US companies are still moving jobs to China. But peak oil could bring them back. Photo: Sterlic via Flickr.
The latest job numbers were dismal, as US real unemployment remains near 20%. America now has about 25 million people either out of work or underemployed.
At the same time, corporate profits in the third quarter of 2010 enjoyed the highest annual increase ever recorded. And even as they shed more and more American workers, taking in $1.7 trillion, American corporations were 28 percent more profitable than they were a year before.
“What’s going on?” asked Robert Kuttner on the Huffington Post yesterday. “Very simply, America’s corporations no longer need America’s workers.”
As Harold Meyerson documents in a brilliant piece for The American Prospect, our most admired corporations — GE, Apple, Hewlett Packard, Intel — are creating ever more jobs overseas and relatively fewer at home. This has the double benefit of taking advantage of cheap labor abroad and disciplining workers to accept low wages at home.
So it’s fair to ask: if these “American” companies have no loyalty any longer to the United States, do they deserve to retain the advantages of corporate American citizenship, from influence over Washington to big taxpayer subsidies? Isn’t loyalty a two-way street?
Free trade is bankrupting us
It doesn’t help that both Congressional Republicans and the Obama administration support the same disastrous free trade policies that originally created Ross Perot’s “giant sucking sound” of jobs streaming across our borders down into Mexico and off to Asia.
Even worse, in exchange for short-term profits, companies that offshore their manufacturing are making a deal with the devil that will hobble America’s ability to compete with other economies for decades to come. As Kuttner explains, “American industry is competing against an industrial system in China radically different from our own.” In China,
Companies are made to take on Chinese partners, to transfer sensitive proprietary technology, and to shift their production and R&D to China. In exchange, they get government subsidies and docile workers. Eventually, much of their production is displaced by their Chinese partners, but in the meantime they make a lot of money.
Corporations are truly selling America’s industrial birthright for a mess of pottage.
And what of the much hyped service sector of software developers and architects that was supposed to replace the old smokestack economy? Well, the American worker who loses her job in a GE plant today has few other options than to put on a Wal-Mart smock at a significant cut in pay, benefits and job security.
Expensive oil will trump cheap labor
Given that their whole industrial system is rigged, getting the Chinese to reform their currency is only a sideshow, Kuttner says.
“There is a whole other strategy available for dealing with the jobs crisis — a constructive economic nationalism. But neither the White House nor the Republican opposition is offering it.”
Repeal NAFTA, GATT and the WTO? Probably unlikely in the near term, but coming up with some way to protect domestic manufacturing needs to be back on the table.
An option that Kuttner doesn’t consider is putting a price on distance. Until now, cheap oil has meant that moving shipping containers from Shenzhen to San Pedro was almost free.
As economist Jeff Rubin explains, peak oil will make distance cost money, if we just sit back and wait. At some point the market will decide that shipping costs outweigh any savings from cheap labor from offshore manufacturing.
But waiting for price to disrupt international trade could leave us without any economy at all in the meantime. It would be far more prudent to plan now for the day when we can’t afford unnecessary plastic pumpkins (and other outright junk) from China.
A combination of a sensible energy policy that encourages conservation with some old-style trade barriers that could give a re-born US manufacturing sector some of the protections that it used to have, and that Chinese manufacturing still enjoys, would provide the balance needed. Whether we’ll go there depends less on corporate leadership and more on whether our voices raise up questioning the status quo.
Editor’s Note: We have replaced the original photo posted with this article, which offended some readers. We don’t mind offending people when we see the need. In this case, we did not see that compelling need but we did want to avoid distracting from the main issue of article.
— Erik Curren
Erik,
I’ve enjoyed reading Transition Voice for a while now, but I’m appalled and disappointed that you chose the above photo for this article. Racism is not funny. Full stop.
I’m as concerned as you are about the toll that outsourcing manufacturing to countries like China has taken on the US economy, but Chinese laborers are not a punchline or a clever foil. Please find a more appropriate, non-racist photo for this post. I would rather see no photo at all than see that one.
