"spitfire2" wrote in message
...


Its all happened so many times over, over the last couple of centuries.
When the industrial revolution started, here in Britain, we had the
world as our market, We imported some raw materials, those that we
didn't have naturally here, and sold to everyone. It wasn't long before
all our customers caught up, and started making the things for
themmselves, and at rates well below our own, as their costs of living
were much lower. We then bought from them. In their turn, the same
happened, and again and again. Post war, its been the turn of Japan,
then Korea, then India and China. Since nearly all our companies reckon
that they are "global" and not "national" they see no reason not to
shift labour intensive work to wherever its cheapest at the moment. The
accountants hold the sway, and claim its all for the shareholders'
benefit, which is probably true, since if a company falls behind its
competitors, it loses their market and soon folds. They have little
option.

Dave. UK



That's all true, but there are two issues that bother many of us in the US
with the present circumstances. One is the huge volume and acceleration of
capacity we're seeing from those two enormously populous countries. Our
standard ways of adapting to increased imports may not be able to cope with
them except by suffering some severe displacements in our economy -- ones
that many of us feel can have a permanent deleterious effect.

The second is that it's true that our multinationals have no option, but the
options are determined by the rules of the game. And they've been writing
all of the rules.

Ed Huntress