Tapsearch Com EditorSick Consumption trips world
January 30th 2008 23:36
Bizarre Politics Reports:
Sick Consumption - Global economic disease
Franklin Roosevelt said economic diseases are highly communicable. Consumption is one of them.
Katherine Reynolds Lewis, with the Newhouse News Service, writes - Must CONSUMPTION be a pillar of our economy? She talks about consumerism as the tool of Globalization and Free Trade . The value of the dollar depends on the power of the USA in the world. This power depends on consumers spending enough money to prop up Globalization and Free Trade.
About a week ago, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke committed economic heresy by telling the American consumer to buy "domestically produced" items. He apparently was afraid to use the term made in the USA since not much is made in the USA. In any event, his remarks was a strike against Free Trade.
Lewis gets into the definition of the term consumption. She takes it back in time when the term consumption defined the disease tuberculousis. Now it defines consuming. The term consume means to use up, to destroy etc. Today, we do not even use up things with our junk yards filled with throw away electronics, computer, printers and light bulbs filled with mercury. The dictionary gives another defintion for the term consume which is a better description to relate to Free Trade - " to spend wastefully".
Most of us are aware auto manufacturers could have made lifetime lasting autos but that would not bring in lasting profits. Investors want lifetime investments insead of common sense products. The term durable goods used in economics evidently does not mean durable goods but something more temporary.
The picture of an indian with a tear in his eye observing the pollution around him became famous in our time. U.S. companies just sent their dirty manufacturing out of the USA in their response to the impact of the picture.
I would like to see the face of a woman shopper from the 1940s standing at the entrance of a modern super market or big box store. In those days, a retail clerk had to debate with a customer about replacing a worn out paper shopping bag. The shoppers would use them over and over again. I wonder how they would respond to all the plastic shopping bags and then see people buying plastic garbage bags to have a plastic bag to throw away the plastic shopping bags in.
I would like to see thier faces at a frozen food case, looking at a box of frozen foods which contains more packaging than food. I would like to see them struggle with a security plastic packaging containers surrounding a small item and see what they would say. They thought bulk foods and items were naturally less expensive because of less packaging.
I wonder what they would do if they noticed the item was made in China. Most likely they would ask how can an item with so much packaging travel so far and be cheaper than local products. Someone would have to tell them it is because your husband made too much money and were in unions. Those days are gone.
These days we now also have human throw aways. If you can not compete with workers making pennies a day, you better find a different way to live.
Now even Wal-Mart is reporting their clients are running out of money at the end of the month and they are surprised when 6000 people apply for 350 jobs. 46,000 applied for just over a 1000 jobs at three new Wal-Mart stores. At the same time outside the USA , the workers do not make enough to afford even the products they make. Today there are new automobile factories outside the USA that do not need employee parking lots. I wonder what Henry Ford would say about that.
Ben Bernanke says consumers should spend their economic stimulus money on "domestically produced" products for the sake of our economy. He says spending the money to pay down credit cards would be a "negative". Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com says " In the near term , we don't want consumers to reign in their spending because then everything falls apart. " Perhaps he should tell them what it means to consume these days. It means - to spend wastefully. With the money spent at places like Wal-Mart quickly fanning out to the places where the products are made spending is wasteful as far as reviving the U.S. economy. The pillars of consumption supporting Free Trade and Globalization have too heavy of a load on them. The economic diseases are invecting them. It may even be a house of cards ready to fall.
Who said we had to compete like this with one another in global economic arena ?
Reference: from Newhouse News Service at Katherine Reynolds Lewis article
Katherine Reynolds Lewis, with the Newhouse News Service, writes - Must CONSUMPTION be a pillar of our economy? She talks about consumerism as the tool of Globalization and Free Trade . The value of the dollar depends on the power of the USA in the world. This power depends on consumers spending enough money to prop up Globalization and Free Trade.
About a week ago, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke committed economic heresy by telling the American consumer to buy "domestically produced" items. He apparently was afraid to use the term made in the USA since not much is made in the USA. In any event, his remarks was a strike against Free Trade.
Lewis gets into the definition of the term consumption. She takes it back in time when the term consumption defined the disease tuberculousis. Now it defines consuming. The term consume means to use up, to destroy etc. Today, we do not even use up things with our junk yards filled with throw away electronics, computer, printers and light bulbs filled with mercury. The dictionary gives another defintion for the term consume which is a better description to relate to Free Trade - " to spend wastefully".
Most of us are aware auto manufacturers could have made lifetime lasting autos but that would not bring in lasting profits. Investors want lifetime investments insead of common sense products. The term durable goods used in economics evidently does not mean durable goods but something more temporary.
The picture of an indian with a tear in his eye observing the pollution around him became famous in our time. U.S. companies just sent their dirty manufacturing out of the USA in their response to the impact of the picture.
I would like to see the face of a woman shopper from the 1940s standing at the entrance of a modern super market or big box store. In those days, a retail clerk had to debate with a customer about replacing a worn out paper shopping bag. The shoppers would use them over and over again. I wonder how they would respond to all the plastic shopping bags and then see people buying plastic garbage bags to have a plastic bag to throw away the plastic shopping bags in.
I would like to see thier faces at a frozen food case, looking at a box of frozen foods which contains more packaging than food. I would like to see them struggle with a security plastic packaging containers surrounding a small item and see what they would say. They thought bulk foods and items were naturally less expensive because of less packaging.
I wonder what they would do if they noticed the item was made in China. Most likely they would ask how can an item with so much packaging travel so far and be cheaper than local products. Someone would have to tell them it is because your husband made too much money and were in unions. Those days are gone.
These days we now also have human throw aways. If you can not compete with workers making pennies a day, you better find a different way to live.
Now even Wal-Mart is reporting their clients are running out of money at the end of the month and they are surprised when 6000 people apply for 350 jobs. 46,000 applied for just over a 1000 jobs at three new Wal-Mart stores. At the same time outside the USA , the workers do not make enough to afford even the products they make. Today there are new automobile factories outside the USA that do not need employee parking lots. I wonder what Henry Ford would say about that.
Ben Bernanke says consumers should spend their economic stimulus money on "domestically produced" products for the sake of our economy. He says spending the money to pay down credit cards would be a "negative". Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com says " In the near term , we don't want consumers to reign in their spending because then everything falls apart. " Perhaps he should tell them what it means to consume these days. It means - to spend wastefully. With the money spent at places like Wal-Mart quickly fanning out to the places where the products are made spending is wasteful as far as reviving the U.S. economy. The pillars of consumption supporting Free Trade and Globalization have too heavy of a load on them. The economic diseases are invecting them. It may even be a house of cards ready to fall.
Who said we had to compete like this with one another in global economic arena ?
Reference: from Newhouse News Service at Katherine Reynolds Lewis article
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