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The International Writers Magazine
: Where American Jobs go

Review of Lou Dobbs Exporting America
By Phil Mershon

Hardcover: 208 pages
Publisher: Warner Business Books (August 30, 2004)
ISBN: 0446577448


Loath as I am to recommend the work of any systems theorists, much less professional media-ite, I must nevertheless heartily endorse a new book called Exporting America.

As you may have guessed, it is authored by a self-described Republican Capitalist named Lou Dobbs. I've never had much use for old Lou, but in this case I feel quite warm toward the frequent contributor to US News and Fortune and longtime host of "MoneyLine." In this book he makes it clear that the corporations more or less operating in the United States do not give a damn about anything at all. It's obvious. Send all the jobs from your corporation overseas to save on labor costs? Result: A town full of working people becomes a town full of nonworking people, or people working for less. The underemployed pay less taxes, the unemployed pay no taxes. Either way, revenues go down. Eventually people either relocate or die. The town that once served the company ceases to exist. Advantages to 99.9999999 percent of the US population? Zero. Advantages to evil rat bastards who make these decisions? Not much more, unless they think they're going to die within a year or two.

The short term thinking that drives the decision to have your computer support tech working in India or Thialand, or your automobile manufactured in China or Canada, or your embroidery done in Mexico--it is the thinking of a spoiled and undersupervised child. Gee, thinks the corporate child imbecile, no one's ever thought of raiding the economy before, so I'll make a financial killing. Yeah, and if you get away with that, you have gained nothing that lasts longer than next week. Because some other country's population will always be willing to work for even less than a dollar a day, and will undersell you. As Lou points out, there was a time when even the Big Four Automakers (now reduced to the Big Two--Chrysler has mutated German and doesn't count in the way it previously did) once believed that making a better product was the best way to maintain ruthless economic control over an industry. But that philosophy presupposed the notion that we would all be back tomorrow to fight another round. But in this advanced stage of late capitalist decline, the new breed of robber barons clearly have no interest in tomorrow, and remind one of the coke addict who drains a bank account to support a habit with the rationalization that he'll be dead from an overdose soon anyway, so why not enjoy?

Now, to be fair, Dobbs did not make the cocaine comparison I just offered, but what he does do is incur the wrath of loudmouthed members of both major US political parties, various government administrations and lunatics of all fringes, most of whom label him a protectionist, isolationist, communist, or economic drag queen. This quick but potent read will do nothing to calm their trembles, but it will arm all the rest of us with an intelligently argued, logically based strategem with which to struggle. Dobbs proves himself to be a genuine man of the people with this tome. It's good to have someone this lucid and wise on the side of the angels for a change.

© Phil Mershon Jan 2005

More Comment here

(Worth noting that Canada not only makes American trucks and SUVs but buys them as well! Somethings go both ways - You can have Macdonalds back now - anytime Ed)

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