Hi Maria,
Thanks for your nice comments about Transition Voice. It goes without saying we agree that racism is not funny. And we support Chinese workers as we support US workers and workers around the world, all of whom have a tough time these days with job security, working conditions and the freedom to organize.
Also, I know that white people have a checkered history of dressing up as folks from other races. At the same time, we don’t want to fall into excessive caution or political correctness in the graphics we select. While we do not endorse the views of every graphic we publish, we publish graphics that we believe make an important point in a vivid way.
I disagree that this photo as racist–it’s not targeting Asian people as a race or Chinese workers in particular. Instead, since the demonstrators are holding US consumer products, the shot seems clearly aimed at US company management who are making the decisions to move their production offshore.
If more readers have opinions about this photo, we invite them to chime in.
Regards,
Erik
Thanks for your reply, Erik, and thanks for listening and replacing the photo. I realize that I commented here and then didn’t have another chance to respond until now, so I’d like to tie up some loose ends.
I maintain that the photo is racist, and I hope can explain why:
The photo depicts people at a Halloween party (not demonstrators, at least according to SansPoint on Flickr) dressed as “Chinese” workers, as evidenced, presumably, by their “coolie hats,” pointed/diagonal eyebrows, and what appears to be yellow face makeup. These are all features that signify “Chinese” to the Western viewer because of our history of racial oppression, not because they resemble actual Chinese factory workers (I’m not positive, but I would guess that those types of hats are probably worn by people who work outdoors).
I understand that they are also holding US consumer products, but their costumes are ethnic caricature. The costumes make Chinese people the focus of the joke (the joke that, as you point out, also involves US manufacturers), and they perpetuate an exaggerated and unrealistic image of Asian people that, historically, has been used to dehumanize and incite violence against them. This why I call the costumes (and by extension, the photo of the costumes) racist–not merely a benign “portrayal” of Chinese people (as Lindsay suggests below).
Moreover, and this is what I meant with my initial comment, such depictions do not show solidarity with Chinese workers–if anything, they undermine it. As we all seem to agree, it’s the corporations who deserve to be vilified for their persistent greed and exploitation.
In case I need to clarify: I am not, and was never, calling Transition Voice (or Erik or Lindsay) racist. I simply found the photo extremely problematic, because it disgraced an otherwise perfectly decent article about the impact of peak oil on globalization.
I don’t agree with the many qualifications that accompanied the change in photos: the assertions that it’s a matter of opinion, up to aesthetic interpretation, or that there’s no right answer (I hope that my explanation above helps clarify why I think it’s not just a subjective matter of opinion). Nor do I agree that this is a matter of “political correctness” in the sense that we are somehow dealing with frivolous semantics or nitpicking.
I’m also a little puzzled at Lindsay’s “Ivory Tower” remark, simply because I dropped out of college–twice–and I don’t consider the work of social justice to be the exclusive domain of the formally-educated. I do absolutely agree that this should prompt us to explore what racism is. Indeed, I have felt prompted to do so myself over the last day or so.
As Emily wrote below, and I expressed recently in a comment on another TV article, we in the Transition movement are faced with the challenge of putting our other political differences aside in order to confront the realities of peak oil and climate change together. This can be really difficult at times, but I believe we can avoid gratuitously offending and alienating other people in the discussion (and Erik, I understand that to be what you meant when you said you did not see the need to offend anyone in this case). I appreciate that you listened to your readers. I also think that there’s a difference between being controversial (something we cannot always avoid when discussing issues like peak oil and climate change) and being offensive (something we can at least try to avoid).
I like Transition Voice and I have been recommending it to folks on social media sites and in person since its debut (my friend/neighbor spotted my recommendation on Twitter and now he writes a column for TV). Seeing that photo gave me pause, and it made me wonder if I could continue to endorse TV, given my commitment to social justice. I’m still not sure if I want to promote a web publication whose editor so readily professes to find ethnic caricature “laugh out loud hilarious.” But what I requested was that you replace the photo, and you did, so Erik, I thank you for doing so, for listening, and being willing to engage in this discussion.
