America Resembles a Broken Banana Republic

MilanPan!c

Look at the Stats -- America Resembles a Broken Banana Republic

America has become a RINO: rich in name only. By every measure, we look like a broken banana republic. Not a single U.S. city is included in the world’s top 10 most livable cities. Only one U.S. airport makes the list of the top 100 in the world. Our roads, schools and bridges are falling apart, and our trains—none of them high-speed—are running off their tracks. Our high school students are rated 30th in math, and some 30 countries have longer life expectancy and lower rates of infant mortality. The only things America is number one in these days are the number of incarcerated citizens per capita and adult onset diabetes.

The destruction of labor has been so comprehensive that first-world nations now offshore their jobs to the U.S. In other words, we’ve become the new India. Foreign companies now see us as the world’s cheap labor force, and we have the non-unionized South to thank for that. Chuck Thompson, author of Better off Without Em, writes, “Like Mexico, the South has spent the past four decades systematically siphoning auto jobs from Michigan and the Midwest by keeping worker’s salaries low and inhibiting their right to organize by rendering their unions toothless.” Average wages for autoworkers in the South are up to 30 percent lower than in Michigan.

In Sweden, the minimum wage is $19 per hour and workers enjoy a minimum of five weeks paid vacation every year. In the U.S. the minimum wage is a tick above $7 per hour and workers can expect no more than 12 days of annual vacation. So guess what? IKEA has set up a factory in Virginia. Volkswagen has set up in Tennessee, and the likes of Hyundai, KIA, BMW, Honda, and Toyota have all set up in the South to take advantage of the world’s latest cheap labor source. Moreover, the profits of these foreign companies goes toward stimulating their economies instead of ours.

http://www.alternet.org/economy/america-rich-name-only-look-stats-we-resemble-broken-banana-state


What do we think?

What's happening to America seems, at least in the near-term, to be irreversible. And of course US politics is closer to broken than working... so no help from Washington.

Of course, one of the two parties is going through death spasms, and the other is paranoid about being seen as anything but slightly right of centre. So... Americans don't really have much hope for fixing the issues, except at the grassroots.

sparksfly

The onslaught of globalisation puts millions on very low pay or out of work, while making a small number of people very wealthy. Its a race to the bottom with terrible consequences.

MonaPizza

40%.....that's FORTY PER CENT of bank tellers in the US are supplementing their miserable wages via food stamps.

So, to those who think that people on Welfare are strap-hanging leeches, I would ask this:

Why do banks pay their staff so little that they have to seek welfare?

In case you didn't know it, the taxpayer pays for the foodstamps that bank tellers need to pay for grub after their 9 hour day at Chase.

And these are the cnuts who smashed the whole this to bits in the first place.

A guy in Trtenton who works till he drops is a model citizen. A guy in another part of the world who picks up a bat or a bar or a gun and demands not to be a slave is a tree-hugging, anti-global terrorist?

Gotta laugh.

Wal-Mart employees recently had a "donation box" for Thanksgiving....to help them have a similar dinner to the imbiciles who booted down doors in search of an iPad.

Fab!

MilanPan!c

MonaPizza wrote: »

40%.....that's FORTY PER CENT of bank tellers in the US are supplementing their miserable wages via food stamps.

So, to those who think that people on Welfare are strap-hanging leeches, I would ask this:

Why do banks pay their staff so little that they have to seek welfare?

In case you didn't know it, the taxpayer pays for the foodstamps that bank tellers need to pay for grub after their 9 hour day at Chase.

And these are the cnuts who smashed the whole this to bits in the first place.

A guy in Trtenton who works till he drops is a model citizen. A guy in another part of the world who picks up a bat or a bar or a gun and demands not to be a slave is a tree-hugging, anti-global terrorist?

Gotta laugh.

Wal-Mart employees recently had a "donation box" for Thanksgiving....to help them have a similar dinner to the imbiciles who booted down doors in search of an iPad.

Fab!

I agree with all of this except the assertion that violence is the answer and that capitalism - even the dodgy sort the US currently has - necessarily makes people slaves.

Saying that, it is pretty obvious why there's so much desperation, and why for the first time in my memory there's real hope of actual liberals (as opposed to Democrats) taking some power back from the centre-right.

People want to believe that US capitalism is magic, but the truth is becoming more and more obvious - there has to be real controls over capitalism to make it work for the majority.

hfallada

That article is so biased. The return of us manufacturing is due to cheap electricity and not cheap wages. US workers in the car factories in the south earn some of the highest wages in their states and are seen as excellent companies to work for.

Some roads are in bits in the us. But states like nj, Texas and California and the gas states are pouring money into their roads. Plus most goods in the us are moved using rail.

