“Trade War With China is Good for Us – If We Win” by Joel D. Joseph [9/15/19 TPP] raises some important points worth further discussion. The opening paragraph states, “China has taken five million manufacturing jobs away from the United States.” Later, under the second section, he states “capitalists have moved five million jobs from the US to China, cutting their own throats to save a few bucks.”
The second statement better describes what happened. China may have paved the way for shifting the jobs, but capitalists moved them. Whatever China did, it made the move attractive to the capitalists’ bottom line. Consideration of anything other than the bottom line, and the jobs might not have moved. But there were, and are. no considerations other than shareholder value, as expertly described by Robert Kuttner’s “The Business Roundtable’s Strange Outbreak of Social Conscience” [9/15/19 TPP].
The bottom line improved more than a few bucks. The profits Apple realizes from its Chinese manufacturing operations contributes to its enormous executive salaries and massive cash holdings. The production cost of an iPhone is a small part of total cost. More is spent on the executive salaries, research and develop and marketing expenses in the US.
Little goes to Chinese workers and the few environmental regulations allows Apple to sell their product in the US for less than if it had been manufactured in the US. US consumers benefit by paying less, but Apple is the big winner all around.
Whether by tariff or moving the manufacturing to the US, the price of an iPhone will increase. Apple will not cut its profits if it can pass the cost along to the consumer. Consumers’ purchasing power will decrease as they spend more on iPhones. Presumably, newly employed workers at the Foxconn plant in Wisconsin will benefit, but there is no reason to think that Apple will not benefit more.
Another point is made in the second paragraph that quotes Milton Friedman “[T]he kind of economic organization that provides economic freedom directly, namely, competitive capitalism, also promotes political freedom because it separates economic power from political power …” It didn’t happen in China and it hasn’t happened in the US. Instead, neoliberal policies freed capitalists to expand their wealth at the expense of workers. As a result, capitalists entered the political world as campaign financiers, by hiring armies of lobbyists and supporting think tanks like ALEC to write legislation.
The political power of capitalists expanded further with Citizens United [the 2010 Supreme Court decision that held that the First Amendment prohibits government from restricting independent expenditures for political communications by corporations and other organizations], leaving us with rampant corruption at all levels of government. Without the economic freedom to exploit workers and the environment, capitalists would not have gained the wealth needed to exercise their extreme influence in politics. It’s not the working of Friedman’s competitive capitalism that results in the top 1% owning more of the US wealth than the bottom 40%. It’s the political power enjoyed by capitalists in the current system.
RICK PATELUNAS, Myrtle Beach, SC
In case you harbor any doubt that humiliation, domination and perpetrator self-aggrandizement, not sex, is the motive behind rape, check out “Unbelievable,” a Netflix series that began Sept. 13. It’s the dramatization of real case reporting done for ProPublica by T. Christian Miller & Ken Armstrong. More importantly, it was directed by Susannah Grant, who did not succumb – as Hollywood men can’t seem to resist – to the temptation of casting pretty women as rape victims.
While “Unbelievable” is a more-satisfying-than-average police procedural, with Toni Colette and Merritt Wever playing the subtle and intriguingly contrasted lead detectives, the authenticity of the rape victims is key to its plausibility. Here, “Unbelievable” goes above and beyond brave and true: one is a 50-going-on-60 frump, working in a food service; another is plumpish, self-effacing 20- or 30-something, living in a strange city away from any support network …
Make no mistake, that is a victim hallmark, or so the literature I read on the topic, when I got drafted onto the Rape Task Force in the ’70s as a National Organization of Women (Now) member in my Denver Days.
Marie Adler, played by Kaitlyn Dever, the quintessential victim, is attractive enough, but so cowed by the foster care system, which has never stood by her or helped her stand up for herself, that the minute police detectives doubt her, she begins to doubt herself. Thoroughly undermined by the system, Marie is incapable of outrage until the thing turns around, but before that, she can’t mobilize even her natural allies. No less go looking for any! (In feminist groups or elsewhere.)
Of course, to get good drama, you need “bad guys,” and in this film they are a couple of “desk sergeant” types who refuse to believe Marie, (hence the title) and extend her foster-care-victimization right through the rape investigation, up to filing a complaint on her for false reporting of a crime. The viewer can get outraged if she can’t – what makes this series so satisfying, I suspect.
