represents. The more of US who live by investment, the less there are to work making the goods we need to sustain our lifestyles and ultimately our lives. The value of the money is reduced by investor profit, because the abstract manipulations increase the supply of the tokens without increasing the supply of the real goods that they represent. All usury of any form must, because it exists, dilute and inflate the money supply.
      The obvious end product of capitalism, which anyone who cares to can see, occurs when everyone is an investor and no one works. That absurdity also points up the direction in which capitalism has been taking US since the beginning of post agrarian times. As we look backward, the feudalism and aristocratically dominated mercantilism and trade that "free trade capitalism" extends, differed by its less dissipative economic effects only because of the stasis of the social/economic conditions. Opportunity is the harbinger of the end times, as the most ruthless and unscrupulous behavior leads to success and so it’s more frequently emulated. Ironically, as it plays out there is a lesser, not greater percentage of the population hoarding the greatest part of the wealth produced by the community. Feudalism was more stable only because of its economic and political repressiveness. And that’s the status quo, the tried and true to which the conservatives really wish to return. Either direction leads to repression and totalitarianism in defense of the wealth of a few.
      The proof of accelerated economic dissipation due to increasing abstract activity is all around you. If you have the courage to open your eyes and shed your delusion, you can see it. If you will see the economy as the function it is, rather than what you wish it to be, then the end is a mathematical certainty. The upper limit of capitalism is reached when we’re all investors and no one works. . . . or were all raiders who steal from one another and no one hunts or gathers or grows crops or herds animals. . . . or we all live off the increase in the price of, not the value or wealth represented by, our homes.
      The mathematical certainty of the end result of the economic disequilibrium introduced by usury gives US the advantage over 1930's Germans. Even though Bush may have in Rove as effective a propagandist as Hitler had in Goebbels, the neo-cons long term goals are easier to fathom. They aren’t as smart as the Nazis. The intolerable consequence of a few profiting obscenely by increasing the poverty, pain and suffering of the majority is more obvious to those willing to see it, than the self destructive behavior of their historical antecedants. Do you need me to spell outsourcing, downsizing, cheap labor, preserving profit and saving a few investors by sacrificing the workers well being [GM, four airlines and others] . . . giga oil, insurance, pharmaceutical and corporate medical provider investor’s greed, corruption, corporate domination of government, 45 million and more each day Americans without adequate health care . . .? All this is tied to the economically dissipative profit of investors, debt, trade imbalance and consumption of foreign made goods that must lead to devalued dollars and a real estate price reality check. (See the link to the article by Julian Delasantellis.)
      The idiots who support the greatest fraud the world has ever seen don’t even know that they’re impoverishing the consumers, who buy the products on which their profits are made! Don’t be a dumb Bush or a loud mouthed Dick. It’s all around you. Open your eyes. Defend yourself. Their dominion is a threat to your life. It’s time for some preemptive self defense against the corporate parasites that infest our livelihoods.

Some possible consequences of the declining value of the dollar are explored in an Asia Times article: "US living on borrowed time - and money"
      By Julian Delasantellis
      Asia Times says: Julian Delasantellis is a management consultant, private investor and professor of international business in the US state of Washington.
"Pay the Piper"

Letter to the Editor:
      The tidal flow of illegal immigrants will continue, while money is to be had by looting the treasury through promising to stem the tide. The high tech gadgetry, purchased at taxpayer expense with money borrowed in our name, is applied to that end by the INS et al. where it will have the least effect . . . on the tens of millions of people, who flood our workplace. Those who threaten our economy by using cheap labor will never be confronted because that would conflict with the real reason for opposing the inflow. It’s like war. The purpose of war is typified by the one in Iraq. Enduring wars will not end until the government stops borrowing money for the military industrial complex to loot from the treasury. China and the rest of our creditors may have something to say about this. Likewise, the war on drugs will not have much progress or end until no more money is to be made by contractors and vendors selling high tech gadgets or various services that accomplish nothing but to loot the treasury. And the tide of illegal immigration will not be stemmed, while money is to be made by opposing it.

      Alfred G. Kaiser - Arizona

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