Maria, thanks for your further comments.
I found the photo laugh-out-loud hilarious for two reasons. First, because I viewed it EXCLUSIVELY as a parody of corporations and how THEY view workers. Secondly I laughed at it for artistic and activist potency. (And I also place a high value on the power of humor to break up tensions where reasoning fails.)
I saw the photo as a potshot at corporations, and in that sense, to me, it was “pulling the curtain back” on their dehumanizing viewpoint—using the material of their own sublimated attitudes against them as it were. As a choice, I felt the photo had a gestalt in relation to the article. And I maintain that portrayals, even when caricatures, can have a multi-hued plasticity depending on intent. We see this in art, theater, comedy, the written word, and human interaction all the time.
Further, I refute that simply because something exists in a Halloween context it loses political voice. I’ve seen and/or participated in plenty of Halloween moments with political overtones. In fact the caption on that Flickr photo is “So wrong, yet so right.” We took that to mean an uncomfortable portrayal that revealed a truth. Finally, in an age of appropriation and pastiche, re-use plays a huge role. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with AdBusters and other forms of activist engagement art in the post-modern era. They push the envelope all the time on reappropriating meaning to make a point. Like them, I enjoy aesthetic freedom even when that rubs some folks the wrong way, whether intentionally or unintentionally.
I respect your right to disagree. But I do not cede that anything you personally find racist, or even find racist within a contextual body of thought, attitude, history, and shared opinion, OBJECTIVELY exists as racist.
My Ivory Tower comment simply referenced the power of political correctness and various attitudinal lenses to become an irrefutable interpretation delivered with the voice of assumed objectivity.
Finally, what interests me about racism is less its more overt aspects (frank discrimination, hostility, abuses, crimes, etc., though I find those deeply tragic, and unnecessary.) But at least we can see these.
What’s more troubling are the HIDDEN aspects, again, as we felt the photo revealed and as I would maintain we are all culpable of through buying so many cheap consumer goods from China and elsewhere. To me that would include shipping fair trade goods thousands of miles. It may be better than corporate exploitation, but it is still socially unjust to the planet as a whole and all her people through unnecessary pollution. But, as you know, all these things become contextualized, rationalized, redigested in ways that are more palatable. There are few easy answers.
Perhaps the bigger problem is a broken system overall. But none of us will gain consciousness of that unless we can expose it for what it is, in all its ugly imagery and buried truths. You may not like the way we did it, but I do not feel that you can lob an accusation with out at least accepting that intent had a major role to play for us.
I am not sure it is possible to avoid offending people, even when that is the furthest object from one’s aim. One of my greatest yoga teachers once said to me, “People don’t push our buttons. We have buttons.”
All my best, Lindsay
Hi Erik,
I generally support TV, but I am also of the opinion that the above photo was used in poor taste. Whether you think it’s racist or not, the context of the photo can easily be skewed. So why even go there? Furthermore…. I don’t think it relates especially well to the content of the article.
Overall– I appreciated your call for old-style trade barriers as part of a peak-oil energy policy. I just don’t think the photo belongs with your message, and I definitely don’t think it’s conducive to constructive discourse.
Emily — thanks for your perspective. I wonder if you’d be willing to share specifically what you think is racist about this photo?
And I’m not sure what you mean about context being skewed. We deal with controversial material in many of our articles. Since Transition teaches us that we all have filters in perception, we’re always curious about the relationship between what is presented and how it is perceived.
Erik,
The first thing a viewer/reader was confronted with when viewing the post was an image of Americans in yellow face, wearing traditional coolie hats and holding problematic products imported from China. By far, the strongest message portrayed by the original image was the issue surrounding foreign manufacturing and safety regulations… something that wasn’t actually focused on in the discussion piece.
