Cheap labor: Major source of human problems

[rurallib]

This is just an opinion, mind you:
Seems like when you analyze the root of many of the problems we experience in this country have a basis in one group exploiting some other group as a source of cheap labor. Slave labor in this country has its roots in cheap labor for the cotton industry. The racism and hate were ginned up as a means to rationalize why these human beings "deserved" to be slaves.

We can follow it down throughout US history - exploiting groups such as Chinese, Irish, Eastern Europeans etc. Using them as cheap labor rationalized based on the groups being less than human.

Even the treatment of Native Americans falls generally in here. Using racism to demean them the US stole everything they own. Lessons of demeaning learned while "controlling" slaves.

Even up to today. Many different nationalities were brought in to break unions. Cheap labor. In my area, Latinos were brought in to bust the meat packing unions.

Now, formerly US industries go to the country of lowest wages - cheap labor. Used to bust unions and many other leverage points. Certainly one of the major attractions for industry in the TPP is more exploitation of 3rd world workers.

One of the major strategies to make this exploitation work is to create competing groups and have them pick up the strategies of hate and racism to supposedly strengthen their position. In truth the divisions fostered by industry serves to keep labor from working together and thus keeping their price low. If they do unite, industry turns to exploited 3rd world workers as a strategy to cut labor costs in the US.

Hope I didn't offend anyone in this short message on something that volumes and volumes have been written about.

The other side of the coin is cheap energy with the citizens paying for all the "extra" costs of extraction and use of sources such as coal, oil or nuclear. This includes wars to maintain our supplies.

Just had to get this off my chest.

[Dream Girl]

1. You are on to something.

I would extend your argument globally. Growing up, labor used to produce goods was much more expensive. goods are now so cheap that the average person owns many more goods than they need or use.. For example, I thin about the number of shoes I own compared to my mother. I probably have 60-70 pairs while my mom had maybe 3. I'm sure hers were much better quality and she owned and used them for years. There is an incredible amount of waste in energy and resources that go into producing these goods. We (myself included) buy things we don't need because they are cheap. I would argue that more expensive goods produced by more expensive labor would increase the value and quality of goods.

[rurallib]

2. you are exactly right on the button.