Are corporations at war with common citizens??

[kentuck]

Most do not use guns or resort to outright violence. Instead, they use capitalism as a weapon. They pit worker against worker, not just in this country, but around the world.

For example, it they can get someone in Asia or Mexico to make cars for $8-$10 dollars per hour, why would they pay American workers $20-$25 dollars per hour? No one can argue that the competition doesn't drive down the cost of labor. At some point in time, probably at some far point in the future, the lowest wages will go up and the higher wages will go down, until they are in near equilibrium.

When that point is reached, the corporations will have won a major portion of their war. They can then dictate their own terms to their workers. Lifestyles will decline in this country as they slowly improve in the new labor markets. Such is the way of capitalism. Such is the way of capitalism that it uses labor at the cheapest price possible, retaining most of the gains of labor for those at the very top. Fairness has absolutely nothing to do with it. That's just the way it is. Accept it. The production of more capital by labor is not meant to be shared equally with the capitalists.

Such is the war waged upon the people. These trade treaties are just the latest attacks by the corporations.

[grasswire]

1. and their shareholders?

I don't think we can exclude investors and shareholders from culpability.

[PowerToThePeople]

2. Yes. n/t

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

3. "Workers of the WORLD Unite!" Is still a damned good idea.

Letting the bosses and their middlemen the politicians decide who works and how much they get paid is a fools errand.

[BrotherIvan]

4. The only thing that works is tariffs

I've said this on DU before as an example. For the South Korea trade agreement, if I import fabric from Korea where a lot of it is made, I pay a 10% duty. But if I have the garment sewn in Korea and import it as a finished good, then there is 0% duty. So not only would I get the benefit of a lower wage worker (in this case about $5 an hour) but a 10% savings for using Korean, rather than US labor. No worker's comp, no health insurance, no paying into Soc. Security for those employees. Nada.

And while someone thinks, well the people in the factory who may have sewn it might be out of a job. But they forget that this also means the company that produced the notions such as thread or buttons, the company that produces sewing machines (yes, there are still US companies who do that), the shipping company who would have benefitted from shipping all the raw materials and then shipped the finished product. A whole network of people are effected in the local economy.

And no one, not a single politician has explained how to replace those jobs. They talk about retraining or a new economy, but no one has actually gone any further than that. The only conclusion to be drawn is that we are all working at low wage service jobs selling cheaper goods to each other. What will happen when the spending power of the US consumer-driven economy collapses?

[F4lconF16]

5. Yes, and they always have been.

It's capitalism. We are labor costs, not people. It has never been different, all the way back to the emerging capitalist economies in the late middle ages.

[dawg]

6. No.

You're not at war with someone you conquered 35 years ago. You just rule them.

[moondust]

7. Don't know if I'd call it war.

Perhaps it's just brutal indifference to the social consequences of their profit-seeking at any cost, i.e. abject amorality. A feature of corporatism, not a bug.

[kentuck]

8. OK.

[socialist_n_TN]

9. It's called class war and it's something that Marxists have been talking about.....

for nigh on to two centuries now. Nothing is different, except maybe that more people are recognizing it now. There's also a prescription for it, also from Marx. Since they won't voluntarily give up their ill-gotten gains, it needs to be taken from them.

[Terra Alta]

10. corporations don't care about their workers.

all that matters to them is the bottom line. Workers are easily replaced, and if they can get rid of a highly paid worker and replace them with someone doing the same job for less pay, you bet they will.

[hifiguy]

11. They always have been and

Always will be. The logic if capitalism demands it. Too bad we didn't listen to Jefferson and Jackson on the subject of "monied corporations" and the mortal dangers they pose to honest government.