Very few white middle class families choose to live in cities in America(except NYC ) but live in the suburbs for bigger and cheaper housing. Us schools have always been terrible but their colleges are excellent

Jonny7

to take advantage of the world’s latest cheap labor source. Moreover, the profits of these foreign companies goes toward stimulating their economies instead of ours.

wow

MilanPan!c

hfallada wrote: »

That article is so biased. The return of us manufacturing is due to cheap electricity and not cheap wages. US workers in the car factories in the south earn some of the highest wages in their states and are seen as excellent companies to work for.

Some roads are in bits in the us. But states like nj, Texas and California and the gas states are pouring money into their roads. Plus most goods in the us are moved using rail.

Very few white middle class families choose to live in cities in America(except NYC ) but live in the suburbs for bigger and cheaper housing. Us schools have always been terrible but their colleges are excellent

Wellllll... US schools have not always been terrible. There's AMPLE evidence that they're growing worse and losing all competitiveness.

Statistically the infrastructure is awful... it was recently upgraded to a D+...

http://www.asce.org/ascenews/featured.aspx?id=23622324272&blogid=25769815007

The VAST majority of goods are not sent by rail, but by truck:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trucking_industry_in_the_United_States#Economic_impact

City populations are now growing faster than suburb populations:

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/05/23/u-s-cities-growing-faster-than-suburbs/

what percentage, in 2013, live in cities vs suburbs is open to debate, but it's not as dramatic as you make it out to be.

As for why businesses are going to the south, not the north of the US:

Companies are taking advantage of state- and local-funded business incentives and convenient transportation routes, as well as the Southeastern U.S.’s lower cost of living and a largely non-union labor force that’s inexpensive relative to other parts of the country.

http://www.nbcnews.com/business/manufacturing-jobs-making-comeback-southern-u-s-1C7660234

and

In the future, no U.S. state is going to be able to depend solely on low wages as its chief source of comparative advantage. This is of particular concern to Southern states which, in the past, have leveraged low wage structures to increase their share of the continent’s auto sector. Now, that may need to change.

http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/the-avenue/posts/2013/10/09-auto-sector-wage-competition-andes-muro

The cost of electricity is basically uniform across the US except in NE and California: http://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/



So, you're really wrong about all of this.

Permabear

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MilanPan!c

Permabear wrote: »

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There's obviously some confusion as Forbes (hardly left-wing) says only one in the top 30:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/eamonnfingleton/2013/04/16/the-worlds-best-airports-and-the-only-u-s-airport-to-make-the-top-30/

And here:

Not one US airport in the top 25

http://money.msn.com/now/post.aspx?post=db0fa572-3ab2-49d1-bd14-3f4f51b0a2a4

The Guardian on the other hand has over 10:

http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/may/04/world-top-100-airports

This list makes the US look a lot worse as well - with only three US airports in the Top 50 and only one in the top 30, at number 30:

http://www.worldairportawards.com/Awards_2013/top100.htm

So unless we see the data and know how it was defined, who knows... it does seem dubious...

Jonny7

MilanPan!c wrote: »

There's obviously some confusion as Forbes (hardly left-wing) says only one in the top 30:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/eamonnfingleton/2013/04/16/the-worlds-best-airports-and-the-only-u-s-airport-to-make-the-top-30/

And here:

Not one US airport in the top 25

http://money.msn.com/now/post.aspx?post=db0fa572-3ab2-49d1-bd14-3f4f51b0a2a4

The Guardian on the other hand has over 10:

http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/may/04/world-top-100-airports

This list makes the US look a lot worse as well - with only three US airports in the Top 50 and only one in the top 30, at number 30:

http://www.worldairportawards.com/Awards_2013/top100.htm

So unless we see the data and know how it was defined, who knows... it does seem dubious...

As demonstrated here, information can be cherry-picked to present one argument or another

The author claims that the US labour force is the cheapest in the world, well, that's a pretty glaring mistake to make.

Is the US the number 1 country in the world in every respect? nope, not even close.

Is it akin to a banana republic as presented in the blog? nope

Permabear

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MilanPan!c

Jonny7 wrote: »

As demonstrated here, information can be cherry-picked to present one argument or another

The author claims that the US labour force is the cheapest in the world, well, that's a pretty glaring mistake to make.

Is the US the number 1 country in the world in every respect? nope, not even close.

Is it akin to a banana republic as presented in the blog? nope

Umm... he doesn't say that...

He says:

The destruction of labor has been so comprehensive that first-world nations now offshore their jobs to the U.S. In other words, we’ve become the new India. Foreign companies now see us as the world’s cheap labor force, and we have the non-unionized South to thank for that. Chuck Thompson, author of Better off Without Em, writes, “Like Mexico, the South has spent the past four decades systematically siphoning auto jobs from Michigan and the Midwest by keeping worker’s salaries low and inhibiting their right to organize by rendering their unions toothless.” Average wages for autoworkers in the South are up to 30 percent lower than in Michigan.

