A tale of two continents - Europe Helps Workers, U.S. Squeezes Workers

From Open Left, one commentator put it succinctly:

A tale of two continents
In Europe, state aid is contingent on the firms preserving jobs. In the US, state aid is contingent on the firms cutting their workers wages and benefits.

The story is about government expenditures being used for the benefit of it's citizens, their workers.

WSJ:

France unveiled a plan on Monday to give €6 billion ($7.8 billion) in low-interest loans to Renault SA and PSA Peugeot-Citroën in exchange for promises that they won't close factories in France or lay off workers for the duration of the loans. The government also will offer €500 million in loans to auto-sector firms with operations in France.

and in Spain, FT:

Mr Sebastian said the industry employed 300,000 people, and accounted for 6 per cent of gross domestic product and a fifth of exports. He said the new "integrated automotive plan" would allow the industry to continue being a "strategic sector of the future". State aid would be denied to companies that cut their workforces without trade union agreement.

While in America, auto bail out requires union concessions.

Seems like every other nation on Earth is watching out for their citizens, their middle class, their workers....except the United States.

Isn't this the fundamental issue, multinational corporations along with their lobbyist generated policies have sucked the blood right out of the United States middle class until it's bone dry?

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Patriotism

How come when we fight for American Workers, American Products and American Jobs there is always a bad connotation? You are racist, you are a protectionist. For most of the benefits we have received we should bring a love for this great country of ours. It seems being a true American is not cool anymore.

btw, I am Ariel...that comment was from a link that I created in www.linkedin.com.

You are right somebody must have blinders to see the destruction of the economy and American middle class due to Free Trade and Outsourcing.

Funny thing though, the 11 caught because of the H1b Visa raid are all in linkedin.

Hi Ariel

Why don't you create an account here?

I'm convinced that the World Treason Organization is out to destroy the Nation-State. We're not the only country that has problems with their treaties, but we are the only one that continually gets judgements against us.

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Maximum jobs, not maximum profits.

hello Ariel

you might want to create an account, upper right column.

Then, you might want to reply to the comment by hitting the reply button.

You have posted a comment in a different thread, different post.

Then, on you are a racist xenophobe as well as protectionist. This is just attempts at name calling because it works.

They use it to drown out any statistics, realities on the ground of real job losses, real wage repression, real cutting of careers short through labor arbitrage.

Unfortunately for most Americans that's really a scary insult. Who wants to be a racist? So, it works very well to stop people from looking at all of these global labor issues objectively and acknowledge the statistics.

Corporations are trying to turn the word protectionist to mean anything at all with trade policy modification and it's obviously false. Protectionism means tariffs and no one is recommending that (or few are) so this is pure corporate lobbyist generated spin.

One of my favorites is for people to say major studies, done by highly credible researchers, where the actual research clearly has correct methodology, assumptions, mathematics....some of these cats try to say oh don't you know that organization are racists? to try to discredit the report. My case in point is the Center for Immigration Studies. Many of their research reports are actually funded by them but done by some heavy hitter researchers who not only are not racists but well respected authorities. Then the research itself is credible.

I cannot say that about every organization, even every paper but this sort of blanket "oh they are racists" because they do not like the conclusion of some research paper is pretty pathetic in my view.

I was on another blog recently and literally they said the Government Accountability Office were racists. Just unreal.

Thanks

Hi, I created an account. Thanks for showing the truth. One thing lately a lot more Americans are opening their mind.
During the dot com bust I know managers that use to be H1b believers started loosing their jobs and looking for work. Lately, it's been last bastions of H1b American believers that are loosing their jobs. I own a consulting company and hire Americans. Always believed that we should help ourselves (Pro America) before worrying about our neighbors. If we have a good economy then we can help the poor countries.

After all this mess we will be become a better nation. We have already started the reboot (ctrl+alt+delete).

Now you just need to remember to log in, Ariel....

n/t

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Maximum jobs, not maximum profits.

Related to the first comment

Another question: our economy is driven largely by consumer spending. Why then is our labor philosophy designed to suppress aggregate demand? How can we not see that this is counterproductive?

The name-calling referred to upstream also applies to Europe: "socialist", "lazy", "old world", "chocolate eaters". They're eating our lunch on energy and transportation.

Milton Friedman and Henry Ford

Unfortunately, Milton Friedman never studied Henry Ford.

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Maximum jobs, not maximum profits.