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Twin Town High (vol. 8) |
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Fantasies of Corporate Ideologues
Wednesday 09 June @ 11:22:03 |
 by Jim Hightower
It’s always enlightening to have the glories of corporate globalization explained to us by conservative pontificators who try to convince us that globalization is the height of morality, for it indirectly aids the poor - a group of people they never care to aid directly.
Not long ago, we were treated to an example of such enlightenment by William Safire, the old Nixon speechwriter who's now a pundit for the New York Times. He offered a touching, hypothetical story of a low-income mother whose 12-year-old boy had said to her: “Momma, I need new shoes because the old ones with the holes hurt my feet, and the other kids in school are laughing at me.” But, Safire tells us sadly, his fictional momma had to say to her boy that she “couldn't afford no $50 on new shoes made in America.”
 Glory Be and Hallelujah, though Safire's morality tale ends happily, for momma found a store that was “having a clearance of shoes made in China or Indo-someplace. I bought him a pair of fine leather shoes for $24. You shoulda seen my boy's face light up.”
In case you missed the moral of this literary gem, Safire pounds it into us in the next sentence of his column: “Free trade is helping that lady make ends meet because her hard-earned dollar now has more buying power. If those fast-talking protectionists had their way, the high cost of living would deny her boy those shoes.” Gosh, Bill, thanks for that little lecture.
Meanwhile, moving from fiction to real life, you might observe that Nike doesn't lower the price on its shoes just because it pays workers in Indo-someplace a dollar a day, instead of the $10-an-hour it used to pay U.S. workers. No, Nike simply pockets the savings.
Also, if “Momma” had not had her middle-class job offshored by the likes of Nike, she wouldn't be poor - and then she could afford “$50 on new shoes made in America.”
Instead of pushing more trickle-down fantasies, let’s invest in America's middle-class again.
Jim Hightower is the best-selling author of “Thieves In High Places: They’ve Stolen Our Country And It’s Time To Take It Back,” on sale now from Viking Press. For more information, visit www.jimhightower.com.
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