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“Capital America” has always been the “First” among the “Firsts” in “America First”. It has been getting even more so since Reagan became the President. If Trump keeps his words and loyally follows Reagan’s spirit, the interest of “Capital America” will be advanced even further, at the expense of “Labor America” of course, unless you still genuinely believe the “Trickle Down” economic model will eventually work, after failing so many for so long.
“Labor America” as necessary evil to us
Trust me on this one since I was one of the guys crunching numbers to justify exporting US jobs to China & India, not only blue collar factory jobs in West Virginia, but high-pay (100k+ /year) high-tech jobs such as semiconductors and software development in Silicon Valley.
If you still have doubt, ask a few Financial Analysts in any large US companies. You can hardly find one who has not yet helped people like me to crunch such numbers.
To “Capital America”, a UPS truck driver is as good as the brown truck he/she drives. As soon as the truck becomes capable of driving itself, and a robot assistant capable of walking up your driveway, the brown uniformed human driver will be obsoleted immediately.
From “Capital America” point of view
#1: Minimum Wage
What minimum wage? A laborer is as good as a barrel of oil. When there is too much of it, the price shall drop to -$37 per barrel. With cheap unemployed laborers willing to work for $1/hour in the billion in India, what right “Labor America” has to ask for more than $7.25/hour we already gave you decay ago? Have you not seen someone circulating articles advocating “0” minimum wage lately?
#2: Job Creation
Yah, when US labor costs drop to India level. Trust us we’ll make that happen in 20 years. The trend has been in our favor for decades. Take US auto jobs, it was $30/hour in 1980 dollars and is already down to $14 in 2020 dollars, a 75% drop in 40 years. Quite a progress.
#3: US Manufacturing Revival
Given our advancement in equalizing global labor cost, we can do a little bit of it in a few selected niches, but not much more. The PR gains worth the extra cost, and we love it.
#4: US / China Trade War & Tariffs
It is a fist fight between us “Capital America” and our bedfellow “Capital China”. As soon as they become more agreeable, which they will, it will be business as usual. Tariff? Do you think I’m that stupid and willing to risk my re-election for “Labor America” by offending “Consumer America”?
#5: Illegal immigrants & border wall
We love illegal immigrants. Most of them work for our farms and meat plants, taking less than minimum wage, with none of those expensive health insurance costs or any other employee benefit costs. Best of all, they never complain and they never strike. Don't you “Consumer America” love the cheap strawberries and chicken breasts they crunk out for us? And BTW, they help create a labor surplus at the bottom so no one above dares to ask for a raise. That is how we manage to keep $7.25 federal minimum wage longer than a decade. Remind me what was the price of a "Big Mac" back then?
Since advanced machinery is even cheaper than cheap undocumented labors, there are already too many of them, so wall them off Mr. President.
#6: Legal Immigrants, H1B & S-386
Family reunions are none of our business and we couldn’t care less. On the other hand, more H1B visas for Indian tech workers do make us more efficient exporting costly US high tech jobs to India, so S-386 will serve us well.
#7: ObamaCare & Medicaid Expansion
Yes, we understand how much Obama cares, but we don’t give it a dam since he is no President any more. Covering more people that are not already on our payrolls raises the cost for the whole society, including our costs of employee coverage. ObamaCare is already bad enough, why take in additional 0.5 M poors with Georgia Medicaid Expansion? Are you out of your mind?
#8 Universal Healthcare
Yes, we understand perfectly that a Universal Healthcare system will lower our cost of doing business here, but that is not worth fighting. The medical conglomerates are too powerful even for the largest individual company in the world to fight against. Our immediate concern is delivering profit to Wall Street, quarter after quarter. Lowering the cost 10 year from now does nothing to raise my fat CEO pays or my profit next quarter, so why bother. With capital already circled the global multiple times as we speak, who knows which part of the earth we’ll be landing 10 years later, but more likely India than the USA if I have to bet with my own money.
| You may think whoever says things like that must be a capitalist hater. The truth is, this writer started owning Amazon stock when it was still in the teens. He could care less if Amazon mistreated warehouse employees during Covid-19, or bullied city governments around the country for huge tax breaks, or paid no federal income tax, etc. One can't have much to complain after Bezo brings you this huge capital gain. But if you are not willing to listen, even Bill Gates and Warren Buffet could not help. |
(to be continued)
Frank Hui
2020-10-20
Atlanta, Georgia, USA
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发表于 2020-10-23 06:17:40