Hightower Lowdown
"Speak the truth, but ride a fast horse." -- Old West Texas cowboy saying
In This Issue
January's Lowdown
Senators bail out their banker buddies but stiff workers and their unions
THE 8,000-MEMBER GREATER GRACE TEMPLE in Detroit is the home church of many autoworkers, and its Sunday service on December 7 spoke directly to their troubles. The tone was set by the choir's opening selection, "I'm looking for a Miracle." The Pentecostal pastor kept the spirit moving with a sermon he titled "A Hybrid Hope," after which the congregation joined in a full-throated, hallelujah version of the gospel classic, "We're Gonna Make It." For the men and women who actually do the work in automobile manufacturing (America's quintessential industry), the only hope left for dealing with a catastrophic economic meltdown seems to be prayer.
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Where is Santa's Workshop?
"Ho-ho-ho," shouts Corporate America—‘tis the season to buy-buy-buy! For them, though, it’s open season on downsizing and moving American manufacturing jobs off-shore.
Take Christmas: Santa’s workshop has moved to China. Hundreds of thousands of impoverished, poorly paid migrants from China’s vast rural areas are squeezed into thousands of unregulated, hellish sweatshops to produce Merry Christmas largesse for the rest of us.
Examples of what comes from China’s very unmerry factories: three-fourths of the artificial Christmas trees, ornaments, lights, and wreaths in our homes; 71 percent of the toys we buy, and more than half of the clothing, computers, cameras, and other gifts.
The Wal-Marts, Nikes, Dells, and other profiteers, of course, say that they have no choice but to abandon America and buy low-wage Chinese goods in order to "stay competitive." They lie. For example, a top-of-the-line artificial Christmas tree costs the owner of a Christmas-tree factory only about $11 to make, with the labor cost only a pittance of that—under a buck. That same tree is sold wholesale for $120 to US retailers, who then charge you about $250 for it. In other words, the labor cost is an inconsequential fraction of the consumer price. They could pay wages 10 times as high and have no impact on the price. That’s not being competitive—it’s being exploitative.