In Sweden, the minimum wage is $19 per hour and workers enjoy a minimum of five weeks paid vacation every year. In the U.S. the minimum wage is a tick above $7 per hour and workers can expect no more than 12 days of annual vacation. So guess what? IKEA has set up a factory in Virginia. Volkswagen has set up in Tennessee, and the likes of Hyundai, KIA, BMW, Honda, and Toyota have all set up in the South to take advantage of the world’s latest cheap labor source. Moreover, the profits of these foreign companies goes toward stimulating their economies instead of ours.

MilanPan!c

Permabear wrote: »

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I agree that the lists we've both seen disagree with the author's assertion... However what list did he use?

Do you know?

My point was that there's obviously different ways to rank airports, and different year's rankings... who knows what list he used.

I also agreed it's a hard claim to back up, but it hardly seems right to dismiss the whole article based on that.

I'd also point out that you "liked" the comment about the "world's cheapest labor" even though that claim was untrue. You didn't dismiss the entire comment, did you? On the other hand, because we can't find the source for the authors airport claim, you're willing to dismiss the entire article.

Bit of a double standard.

Jonny7

MilanPan!c wrote: »

Umm... he doesn't say that...

He says:

Yup you're right

However his inference is way off. Companies set up in the US to avail of the vast market there. Volkswagen don't want to ship cars across the Atlantic if they can just build cars in that lucrative region - he appears to solely blame the cheap labour market in the US (it's not cheap at all, relatively speaking)

US businesses move operations to Eastern Europe and the BRIC countries to avail of cheap labour.

MilanPan!c

Jonny7 wrote: »

Yup you're right

However his inference is way off. Companies set up in the US to avail of the vast market there. Volkswagen don't want to ship cars across the Atlantic if they can just build cars in that lucrative region - he appears to solely blame the cheap labour market in the US (it's not cheap at all, relatively speaking)

US businesses move operations to Eastern Europe and the BRIC countries to avail of cheap labour.

I think you've missed his point.

If the US labour costs, especially those in the south, were on par with other first world countries, there'd be NO economic justification for Asian car manufacturers to move factories to the US.

Sure, the guy from the Wire made a similar set of claims recently.

The US standard of living, healthcare, education and infrastructure are all well below where they should be, considering the wealth the country has.

Permabear

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MilanPan!c

Permabear wrote: »

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Of course he never claimed that one thing makes it one. Because that would be absurd.

Permabear wrote: »

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So you found the list he used? Or are you just guessing again?

Permabear wrote: »

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Again, taken on it's own it's not; you seem to be unwilling to look a the cumulative picture.

Permabear wrote: »

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Riiiight... but tell me then, in your weighted comparison that you've developed, where does the US rank, and can we seem how you developed the weighting?

Permabear wrote: »

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US has highest incarceration rate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate

As for diabetes, I'm not sure what country you think has a higher rate of type 2 diabetes, as that is a hard figure to track down. I would say this:

A stunning new federal report reveals just how bad the obesity-linked type 2 diabetes epidemic in the United States has become, with rates of the often-preventable disease hitting record highs.

Some of the statistics are staggering: While in 1995 only three states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico had diabetes prevalence rates of 6 percent or more, by 2010 diabetes rates in all 50 states had reached that level.

Some states -- especially in the South -- have fared much worse than others, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report said. Eighteen states saw their rates of diabetes cases double during the 15-year period covered by the study, and in 42 states the rate jumped by 50 percent.

In six states and Puerto Rico, one in 10 adults now have diabetes.

"I was shocked myself," said lead researcher Linda Geiss, a statistician in CDC's division of diabetes translation. "We know diabetes has been increasing for decades, but to see 18 states having an increase of 100 percent was shocking."

http://health.usnews.com/health-news/news/articles/2012/11/15/us-diabetes-rates-soaring-cdc

Permabear wrote: »

Workers in one part of the country earn different wages than workers in another part? Surely the same can be said of workers in any country. Compare wages in Donegal with wages in Dublin, for example.

The average manufacturing wage in the U.S. is $19.41 an hour. A BLS study found that Indian manufacturing wages average $0.91 per hour. Therefore, the claim that the U.S. is the "new India" is demonstrably false.

I think you've misunderstood the comparison - again.

Permabear wrote: »

These are only a few examples. One could spend all day picking apart this partisan and poorly sourced blog post, with its unsourced and erroneous "stats" cobbled together into a tendentious argument.

Now. As we see you've made claims which are wrong, and which you haven't bothered to source. Which is odd as you seem to care so much about sourcing.

You've also repeated a claim which you know to be erroneous - i.e. that the author was wrong about the airport facts; unless you've seen his list you're simply guessing.

