Wednesday, June 20, 2001
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Wednesday, June 20, 2001 |
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What's the real price of cheap goods? By AMY RILEY The announcement that Thomaston Mills will close its doors after 102 years in the textile manufacturing business should register more than a blip on our economic radar screens. Thomaston Mills is just one of many American textile firms hoping for some hail Mary financial investor to infuse their dying companies with capital to meet "do or die" loan payment deadlines. Seven hundred people lost jobs two years ago, another 100 were laid off this past February, 550 received their last "paychecks" in cash Friday, and the remaining 1,400 or so employees will be let go Aug. 1, barring some miracle that probably won't come. People with 30 and 40 years of employment are, from one day to the next, without pay, retirement or insurance. Many with little education are left with few options. A sign of the times yes, but this 70 miles south small town economic disaster could be anytown, U.S.A., and has been for thousands and thousands of American workers in the past decade of "open the floodgates" global trade. Some may view the shutdown of American textile producers as a natural progression in our shift from an industry-based economy to one that is technology-based, but American textiles embraced technology by investing millions in high-tech equipment that allowed them to produce a better product faster with fewer people. Servicing the debt on the high-tech capital improvements and trying to compete with an overseas market that doesn't play by the same rules is increasingly impossible. Even the best turn-around CEOs are conceding that it can't be done. Most Americans can't relate. Metropolitan movers and shakers want the lowest price for the best product and waste no energy waxing philosophical over where that product was produced, under what conditions, or by whom. That's free market capitalism, right? But it is precisely this dilemma that has caused the most unlikely players to merge their agendas at massive protests of meetings of the World Trade Organization. Remember Seattle? Where else can you see anarchists, labor unions, humanitarians, American isolationists, conservatives and environmental advocates united under a single banner, calling for global reason and fairness in global trade? What is happening in Thomaston, Ga., has everything to do with what is happening and has happened in the streets of Seattle, New York, Washington, and all over Europe. Global trade is causing global problems. Who can compete with textile manufacturers in Malaysia, Indonesia, Korea, China, Taiwan, India and other global markets that pay their workers a fraction of what American workers need to sustain themselves in this market. Few Americans would be willing to trade our quality of life with the quality of life of the average textile worker overseas, but we have no problem buying that eight-dollar garment off the rack in America's discount stores. We fret not over what market conditions or worker conditions allowed that garment to be produced, transported and sold here, complete with a profit for each leg of the journey, at eight dollars a pop. The lure of the global market is that there are multiple beneficiaries. Big multinational corporations can boost profits and productivity by shipping manufacturing jobs overseas, where government safety regulations and employee compensation levels are scant by American standards. Emerging overseas economies are boosted by the influx of investment capital and export income. American consumers, and in fact global consumers, pay less for goods. All of these forces conspire to perpetuate an economic "ideal" that will likely in the long run prove less than ideal for American workers. Add to that the fact that much of the globe makes sport of hating Americans. They think we are capitalist consumer pigs who have only achieved economic superiority by squashing the rest of the the world. But did we? Or was our economy the product of ingenuity, hard work, innovation, and a dream for a better life right here at home. Are we obligated to trade all of that so that the rest of the world can have it too, at our expense? Just ask those folks in Thomaston. We can't have it all. We can't maintain our standard of living in a global market. We can't buy cheap and live big forever. Eventually buying cheap from overseas markets will require living cheap in our own cheap market. Today it is the textile jobs. Tomorrow, after all of the previously unindustrialized nations are industrialized, it will be the tech jobs your jobs. Think of it as two glasses of water, with water being a finite resource. If you pour water from one glass into the second glass, you raise the level in the second glass, while lowering the level of the first. That's physics AND economics, and that's us. Coming soon to a job near you. Your comments are welcome at: ARileyFreePress@aol.com.
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