In the discussion thread: companies were going bankrupt or had to move out of country. [View all]
Response to seabeyond (Original post)
Wed Dec 28, 2011, 12:19 PM
mbperrin (7,672 posts)
3. Child labor is WHY people are hungry.
The more people in a given labor force, the lower wages are.
Your niece's instructor is a victim of the bastardization of the field of economics which has been ongoing since the mid-1970s. He or she have never read the source documents for the field.
Profits are not a goal of an economic system, period.
Adam Smith, the founder of modern economic thought, wrote The Wealth of Nations, where he examined the reasons a country was poor or rich. He found that production of goods makes a country wealthy.
He points out that the first thing business people do when they meet anywhere, parties or just on the street, is to begin figuring how to cheat consumers to make more money for themselves. To this end, he discourages the meeting of business people and thinks that the corporation should not be allowed to exist as a form of business. Profit should be just enough to prevent the merchant from going out of business. Production should be maximized, and then jobs and incomes are maximized as well.
Before the 70s, the classic American business model was find a place where people need your stuff and locate a branch there. But during the 70s and continuing today, is this perverse notion that business does not have to accept things as they are, but are free to create their own reality. So you stop going where people are, and make people move, instead. That big promotion now means leaving here to go to the big city, where you are cut off from your family and friends, your natural economic support system.
Maybe your uncle the mechanic would work on your car at home for just the parts, your dad the accountant did the whole family's taxes and so on. That's how I grew up, with grandmother babysitting us while mother shopped and so on. Your earned dollars went further, because when you moved away and needed brakes, go to the brake shop and pay full price, same for child care, and anything else you need. Now you need two people working in the household to have the same things you used to get with one. Business continues to squeeze, until now you have mom and dad and kids working as well. Nearly all my high school senior students work, and not for pocket money - they are paying their insurance, clothes, car payment in some cases, as well as chipping in for general family support. Now you have 3 or more people working for what one used to provide.
Overseas and small child continues the scam - now you can get 7 or 8 or 9 people to work for what one used to get.
Now they're trying to get it done over here to make the global pool of labor even larger and wages even lower.
All in the name of profits.
Production, not profits, is the goal of economics. The rest is a race to the bottom, and I so inform my students, and give them strategies to opt out of the current game to their own benefit and that of their families.
The more people who work for less and less, the less and less they can buy, including food. Too many workers spells hunger, and that's where we're at. A huge increase in poverty in the world's richest country, and it won't get better by putting 7 year olds to work.
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