Killing themselves for our pleasure?
By webmaster
The Financial Times is reporting on their front page today that nine people at a giant manufacturing facility in southern China where Apple, Dell, and Hewlett-Packard manufacture their products for the US market have committed suicide.
The factory is in Shenzen and both employs and houses 300,000 people. Our cheap labor - our slave labor overseas - are starting to protest.
These companies that go overseas looking for cheap labor not only have the blood on their hands of the people so tormented by working conditions in Asia that they are committing suicide, but also that of the devastated working class families in America who must buy goods made in China yet are no longer manufacturing anything.
It's time for America to return to rational tariff based trade policies that bring our jobs home.
Comments
#2
Well, 9/300,000 = 0.00003 = 0.003%. The suicide rate in the US (2005 data) is 11/100,000 = .00011 = 0.011%, roughly 3.6 times higher than the rate at that factory. Of course all numbers are untrustworthy; but it helps to put stories like this in context.
#3
"It's time for America to return to rational tariff based trade policies that bring our jobs home."
Please push this proven method more often Thom. It's the great equalizer. It forces countries to think of products they can make within their borders that are better than made elsewhere. Which means folks outside the country won't mind paying a tarrif to get access. And if a country makes something that can only practically be made in that country, so much the better. That's why the U.S. has to get the lead back in manufacturing Solar panels and especially all sorts of renewable energies, before other countries figure out how to make them, and impose their own tarrifs that WE would then have to pay to them.
#4
I'm glad a previous commentor introduced the subject of numbers. Thom did not mention the period of time in which the nine suicides occurred, but that rate is 3 per 100,000. The numbers I could find quickly on the web showed that China's rate in 1999 was 14 per 100,000, the US rate in 2005 was 11 per 100,000, the rate in Japan in 2007 a whopping 24 per 100,000!
I would have expected better scholarship from Thom.
I would have liked to make a more timely comment, but the newsletter arrives here (Israel) during the night and I get to it over my morning coffee - which is during the night there.
#5
I wonder if "Carly" Fiorina will feature this in one of her up-coming political advertisements.
Thom's Blog Is On the Move
By webmaster
Hello All
Thom's blog in this space and moving to a new home.
Please follow us across to hartmannreport.com - this will be the only place going forward to read Thom's blog posts and articles.
Images of Thom
From Unequal Protection, 2nd Edition:
"Hartmann combines a remarkable piece of historical research with a brilliant literary style to tell the grand story of corporate corruption and its consequences for society with the force and readability of a great novel."
From The Thom Hartmann Reader:
"Thom is a national treasure. Read him, embrace him, learn from him, and follow him as we all work for social change."
From The Thom Hartmann Reader:
"In an age rife with media-inspired confusion and political cowardice, we yearn for a decent, caring, deeply human soul whose grasp of the problems confronting us provides a light by which we can make our way through the quagmire of lies, distortions, pandering, and hollow self-puffery that strips the American Dream of its promise. How lucky we are, then, to have access to the wit, wisdom, and willingness of Thom Hartmann, who shares with us here that very light, grown out of his own life experience."
Normally gas prices go up before a holiday... (Memorial Day weekend)
Normally gas prices go up if there's an oil refinery explosion(AGE Refinery - Fort Worth, TX)
Just filled my tank up. Gas was down 20 cents. We don't have BP gas stations here.
Isn't this proof of collusion?