[quote=njtosd][quote=CA renter]
The UAW/union workers don’t scapegoat the foreign workers; they blame the executives and those who (again) make decisions that only seek to maximize profits, without any consideration for the long-term effects of their actions, or how their actions will affect this country in the future.[/quote]
Um. I don’t think you have spent much time in Detroit. I grew up there and the UAW members that I was aware of weren’t really picky about who they blamed for their troubles. At that time (I left in 1990) you didn’t want to park your foreign car downtown very often, unless you liked getting it keyed. Convertible tops on foreign cars were routinely slashed. The UAW workers wanted jobs, and if they could have excluded every foreign car from the U.S., they would have, regardless of their ability/inability to supply a product of equal quality. And don’t get me started on the “job banks.” Ridiculous.[/quote]
But were they angry at the *workers* in those foreign countries, or were they angry about the fact that they saw their jobs being threatened by those *companies*? I make a distinction between workers and the companies they work for.
BTW, Japanese car manufacturers who really did produce better cars, yet still managed to have pretty decent labor and environmental standards are not the same kind of threat that “American” companies who outsource jobs solely because of the lack of labor and environmental standards in “developing” nations.
I don’t have a problem with American workers competing on a level playing field — same wages/labor standards and environmental standards, but if someone can actually make a **better** product, they should be the ones to succeed. What we’re doing in China (and Mexico, and Vietnam, and Cambodia, etc.) is NOT about competing to make superior goods, it is pure wage arbitrage, and it will end up sinking labor around the world.
Of course, I think we need to support American labor over foreign labor because we need to be self-sufficient and productive in our own country. Without American labor, our country will collapse (unless one thinks we can all get rich flipping houses/stocks/bonds/commodities/etc. to one another at ever-increasing prices).
