US recession/unemployment vs world poverty

[ar81]

These times are interesting, because we see that if US has crisis, the rest of the world has crisis.

But also, if there is poverty in the world, US workers are less competitive in the job market, and jobs go overseas. As people get fired, internal market shrinks for you have less people with money, which leads to recession.

US workers are less competitive because of a matter of price, they are simply too expensive... because of world poverty in a globalized world with globalized job markets. A chinese worker costs 1/15 of the salary of an american worker. How can americans compete against this? Government bailout subsidizing 14/15 of US wages?

So it means that we must care about each other. We affect the world and we are affected by it.

We live in a third world planet where about half of people live in poverty. That is worst than living in Venezuela and very similar to live in Nicaragua. It is a planetary Nicaragua. It was just a matter of time before it happened in a global world.

[funchy]

Perhaps you may be looking at it from too much of a USA-centric viewpoint. The collapse in Europe happened because of their own banks failing. AIG which failed terribly here in the US is a global company. Yes, they're all interconnected due to globalization, but IMO they're not all directly due to the US.

US jobs go overseas, even if there isn't a recession in the US. We've been losing jobs for decades. As soon as corporations realized it was cheaper to make something overseas and ship it here, jobs trickled away. The flip side is that consumers don't demand American-made goods; American consumers are happy to shop at Walmart and buy everything made-in-china.

Capitalism by its very nature is not concerned with the world or the people in it. It exists only to maximize profits.

I don't know what the answer is. If we export jobs, we hurt our own earning power. If we don't export, shirt you buy at Walmart for $5 made-in-china could cost $15 if made here. Are we prepared to pay much higher prices? And considering our national passtime is shopping, would voters tolerate a politician who caused prices to rise?

[Doku]

Originally Posted by funchy

Capitalism by its very nature is not concerned with the world or the people in it. It exists only to maximize profits.

I think that this is the worst thing about the stock market in general... Because most of the big companies are publicly traded, they are essentially required by law to do everything that they can to maximize shareholder earnings, and stock growth. Their stock price, and dividends are their #1 product... not the physical things that most people think is a company's product.

Originally Posted by funchy

I don't know what the answer is. If we export jobs, we hurt our own earning power. If we don't export, shirt you buy at Walmart for $5 made-in-china could cost $15 if made here. Are we prepared to pay much higher prices? And considering our national passtime is shopping, would voters tolerate a politician who caused prices to rise?

I have not shopped at Ghetto-Mart since they killed off Huffy, Mr. Coffee, Rubbermaid, et al. In my opinion, that company is more responsible for the downfall of America than anything else in our history.