You may not LIKE the article, but your critique of it is no more sound than the article itself, at best.

Jonny7

Volkswagen have been striving to capture the lucrative car market in the US since the 50's. The company opened plants in the US market to increase sales there. Minimum wages are a factor, but only one factor of many.

If wages were the sole issue, then large companies would only be operating from India. Irish wages are (were) among the highest in the world, yet due to factors like low corp. tax companies were flooding here.

This blog is trying to tenuously link a low US min. wage as the primary factor that foreign companies are moving to US - and that simply isn't true at all

Also, just because McDonalds employees make 9 dollars an hour, doesn't mean that is all encompassing - some blue collar workers in the US are among the best paid in the world - just ask the thousands of Irish who flock there for the good wages

MilanPan!c

Jonny7 wrote: »

Volkswagen have been striving to capture the lucrative car market in the US since the 50's. The company opened plants in the US market to increase sales there. Minimum wages are a factor, but only one factor of many.

If wages were the issue, then large companies would only be operating from India. Irish wages are (were) among the highest in the world, yet due to factors like low corp. tax companies were flooding here.

This blog is trying to tenuously link a low US min. wage as the primary factor that foreign companies are moving to US - and that simply isn't true at all

Also, just because McDonalds employees make 9 dollars an hour, doesn't mean that is all encompassing - some blue collar workers in the US are among the best paid in the world - just ask the thousands of Irish who flock there for the good wages

There's no doubt it's a total picture, but I'm not sure this is easy to completely dismiss.

For instance, the US poverty rate is around 15% whereas the Indian poverty rate is about 22%.

Consider everything the US has over India, in theory, and yet the reality is the US has a decreasing standard of living, relatively poor health, and education, and a shrinking middle class.

Those are real issues and whether or not you like the way the author framed those questions is sort of beside the point, at least to me.

Hope that makes sense.

Jonny7

MilanPan!c wrote: »

For instance, the US poverty rate is around 15% whereas the Indian poverty rate is about 22%.

Am in work can't really go into this too much but those stats are misrepresented above

It's actually quite a classic example of how stats can be misunderstood (or manipulated) to create false comparisons (will explain later)

MilanPan!c

Jonny7 wrote: »

Am in work can't really go into this too much but those stats are misrepresented above

It's actually quite a classic example of how stats can be misunderstood (or manipulated) to create false comparisons (will explain later)

Those stats are relative to the country, not to each other.

But for someone living in poverty in the US - and there's millions - that matters not.

Permabear

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MilanPan!c

Permabear wrote: »

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Right. So working in reverse:

- It's called hyperbole. The first two claims were demonstrably two and set up the hyperbole of the third.

- the infant mortality rate thing - the US infant mortality rate is interesting and worth further conversation - Ill go read that and respond properly

- and finally, if you don't know where he got the data, you can't simply assume its wrong - that itself is very dubious. If you're really that concerned, contact the author. Until you know where he got it, you can not pretend its false. And you ARE just pretending. We both agree we've seen data that contradicts it, but there's also data that contradicts that data. So.

Permabear

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Permabear

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Jonny7

MilanPan!c wrote: »

Those stats are relative to the country, not to each other.

But for someone living in poverty in the US - and there's millions - that matters not.

They are relative to each other.

How they are classified is different. Taking living costs and the purchasing power of the currency into account, the percentage of Indians living below internationally accepted poverty lines far exceeds that in the US.

InTheTrees

*yawn*

SO the general consensus is that if the US isnt the worlds superpower then its a crumbling third world hellhole (with awful airports!)?

No inbetween at all huh?

Jonny7

InTheTrees wrote: »

*yawn*

SO the general consensus is that if the US isnt the worlds superpower then its a crumbling third world hellhole (with awful airports!)?

No inbetween at all huh?

Not to mention the trains running off the tracks - that's how bad it is over there

MilanPan!c

Permabear wrote: »

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I'm sure aware of the use of rhetoric. Yes? If not then it's no surprise this is lost on you.

Permabear wrote: »

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Sorry, but that's not how this works.

You can convince yourself that the author is lying, if that suits you, but you can't claim that it's a lie, and that that is an established fact, without knowing the authors' source. And - like I said earlier - you had no problem supporting a completely erroneous claim earlier. The difference was that it supported your argument.

Two wildly different standards depending on your goal.

If you're really that interested in that fact, simply contact the author and get his source.

InTheTrees

Jonny7 wrote: »

Not to mention the trains running off the tracks - that's how bad it is over there

Chaos and third worldiness all around.

Next time I fly I'm going to make sure its a russian or chinese aircraft so at least I can feel confidant after having to endure the horror of some ghastly 1980's American airport.

Jonny7

If you can make it through the swathes of kids begging in the streets