Mass Suicide Threats Affect Corporations' Bottom Line

Recently we have seen in the news stories about threats of mass suicide coming from workers at Chinese factories.  It is a tragedy when someone even threatens to take their own life, and it is catastrophic when people group together to make such a threat.  Living and working conditions must be inconceivably poor for a group of people to be driven to this point.  Most people in the world agree that living and working conditions in Chinese factories are extremely poor and we would like to see them improve. 

So why don’t they?

Unfortunately those conditions are part of a giant conundrum that reaches halfway around the world to the United States, as well as to other countries that buy Chinese-manufactured goods.  There are four parts to the conundrum:

Part 1: We are addicted to our standard of living.  That standard consists of using fossil fuels, using portable electronic devices, drinking bottled water, all while polluting our resources and generating endless amounts of trash.  The portable electronic devices, mentioned above, are not made in the US because the cost of labor is far too expensive.  Instead they are mostly made in China.

So companies should just make the portable electronic devices here in the US instead, right?  That leads me to Part 2.

Part 2: The reason we are able to afford our present standard of living is that the prices of the stuff we want are within our budget.  Making products in the US would cause the cost of manufactured goods to rise which would not allow us to buy some of the things we consider critical to our standard of living.  So companies cannot afford to sell higher priced products that were made in the US because we would buy less of them.

Since we don’t want to lower our standard of living, the companies should decide on their own to make products in the US because it is the right thing to do, right?

Part 3: Our government does not force companies to adhere to any moral code.  By the legal definition corporations set earnings as their highest priority.  If the management and investors choose to adhere to a moral code in addition to making money, that’s fine, but adhering to the moral code is not a legal condition of the corporation existing.  Instead corporations need to adhere to all laws set by the federal and state governments in the area.  At first this may sound like a fair swap: moral code for laws, but it is not exactly fair since corporations hire lobbyists to affect politicians which in turn affect the laws.  Therefore something could be absolutely wrong, morally speaking, yet legal for the company to do since it is within the boundaries of the law.  An instance of this would be for a company polluting a local river because the law does not restrict pollutants from being dumped in that particular river.

Since we don’t want to lower our standard of living, and companies don’t decide on their own to make products in the US just because it is the right thing to do, then the government should force companies to make products in the US, right?

Part 4: Our government could force companies to make products in the US, but that would be a dramatic change in regulation policy.  The argument is typically that if a government can force companies to make products in a certain place, then it could force companies to do just about anything.  An easier route is to coerce each company into making products in the US by making laws that ultimately improve the company’s bottom line.  This can be done by adding tariffs to imported goods or giving tax credits for purchasing manufacturing equipment that is purchased here, and so on.  Tariffs translate in higher costs to the consumer, and we know that is not an option because of our standard of living.  Hence politicians are not going to make a law that will get them voted out of office next term.  Tax credits to companies need to come from somewhere.  In order to help companies you need to decide to not help other groups of people—which is anyone that will not benefit from the tax cuts given to the company.  The difficult part is in trying to help companies without a lot of money going straight into the pockets of the extremely wealthy.  This plays into the class warfare and in the end not much gets done.

So that’s why it is difficult for us to take corrective action, even though the foreign manufactures are part of US companies.  There are some individuals that choose to not buy from corporations that manufacture goods in countries with poor labor conditions, and this helps.  There are some corporations that choose not to manufacture goods in said countries even though they would make more money doing so, and this helps.  But overall there is a great deal of corporations that do benefit from poor labor conditions abroad.  It is for this reason that we are dependent on the government and people of foreign countries to take action.  Foreign governments don’t want to regulate our companies because that would probably cause our companies to relocate and no longer pay considerably large sums of money in taxes to those governments.  So the companies are from the US, so we know their story, and foreign governments are limited in the action they can take, so out of all these parties we are left only with the foreign workers.  WOW.  Those foreign workers cannot depend on corporations developing a moral code, so they need to take some sort of action that will affect the bottom line.  Bad publicity affects the bottom line.  The threat of bad publicity may have been the cause of a 22% increase in wages.  Luckily one corporation raising wages will force other companies to compete which could cause those companies to raise their wages as well.  By the way, workers typically make about $100 per week, and that’s after their 22% raise.  Hopefully we can put our heads together to figure out a way to change the many parts of this conundrum so that foreign workers do not need to threaten their own lives just to get bread on the table.  Because a threat only works if it is real, and what a shame to be part of that.


Ways to help:
Have a blog or web site?  Add a "Buy American" link.  I've got a great one in the upper left spot of my blog.  You can copy the page mine links to and add a link to your blog or site.

Eric Cantor is presently the House Majority leader and he has a proposal to help small businesses.  Check out his site via  the link below.  If you like what he has to say, show your support and tell others :)
http://majorityleader.gov/

UPDATE: ERIC CANTOR'S BILL WAS SIGNED BY PRESIDENT OBAMA TODAY.  CONGRATULATIONS AMERICA!
 http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/04/05/obama-signs-small-business-legislation/


This is Practical Manifesting.

Here are a couple links to recent stories:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZPTeL9Og94

 http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/11/world/asia/china-microsoft-factory/index.html

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