|
REINVENTION OF AMERICA - Part 3 Corporate Demand to Achieve the Impossible
|
|
Capitalism failed. It's not the technical model of capitalism that failed, rather it's the society and culture that was built by capitalism that failed. When capitalists become too big to prosecute, corporations become too big to audit and too big to fail; when they become big enough to buy politicians and to dictate government policy, and they become big enough to attack the government itself, the country then falls into a state of fascist corruption and decay. And that's the condition of the United States today. The choice Americans must make is to either bring integrity and loyalty back to corporate America or to suffer under the tyranny of global corporate fascists who care nothing about America and her people. They care only about power and money. For the purpose of this paper, the story of the Reinvention of America began when American Express decided that they wanted a new round of trade talks under General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) that included Financial Services as a subject of international trade. At the time, the GATT agreements covered only physical goods. American Express wanted that changed because they were having difficulty in gaining market access to about forty countries so they enlisted the support of Citigroup and AIG to lobby for a new round. In other words, these three corporations used our government as a tool for their international business goals. The Uruguay Round of trade talks was formally initiated at the Punte Del Este GATT Ministerial Conference in 1986. William Brock who had been the U.S. Trade Representative in the timeframe leading up to that conference, by then had moved to the position of Secretary of Labor. He commissioned a study to be done by the Hudson Institute to report on the anticipated impact of successful completion of the Uruguay Round that included 'Trade in Services'. The name of report commissioned by Brock was 'Workforce 2000' and it begins with a quote from Ronald Reagan:
The goal that was stated in the report was "rebalancing the world economy". And of course, all the propaganda we hear now is that the goal is to lift the world's poor out of poverty. Obviously that's a smoke screen and a laughable one at that. American Express, Citigroup and AIG could never be accused of humanitarian objectives. They wanted to increase the wealth and power of their corporations by expanding their customer base into countries where they had previously been blocked. And they make money by putting people into debt. The logical fallacy in the idea of Services and Technology as being the foundation of the American economy in a globalized world of "free trade" is apparent when you consider that the United States had only 300 million people compared to a world of 6 billion people. What was being traded in the Uruguay Round was the wealth of America and the standard of living of the American people - for the global market goals of American Express, Citigroup and AIG. They were in effect, selling our country out from under us. To understand why that was true, all you have to do is take a look at a simple statement of productivity: Assume a Computer Programmer in the U.S. makes $35.00 per hour. Now assume that an Indian Computer Programmer makes $3.00 per hour - make it $5.00 per hour if you factor in the costs of communications via the Internet. For $35.00 you can hire 7 Computer Programmers in India versus 1 Computer Programmer in the U.S. Obviously, what you are measuring is productivity of expenditures on Computer Programming Services - not the productivity of the Computer Programmer himself. In order for the American Computer programmer to compete, he would have to produce the output of 7 programmers or he would have to drop salary requirements to $5.00 per hour. Since it is not possible for one person to do the job of 7 people, the American loses out in a global "competition". There is no competition. America simply loses and that's why our economy is collapsing. In Chapter 4 of the report, Workforce 2000, they write that America has six challenges to "win" in the global economy:
In those six bullet points are the seeds of the fascist corporate takeover of America and the collectivism that was inevitable as the people and the country tried to achieve the impossible which was to overcome the simple calculation of productivity of money relative to the profit incentives of the global corporations. The 'Reinvention of America' at its core is about the implementation of management control systems to bring shop floor efficiency to every level of American society in an attempt to achieve cost reductions to make up for the difference in the productivity calculation. And in the end, it won't matter if they consolidate all levels of government to reduce the cost of government; it won't matter if they squeeze the consumers to reduce their consumption of energy to reduce costs; it won't matter if they implement a system of peonage behind the facade of "work-based learning"; it won't matter what is done to overcome the productivity calculation because there is no end to greed of the global corporations and there is no check on their power to enslave and destroy. Corporate globalization is a boa constrictor and they are going to squeeze us to death. The only solution is to kill the boa before it kills us.
|
|
Vicky Davis
|