Put it on your Player
Friday, June 17, 2005
The World is Flat - Thomas L. Friedman
I'm almost finished reading The World is flat - A Brief History of the 21st Century. This is a fascinating and eye opening book. Everyone trying to survive in this rapidly changing world should read this book. Don't just be an observer or googler. Be a go-get-er. Your competition is hungry and the rest of the world is catching up to the US. This book is a MUST READ. Unbelievable facts about Google, HP, UPS, Microsoft, and so on.
Put it on your Player
Put it on your Player
Thomas Friedman leaves out a few things in his book that an eight grader would logically ask.
ReplyDeleteHow can the costs of long haul shipping be accounted for in any real efficient economy?
How can an eatery in Mexico where the food is brought to the table directly from the harvest or slaugther in a local supply setting lose out to giant corporation that has to bring the products from far away places in refrigerated vehicles? How can the overhead of all the packaging be absorbed and still knock out impoverished workers?
The answer is based on a new slave trade involving wage slave labor linked to giant manipulations of currency etc.
Free Enterprise is ignored where both owners and workers can enjoy the fruits of their labor.
The Flat World has destitute workers who can not afford to buy the very things they make as the core of its existence. Their property is denied them with their last property is their work with workers having no voice in the matter. World entities like the WTO control the flow of wealth outside any real democratic process.
In the more prosperous nations the Middle Classes are degraded into Working Poor Classes that soon will not even be able to afford the cheaper imports made by the destitute workers abroad. At the same time the destitute workers have very little money left over to buy anything the US has left to sell.
You can talk about all the innovations of the internet and wireless technoloy as the rest of the world crumples into people struggling to survive.
The Flat World is not matching up with any successful economic model from the past.
There are many new ventures but they are parasites. In the past we did not have the multitude of temporary help and casual labor offices. We did not have the multitude of payday loan stores throughout the cities that charge usury rates.
In the past, we did not have someone promoting making a living on home foreclosures on TV.
In the past, the baptism rooms in churches were just that and did not look like grocery stores to feed the needy even in the suburbs of the USA.
In the past we did not have record breaking prison populations.
In the past, only one spouse had to work while large families grew.
The internet is actually a highway in the sky going nowhere. It has advanced technology in many ways except in making a living for millions. Since its inception, the US has had the largest dislocation of jobs ever including the Great Depression.
Only about 40% of all workers qualify for unemployment insurance and someone making only a hundreds dollars a month is considered employed. In the past this would be a considered some kind of bad joke.
The unemployment data is not the same either. There are millions missing in action from any kind of reporting giving up looking for work.
The new economy has strings of shopping centers selling their wares from abroad with the retail workers not making enough to support themselves or a family. Reportedly employees of places like Wal-Mart require on an average of about $2000 each of some sort of government assistence to survive. So a new kind of tariff is attached at the end of the process to make things work.
All this happens while Chinese containers on railcars roll by dead towns in the USA with the containers being owned in part by the Chinese Liberation Army.
For more information visit Tapart News and Art that Talks at http://tapsearch.com/tapartnews/
View the Cross of 9/11 Tangle of Terror Art by Ray Tapajna asking who will now untangle the terror Globalism and Free Trade have bred.
See newspaper story featuring the American Dream is Burning art at http://tapsnewstory.filetap.com Se e Who Had the Key? The American Worker is Handcuffed and the Pearl Harbor Attack on Workers at http://www.graphicsforums.com/public/list.asp?id=1250
Or search on Yahoo, Google, Donkeydo and other search engines under Tapart News for hundreds of more references. For all who want to reclaim the American Dream for all in the world pass on Tapsearch Com Tapart News and Art that Talks