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TPP only underscores it.
Obama has been a good friend to big money.
TPP only underscores it.
as for using race and class to divide, no one beats the GOP.
Nike, Obama, and the Fiasco of the Trans Pacific Partnership
n Friday, President Obama chose Nike headquarters in Oregon to deliver a defense of his proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership.
It was an odd choice of venue.
Nike isn’t the solution to the problem of stagnant wages in America. Nike is the problem.
It’s true that over the past two years Nike has added 2,000 good-paying professional jobs at its Oregon headquarters, fulfilling the requirements of a controversial tax break it
wrangled from the state legislature. That’s good for Nike’s new design, research and marketing employees.
Just before the President spoke, Nike announced that if the Trans Pacific Partnership is enacted, Nike would “accelerate development of new advanced manufacturing methods and a domestic supply chain to support U.S. based manufacturing,” thereby creating as many as 10,000 more American jobs.
But that would still be only a tiny fraction of Nike’s global workforce. While Nike makes some shoe components in the United States, it hasn’t assembled shoes here since 1984.
Americans made only 1 percent of the value of Nike products that generated Nike’s $27.8 billion revenue last year. And Nike is moving ever more of its production abroad. Last year, a third of Nike’s remaining 13,922 American production workers were laid off.
Most of Nike’s products are made by 990,000 workers in low-wage countries whose abysmal working conditions have made Nike a symbol of global sweatshop labor.
As wages have risen in China, Nike has switched most of its production to Vietnam where wages are less than 60 cents are hour. Almost 340,000 workers cut and assemble Nike products there.
In other words, Nike is a global corporation with no particular loyalty or connection to the United States. Its loyalty is to its global shareholders.
I’m not faulting Nike. Nike is only playing by the rules.
I’m faulting the rules.
In case you hadn’t noticed, America has a huge and growing problem of inequality. Most Americans are earning no more than the typical American earned thirty years ago, adjusted for inflation – even though the U.S. economy is almost twice as large as it was then.
Since then, almost all the economic gains have gone to the top.
The President is angry at Democrats who won’t support this trade deal.
He should be angry at Republicans who haven’t supported American workers. Their obduracy has worsened the potential impact of the deal.
Congressional Republicans have refused to raise the minimum wage (whose inflation-adjusted value is now almost 25 percent lower than it was in 1968), expand unemployment benefits, invest in job training, enlarge the Earned Income Tax Credit, improve the nation’s infrastructure, or expand access to public higher education.
They’ve embraced budget austerity that has slowed job and wage growth. And they’ve continued to push “trickle-down” economics – keeping tax rates low for America’s richest, protecting their tax loopholes, and fighting off any attempt to raise taxes on wealthy inheritances to their level before 2000.
Now they – and the President – want a huge trade agreement that protects corporate investors but will lead to even more off-shoring of low-skilled American jobs.
The Trans Pacific Trade Partnership’s investor protections will make it safer for firms to relocate abroad – the Cato Ins ute describes such protections as “lowering the risk premium” on offshoring – thereby reducing corporate incentives to keep jobs in America and upgrade the skills of Americans. CATO!
Those same investor protections will allow global corporations to sue the United States or any other country that raises its health, safety, environmental, or labor standards, for any lost profits due to those standards.
But there’s nothing in the deal to protect the incomes of Americans.
We know that when Americans displaced from manufacturing jobs join the glut of Americans competing for jobs that can’t be replaced by lower-wage workers abroad – personal service jobs in retail, restaurant, hotel, hospital, child care, and elder care – all lower-skilled workers face downward pressure on wages.
Jobs being lost to imports pay Americans higher wages than the jobs left behind. Government data show wages in import-competing industries (e.g. manufacturing jobs) beat those in exporting industries overall.
Without a higher minimum wage, an expanded Earned Income Tax Credit, affordable higher education, and a world-class system of job retraining – financed by higher taxes on the wealthy winners in the American economy – most Americans will continue to experience stagnant or declining wages.
Instead, the Trans Pacific Partnership – which includes twelve nations, including Vietnam, but would be open for every nation to join – would lock us into an expanded version of the very policies that have failed most American for the past twenty years.
No doubt Nike is supporting the TPP. It would allow Nike to import its Vietnamese and Malaysian-made goods more cheaply. But don’t expect those savings to translate into lower prices for American consumers. As it is, Nike spends less than $10 for every pair of $100-plus shoes it sells in the U.S.
Needless to say, the TPP wouldn’t require Nike to pay its Vietnamese workers more. Nikes’ workers are not paid enough to buy the shoes they make much less buy U.S. exported goods.