Why context matters: the original image evoked an element of fear (for our pets, our children, and our own health), accompanied by goofiness in the expressions of those wearing the costumes. Perhaps the photo was taken at a Halloween party, a time when boundaries are blurred; people misbehave and intentionally and playfully offend. Halloween doesn’t necessarily make things less problematic (remember Prince Harry as Hitler?), and it doesn’t allow a carte blanche for the display of prejudice, but it does place the photo in a very different framework than as the sole image representing an article about American job loss and the unfortunate failure to keep manufacturing initiatives stateside.
In the context of the article, the image seemed to direct blame towards the Chinese, and specifically to Chinese laborers. The image itself “spoke” towards them contaminating products, and the article and caption implied that they are culpable for stealing/receiving our jobs, too. You can call it racist, you can call it a lot of things, but at the very least it’s problematic.
If you intended to integrate the topic of contaminated products into your article … it’s not as easy as pointing our fingers overseas. We forget that failures in American systems of regulation are equally responsible for allowing contaminated products to reach our stores and our homes. A more constructive question would be—“If we are to keep more manufacturing jobs here in the states, or bring them back here, what can we learn from China’s failures? And how can we get our gov’t, which is suffering under terrible budget constraints and reduced program staff, to respond to these concerns?” Personally, I have great fears about bringing manufacturing here— I know it will happen, but at what cost? What makes us thing we can do a better job at keeping melamine and lead out of our USA-Made products? Our industrial agriculture is a mighty fine example of how “not great” we are at this whole “regulation and safety” thing.
To use your words… “Whether we’ll go there depends less on corporate leadership and more on whether our voices raise up questioning the status quo.”
I like the hard questions posed here at TV, I like the controversial topics, and I like the differences in backgrounds and opinions. But I’m part of this community because I want to take my fears and concerns about peak oil and focus them on something constructive, positive, and inclusive. I didn’t think the original photo was conducive to this in any way, and I appreciate that you changed the photo after having only received a few comments about it—that shows you are listening and responsive to your readers.
But I am not interested in continuing to be part of a community that is okay with “offending people when they see the need.” I don’t want that to be part of my transition life.
Thanks for your perspective. We may just have to disagree about the photo — for us it was a shot poking fun at corporations. But the whole point of aesthetic interpretation is that it’s a matter of opinion. There’s no right answer.
On your last point: It’s one thing to be insensitive to concerns about race or class. But it’s something much different to try to never offend anybody. In that case, you might call Jon Stewart or Steven Colbert and ask that they cancel their shows.
For our part, we’re dedicated to telling the truth about controversial topics like peak oil and climate change, and we’re going to do it with humor and verve. We welcome responses from those who disagree with what we put out. But if we didn’t offend a few people once in a while, then we wouldn’t be doing our job.
Erik, I agree with Maria’s perspective and believe that the photo was poorly chosen. I understand your rationale, but my initial inclination – indeed, my opinion even having read your defense – is that the photo is offensive and poorly chosen (and I think the caption makes things even worse). I’m certain a better photo could be found to make your point much stronger.
Jesse — Thanks for your comment too. We actually just changed the caption given the context of this discussion. I’m wondering if I might ask you the same question as Emily. What specifically about this photo do you find racist?
By your logic, it wouldn’t be racist to use a picture of three minstrel-makeup-and-Afro-wig-wearing frat boys holding KFC buckets in an article about affirmative action with the caption, “You’ve really got to hustle to get into Harvard these days.”
Such attitudes make me ashamed to be white.
I disagree.
The picture was funny. Laugh out loud hilarious! I still bust a gut when I see it. And US companies pimp out Asia to get workers on the cheap. What eyes do you think those corporations use when viewing those workers? Enlightened eyes? No. They use dollar sign eyes.
Cultures and peoples exist. Portraying them is not inherently racist and saying it is is a false reading of the Ivory Tower dictates.
At best this prompts us to want to explore more in depth what racism is in a global economic world where very different people exist and where the gamut of human expression exists, from the serious to the tragic to the uplifting to the funny and more…
Then we have to ask, “Who decides?” What role is there in intent? What role in perception? It is a worthy conversation.
But I regret that Erik took the picture down. To me it’s just another form of pack mentality bullying by folks who accuse others of the very same tack they advance.