Most of the time, though, the police dealing with rape victims, especially if it is a special unit, are savvy and sympathetic – at least in the early ’70s Denver NOW Task Force we believed they were in the victim’s corner.
It was the courts and general public that were the problem, which, of course, deposits us all on the doorstep of knowing a guy like Brett Kavanaugh is sitting on a court. Any court.
S. KEYRON McDERMOTT, Cascade, Iowa
Someone thought it was a good idea to send me a copy of The Progressive Populist to see if I might subscribe. It was a good idea since I am a long time left-of-liberal progressive as well as a proud member of Vermont’s Progressive Party. Last week I received your 10/1/19 issue in the mail.
Six pages in, I came upon Froma Harrop’s editorial telling us to “Curb [Our] Enthusiasms [because] Biden’s the One.” She harkens back to 2016 — that Sanders with his tens of thousands enthusiastic rally attendees was “creamed” by 16 points by Clinton in the New York primary — as if she were describing a fair fight. As if Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and the rest of the DNC did not exist. As if the distinctly anti-progressive mainstream media didn’t bury Sanders in immense ghostly heaps of non-coverage sprinkled with tiny bits of cynicism.
There is and was nothing progressive about the Biden and Clinton campaigns for the presidency. Because the vast majority have been screwed over during all presidencies of the last 40 years, it is silly to suggest that the majority of primary and general election voters “just want to replace Trump” and would be happy with a Biden presidency because he would “offer dignified leadership” and “surround himself with smart people.”
The vast majority vote according to how we see our interests; we are voting with eyes toward increased income, full medical care, affordable education and housing, holding huge corporations accountable, and drastically progressive changes in climate policy. Progressives who see we can only get there with deep systemic changes are supporting Sanders. Most progressives who think current systems can be reformed toward these ends support Warren, while some make an argument for Booker, Buttegeig, Castro, Harris, Klobuchar, O’Rourke, or Yang.
But, Biden? Pundits and others with a platform will continue to argue that if all you want is to “get rid of Trump,” Biden’s the one to do it. Well, they are wrong about that, too —just as they were wrong that Clinton was fairly earning the nomination —and wrong that Trump would never get nominated —and once nominated, never win. Flat out wrong.
Progressive populism and a Joe Biden candidacy are diametrically opposed. It makes no sense to me that your journal would editorialize otherwise.
Editor replies: We carry some writers with whom we don’t necessarily agree 100%, but we think their points of view are worth presenting.
Hal Crowther [“Bad News from Home: The White Knights Ride Again,” 10/1/19 TPP] bewails that since our country still produces pseudo Confederates and Klansmen in 2019, our schools have failed.
Another reason schools have failed is that millions of Americans are convinced (for lack of good instruction) that ours is a Christian nation — because others have programmed them to believe that our Founding Fathers, “who were all Christian,” followed Biblical principles to draft the Constitution.
The Religious Right, therefore, will never stop promoting public school prayers and religious displays in public buildings. And that’s only the beginning: They are determined to make the US a theocracy.
Sadly, ignorance is indestructible. Like the poor, the ignorant will always be with us. Unlike the poor, however, the ignorant are very dangerous.
DAVID QUINTERO, Monrovia, Calif.
Those most affected by climate change won’t vote because they are dead. Burnt, drowned, buried under debris. Survivors lost family members, homes, jobs, income, transportation, even food and water in some places.
There are more important tissues than watching candidates on TV because they no longer have TVs, chairs or living rooms.
Survivors say they have “never seen anything like this” before. Of course not! Each disaster seems to get worse. We’ve never experienced a government like this before, either.
In 1650, Molière wrote, “Ah, there are no longer any children.” Perhaps meaning they grow up too fast? They think, they speak, they write, they organize and they shame us.
Kids aren’t just baby goats. We are the ba-a-ad ones. We can’t lower the voting age, but we should not lower our standards, either.
FLORA ORMSBY SMITH, Marblehead, Mass.
Calling what’s happening to the planet an extinction event doesn’t convey the true nature of the crisis. It’s an extermination event, a deliberate and methodical devouring of our planet to satisfy the voracious greed of a capitalist system that requires constant expansion and exploitation regardless of the consequences.
Karl Marx described a capitalist’s greed by saying they would sell the very rope that’s used to hang them. Now they’ll sell the very life of the planet that will surely kill them too.
ROBERT McALLISTER, Lantana, Fla.
From The Progressive Populist, November 1, 2019
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