Nike may be the perfect example of life under TPP, but that is not a future many Americans would choose.
http://readersupportednews.org/opini...ic-partnership
LibertarianismActually thinking socialism works
Conservatives that think they're 'radical and want change'
Senile Paul
We do want change. Down with big government and statism, up with the Cons ution and a limited republic.Libertarianism
Conservatives that think they're 'radical and want change
Senile Paul
The only change socialists want is to increase the balance on their LoneStar Cards.
At least they give consumers a choice, with several Made in the USA.
How many Nike shoes are made in the USA?
None.
I'm just clarifying what might be a misconception.
I prefer NB to Nike because NB shoes run true to size and 13.5 Nikes aren't generally available.
LOL...
That's a good size foot, you occasionally put in your mouth!
I have bough New Balance since the 90's. I am one that shops for USA products, and limit my purchases to them when I can find them. It increasingly frustrating to not be able to buy some things from here.
Socialists have fought revolutions, only 'Libertarians' I've ever seen are those hipster dweebs on twitter with the twitter bio 'free-thinking Libertarian'We do want change. Down with big government and statism, up with the Cons ution and a limited republic.
Socialists have fought revolutions, only 'Libertarians' I've ever seen are those hipster dweebs on twitter with the twitter bio 'free-thinking Libertarian'
Libertarians
Middle class white kids whose mothers cut the crust off their sandwiches and play Lacrosse
Socialism has Castro, Gorbachev, Mandela, Einstein, Libertarians have Senile Paul and his half-assed son
Pretending they're pro LGBT and pro choice but as soon as the bible lovers come calling they hate abortions again
The Canucks of the political system
Irrelevant
'Libertarian Socialism'
Individualism
Hate the state and government but still happily take their medicaid
Nobody cares outside the USA
Pointless
Last edited by Blizzardwizard; 05-10-2015 at 07:47 PM.
Lmao lmao this guy is actually a communist
Funnily enough, if the fast track authorization passes, it will likely be with majority Republican votes...
I don't like anything of what's known of that trade agreement, tbh, probably the secret parts are even worse...
ive been to vn many times
trust me whats the difference between made there or made in ur country? same product
u goto vietnam into high end stores for that same product sold overseas? these mofos have the nerve to charge the same price....only fake ass u buy at stall markets..
Marxist-Leninists also committed mass murders (during the Russian Civil War, and after) in the name of ideology that makes the Nazis look like soccer moms in comparison. Well, perhaps that's an exaggeration, but I'm relatively speaking.
In fact, a convincing amount of evidence possibly suggests the Nazis took at least some cue from the Red Terror in their own rise to power.
Last edited by z0sa; 05-11-2015 at 02:28 AM. Reason: spelling
Libertarianism!
unLiberal/no financial regs produced both long-lasting, financial depressions, 1930s, 2000s.
Thanks, Libertarian frauds!
And the risk of repeat, and depth, is WORSE now that it was in 2008.
Last edited by boutons_deux; 05-11-2015 at 10:29 AM.
It's just BigShoe partnering up with BigGovern. Everyone knows that a good shoe is easily made with household items and can be put together for under $5. And now even quicker with a 3D printer. But I suspect that VRWC will never allow those blueprints to become public.Libertarianism!
unLiberal/no financial regs produced both long-lasting, financial depressions \, 1930s, 2000s.
Thanks, Libertarian frauds!
And the risk of repeat, and depth, is WORSE now that it was in 2008.
"BigShoe partnering up with BigGovern"
BigCorp and BigCapital pushed hard for "globalization" (whatever the that meant to the person on the street, they knew they could lie about what it meant if anybody asked) in the 1980s, again exactly when the VRWC got Useful Idiot St Ronnie and his nasty gang into power.
the 99% have been ed harder and deeper ever since. If Nike had to pay import duties on "their" sweatshop shoes imported from Asia, maybe those shoes would be Made In USA.
search "profit margins on (running, athletic) shoes" at retail. I expect Nike, etc make even more % FOB.
^ the up you communist agitator
Supreme Slurper of the Liberal Narrative detected
are you seriously going to say like that when the liberals believe in the same only on the demand side. It's called Keynesianism, but based on your posting experience i dont expect you to know any better.
I'm not going to search anything. That just puts more $ into the pocket of BigSearch and BigTech. I know that the profit margins that BigShoe makes are insane and it's troublesome that BigFinan sits there and thumbs it's nose at the 99%.
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