X-Envelope-From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 1999 13:03:46 -0500 (EST)
Andrew Straw <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>Wrote
"I must admit that I am often torn between supporting those who want freer
trade and those who are interested in protecting workers in core countries
like the US.
===========Andrew's original follows my reply========
Ed Said:
Unfortunately there are many who, like the wealthy doctor, are treating the
symptoms instead of the disease.
50 yearts ago as I was desperately trying to figure out how things worked
the media regularly published three statistics. One was the balance of
trade. The other was the money supply and the third was the international
balance of payments.
Tracking the interplay between these three is absolutely neccessary to the
comprehension of the problem and the identification of international power
players for purposes of making a prognosis of economic health of our own
and other nations.
The balance of trade is still being published regularly. For me it is an
indicator of how well Canada, Canadian companies, Canadian skills and
Canadian resources are serving the interests of the international financial
community. That is the bankers and their front men/women who operate in the
economic jetstream to keep the international weather from getting too far
out of control.
The money supply statistics are no longer published. (except by COMER in
the the economic reform newsletter) The money supply, which consists of
both government issued legal tender and private bank issued credit. The
ratio was in the 60's about $1.00 legal tender to $10.00 of bank issued
credit. The money supply volume is no longer published because in my view
the government is ashamed (1) to admit that they don't know and/or the
ratio is now about $1 to $400. That means if everyone went to the bank to
take their money out they would get $1.00 for every $400.00 they thought
they had on deposit. A good case for using the mattress.
The Balance of Payments is an indicator of how a nation is performing vis a
vis other nations.
Canada is a hewer of wood and a drawer of water because it must hew its
wood and draw its water (remember the trade numbers?) to satisfy its
international financial obligations. The samer applies to all other
"resource rich" countries
A short math quiz.
I'm a foreign country. I see that Canada has many resources and a people
that are skilled, trainable and not too bright. I issue credit (create
money) on the collateral value of Canada's resources, both indigenous and
indigent, and lend it to the few smart ones in Canada who I can trust to do
my bidding because I pay them well.
Canadian's use the money I lend them to engage in economic activity (that's
jobs, jobs., jobs) extracting their resources and doing some low tech
manufacturing. The goods are sent to me in my foreign country to sell to my
fellow countrymen.
There are a couple conditions.
The money I lent Canada is repayable at 10% interest. I have put in place
trade barriers that prevent Canada from exporting any more than the value
of 9% of the interest they owe me.
How long does it take to pay off the balance? The answer is, it cannot be
done.
It gets worse. Remember the other 1%? That has been accumulating. As soon
as Canadians pay enough taxes to subsidize their companies to invent new
technology, I take the accumulated 1% and buy the companies. I transfer the
ownership of the technology to my country and rent it back to the dumb
Canadians by charging them royalties, licenses, management fees etc. that
serve to reduce their productivity. Then I tell them they have to work
harder extracting their resources, pay more taxes to subsidize more
inventions if they want to compete with other countries or improve their
standard of living, pay for their social services etc.
Is anybody out there getting the picture?
We as canadians do have a choice. We can "pull a Castro "and refuse to
allow the international financial community to dictate to us or we can
"play ball" by obeying the dictates of a monetary system that is raping all
the resources of the earth.
There is an intrinsic anomaly in the worlds money systems that acts as
"John Galt's Motor " It drives economic activity. Not because the godds are
needed. but because the money system operates on the elemental principal of
"gow or die."
Wars have been fought ever since Hamurabi sent his troops out to the
villages that became prosperouse and refused to pay tribute. (i.e. send
their goods to Babylon) The crops and houses were burned and the women
raped. (to break down the moral order that grows where there is abundance)
The next 50 years there was a promise of "good times" that would "trickle
down", there was peace, tribute flowed to Babylob (the richest nation in
the world) and people worked hard to impove their circumstances. The order
imposing money system was reestablished.
Sorry about the length but Andrew posed the question.
As my kids always said, "That's just a little more than I wanted to know."
Please don't anyone suggest I'm cynical. I have survived the system because
I was able to sufficently figure it out to protect myself. I just hesitate
to spit against the wind. (spirit)
Peace and goodwill
Ed G
==========================
Andrew's follows=====
On the one hand, laborers in the US have fought for decades to attain fair
wages and reasonable benefits for the hard work they do. Making trade
freer gives management a huge leverage and bargaining tool: either take
our offer or we will do a serious cost/benefit about whether we should
move to Juarez/Singapore/Thailand, etc. Of course this is a threat to the
livelihood of core-country laborers and their unions. I think of it as
macro-level union busting.
On the other hand, providing good jobs in other countries is not such a
bad thing either. How many workers in SW Indiana complained when Toyota
built a factory there? People were lining up to work there because jobs
are scarse in such rural areas. The same happens when an American company
moves to a rural part of another country: they line up for those jobs
because for them, they ARE good jobs. If the jobs paid a relatively awful
wage in that country, there would not be such a demand to become an
employee.
In my opinion, after listening to the many distinguished voices on this
list, we are in a period of turbulence which will last for some
time--perhaps another 20 years? After which time, the dust will have
cleared, and most jobs will have workers who are paid the rate that
benefits stockholders the most. Whether or not that result is a living
wage capable to sustaining a quality standard of living has yet to be
determined.
I don't see protests in Seattle as changing this verdict in the least.
It was happening before the WTO, and will continue whether that
organization is abolished or not. As someone who does care about workers
both in core and peripheral countries, I think the best thing is to use
what little nation-state power there remains to increase the diversity of
precisely the stockholding ownership that drives this system.
Make more people owners. Active owners. Both in core AND in peripheral
countries.
Any other answers? Concerns?
Andrew U. D. Straw
Fredericksburg, VA
Peace and goodwill
Ed Goertzen,
Oshawa,
L1G 2S2,
905-576-6699
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SIGNATURE - About bureaucracy "�.it ceased to be merely a servant of
social institutions and became their master. Bureaucracy now not only
solves problems but creates them. More important, it defines what our
problems are - and they are always, in the bureaucratic view, problems of
efficiency." "... this makes bureaucracies exceedingly dangerous, because,
though they were originally designed to process only technical information,
they now are commonly employed to address problems of a moral, social, and
political nature." "... bureaucracy has broken loose from ....
restrictions and now claims sovereignty over all of society's affairs.
"Technopoly" by Neil Postman 1992 Pp. 86
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