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Back to the Forum Archives This is a tirade. Don't expect a logical progression. It's a bunch of anger about government and international corporations. Electrolux is the latest company to abandon their workers in America. This case happened in Greenville, Michigan. It's a failure for Greenville for sure. It may be a fatal failure for that town. Michigan already has a number of ghost towns where evil greedy companies came in, took out huge profits, then abandoned the area. Michigan's Copper Country in the Keweenaw peninsula is a prime example of that. That one happened many years ago. I suspect every state in America can offer other examples of that kind of scourge. I think this sort of thing is also a failure of our government. I know it is so in Michigan. These crooks were offered big incentives to stay. They took off to Mexico for lower wages and inferior workers. They should never get away with that. No American should buy any of their products again. I learned of this case because the local channel 12 news was doing a series about job losses in Michigan. Greenville was their first example. They call it the Michigan Job Crisis. I call it irrationally stupid government. There is a total misconception in government about where jobs come from. New jobs don't come from old established declining businesses. New jobs come from new businesses. If you want to create jobs in Michigan, you must make the state friendly to entrepreneurs. We must quit belly crawling for established bureaucracy-burdened short-sighted firms like Electrolux. Those crumbs got all kinds of incentives to stay here. Look what it got us in the end. An abandoned factory and what will probably become another Michigan ghost town. It's not those old firms that create new jobs. It's entrepreneurs and Michigan is not friendly to them. It is next to impossible to get the necessary permits to establish a business in Detroit or any other major city in Michigan. I suspect it's not much different across the whole country. When a person wants to set up a business the petty clerks are all too ready to jerk them around and put totally irrational obstacles in the way. There are just way to many bureaus and departments to deal with. Each of them is loaded with petty mean spirited government clerks who want to jerk the applicant around. An entrepreneur should only have to make his case once with a single person to set up a business. That person should be an ombudsman who can clear the way, get all the necessary paperwork, and get the show on the road. He should have all the necessary power to do that. He should have the power to override two-bit clerks wherever he finds them. Helping start a new business beats the heck out of giving big tax incentive to big time crooks who we know will abandon us as soon as they can. As another example, Huron County in Michigan lost 1000 manufacturing jobs last year. The county big shots are trying to get big firms to come in and fill the gap. They want them to create jobs. Big old firms don't create jobs. The jobs they offer are old jobs that come and go by the rules of economics. They staff up and down according to their production needs, but they do not create new jobs. They do not have the products of customer base to create new jobs. All they can do is move jobs around. If they bring jobs to Michigan they must take them from someone else. New firms can offer new jobs. That is because entrepreneurs create new firms, new products, and with them new jobs. Unfortunately, Michigan is very unfriendly toward entrepreneurs and very friendly toward corporate con men. The con men will demand big tax incentive, then they will take whatever profit they can get quickly and leave. It's what we have come to expect of American corporations. I think every one of them does it. If you know of an exception, tell me. They set their workers up then leave them swinging in the wind. Our culture has reached the point where we do not expect ethical behavior from our government or from our corporations. They seek easy quick solutions to profound long term problems and we let them do it. It no longer causes us to gag or gasp. We just shrug, say yeah, and forget about it. Doesn't everyone realize that the fiddler is coming for his pay? Who is going to buy the products made in Mexico? Will the Mexican peasants have money to buy new Fords or Chevies? The media offers no solutions or criticism. They just go on and do their sound bites from people in the street. The people bitch and carp, but they don't do anything. Their favorite phrase is, "They ought to." Who is this "they" who is going to do the "ought to"? Where is "they"? What is the guy in the street going to do? Nothing! He has no ethics either. He is transferring responsibility for his life to "they." It won't work. "They" is unethical too. Sooner or later, we will all lose. No matter what area of life we deal in, no matter what human problems we confront, no matter what behavior we face, it invariably comes down to a matter of personal ethics. More often, it comes down to a lack of personal ethics. Recently a couple of manufacturers have said they are going to increase staff in some Michigan plants. They didn't say for how long. Guess who was right up there on the stage with them helping with the announcement? The Princess of photo-op herself, Governor Granholm. She is ever ready to take credit for even the smallest accident. She says she is creating jobs. It's a lie. She is creating nothing more that political press for herself. Now, as you read this tirade please do not assume I oppose the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). I do not. I strongly favor NAFTA. As it continues, there will be a great leveling. Economically some American workers may be the short term victims. They may be displaced. What we need to do is mitigate that effect. We can do that with laws which put controls on how far firms can go in abandoning their workers. We need a law which requires a firm to pay an indemnity to protect the workers they abandon. We must also be very firm about forcing these crooks to repay the tax incentives if they abandon a city or state that has given them incentives. If they skip without doing those things, we should have the tools in place to place selective embargos on those firms without threatening NAFTA. We must make major corporations liable and we must encourage
entrepreneurs. I also think we have to get realistic about the
world economy. We have been living very high on the hog, mainly
because we have been exporting a great deal of our poverty and
not much of our wealth. That is now changing. It will change,
with or without the trade agreement. The real truth is, we cannot
continue exporting our poverty. The third world is no longer
willing to accept it. In the long term, I believe NAFTA will
be good for everyone. It will eventually lead to prosperity for
everyone. We can hope NAFTA will expand to include all of the
Americas and possibly Australia. As we create the largest free
trade area in the world it will make the European trading block
look like a children's monopoly game. We will be firmly on top
again.
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