It's the Jobs too, stoopido

I know, I know, it's the economy stupid. But what is causing the economy to go down the tubes?

People are in mass not paying their bills, for whatever reason the pundits like to put out there it was all going swimmingly when regular folks could make the minimum monthly payments.

However we've seen our wages stagnate and recess back to early 70's pay scales for both blue collar and now white collar jobs. Downsizing wasn't really a downsize for the company. Sure they downsized the American workforce that was employed at these companies, but remember right after the big downsize bust came outsourcing. They got rid of good paying jobs here in the U.S. and hired even more people over seas at less of a cost to the company, making board members and CEOs of these companies very rich, but their target customer base lost their buying power over the years.

Now we're seeing what happens when you don't give a man a leg to stand on. Republican pundits can rail against "protectionism" like it's a bad thing and when the issue of trade agreements finally gets tackled one day the right wing media machine will be in full swing doing their best to convince well meaning American workers that these deals are good for the country and good for them.

When we look at it though, who's it good for? It's good for the CEO, it's good for the Board of Directors, it's good for shareholders, but only for a short time really. In the long run the consumer is going to have to be able to afford to buy the products that these companies sell.

For awhile they are going to have to come off the public dole of corporate welfare for sending jobs overseas and I'm sure they'll lobby for more welfare to bring jobs back (they don't want to see THEIR pay scaled back at the top after all), but we're going to have to force these jobs and wages issues.

It's all about the jobs and what we get paid for doing them. I like being self employed, however even at my teeny-tiny small business I've been seeing a trend since mid '05 when gas prices went over $2.50 per gallon and now with the drop in the markets, failing banks, etc, not even my customers are able to afford to do things they want to, just what they have to.

It's the jobs folks, we need more of them, we need them stable, we need decent pay and so called "protectionism" is really about the only idea for fixing the problem that makes sense, at least the only one I've heard. Big business, or big American business simply will NOT go for trade agreements like the ones that were passed by the European Union where companies can't just exploit workers in poorer countries and countries with environmental regulations more lax than their own.

Say you're a German CEO and you want to open a factory in Co. Cork Ireland so you won't have to pay the people as much as you would in say Berlin then you have to make some kind of investment in the infastructure of that community. You can't just set up shop like you're based there and basically pull a train and exploit every aspect of the poorer less developed country where you put up your facility and you have to offer a liveable wage based on the scale where your company is located, not just exploit low or non-existant minimum wage laws.

That would be a good thing, it did major wonders for Ireland through the 90's until they went into recession last week. But don't count on American big business to be interested in investing anything in the infastructure of any community overseas that they are in. They aren't interested in doing it for their own back yards here in the states. They just want another yacht to ski behind, another vacation home to go hang out in when they get bored hanging out at home, another ivory backscrather to hang next to the barkolounger on the veranda, etc.

It's time to get aggressive with companies that send most of their work overseas when they aren't just trying to supply local markets overseas. When a company in New York sends work to COMMUNIST China or Vietnam just to send what was made by those men and women over there for .25 cents an hour back to the U.S. for sale then that's just wrong. That's not free trade, that's shady. Those jobs should be here in America, with Americans, or at least some smart illegal aliens, haha.

I'm not trying to engage in "class warfare" here, that's just a buzzphrase used by ditto heads to try to quash any intelligent discussion about the reality of our American job situation. It's time to get real about our work, our pay, our financial security and our dignity.

Be a hero. It's your turn now.