Failure to decisively address the deepening economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic will result in incomprehensible lost lives and a complete collapse of the economy.
The Center for Economic and Social Justice (CESJ.org), a non-partisan think tank promoting universal citizen access to capital ownership, is putting forth recommendations for structural changes to redesign our monetary and tax systems so that EVERY person can acquire and gain incomes from productive capital to become economically self-sufficient and independent. Such measures will facilitate our shifting to green energy sources, technologies, and processes that protect the planet.
Our focus, at this time, however, is on actions we can take NOW to build a more resilient and inclusive economy that can actively empower people so they can better weather and recover from devastating crises such as this pandemic. The measures will enable our society and economy to build toward strength and preparedness, and endure emergencies, including climate, in the future.
As citizens, we need to unite America and organize to mobilize and demand major transformations. As with past crises, this crisis shows the glaring shortcomings of healthcare, economic, and environmental policies that are failing the people and planet, and at an unprecedented rate. The economic impact is acquiring dimensions that are without precedent in the history of the United States, or for that matter every nation.
Global Supply Chain Disruption
Unfortunately, our political leaders over the past five decades have paved the way for an exodus of our manufacturing, led by the controlling owners of American corporations and industries, and their political allies, resulting in direct investment in the development and execution of manufacturing in slave-wage countries. This investment and exodus have enabled those countries to build their productive and technological capabilities, and in the case of Communist China become the world's manufactory, while thousands of factories were shut down and millions of jobs were eliminated in the United States. Restoring manufacturing in the United States no doubt will prove a rough transition, as just in the past two decades since free trade was opened, China has dominated the production of goods previously manufactured in our homeland.
The offshoring of production is the reason the United States is deficient in critical medical equipment, medicines, and supplies as Americans face widespread shortages in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. We have put ourselves at unnecessary peril.
For the controlling owners of American corporations, it was cheaper to relocate production offshore, invest and manufacture goods offshore, and import back the products to the United States. Expanded free trade was supported with tax breaks to corporations offshoring production. Thus, production and importing back for American consumption was made even cheaper and thus more profitable still.
While intermediate supply chain and final goods exported from Communist China to the United States have been halted in many industries, we have yet to rebuild and expand our own homegrown manufacturing capabilities, and, as a result, we remain dependent on foreign supply chain and finished goods production. Not only are we still dependent on China, but even products in Japan's and South Korea's supply chains are essentially made in China and other parts of Asia, with materials and goods delivered to those countries, and then exported to the United States. The same situation is true for goods shipped to Mexico from Asian sources and then exported as final goods to the United States -- or from Asia to Europe, and then to the United States.
The actions that got the United States where we are today include the failure to take United Auto Workers Walter Reuther's advice to keep wages where they are and help workers get their increases from the bottom line. Reuther warned that higher wages would destroy entire industries by lowering their competitiveness in international trade. Had we taken Reuther's advice, businesses would not have set up shop in slave-wage countries like China.
Why is broadening ownership so important? Ownership entails reaping the fruits of all contributions that one makes proportionately to the productive process, whether via the productive capital one owns or one's labor, or both. A person's labor is compensated either by wages or by a share of what the enterprise produces that is attributable to their labor contribution. It is important for ALL the employees to own shares of the companies that employ them to build a productivity culture throughout the organization. Owning thereby entitles workers to the rewards of their own labor as well as that produced by their proportionate share of the physical capital.
No one knows how much disruption our interconnected and service-oriented economy can endure, especially since the past few decades have seen a debilitating decline in and rapid exodus of our manufacturing capabilities. We should have instead been in constant retooling mode with restoration of our manufacturing capabilities and constant technological improvement through research and development. As a result, we no longer manufacture the clothing, appliances, electronics, furniture, cars, infrastructure materials, lifesaving medical equipment, medicines and all manner of supply chain production, necessary to live and consume in today's world.
Such dependency is now painfully evident, as administrations over time have allowed us to become dangerously reliant on medical equipment and supplies, and drug production from Communist China.
While our production of critical medical equipment and supplies is woefully inadequate, China produces a reported 115 million N95 and surgical face masks a day, with a surplus so great that China can supply to countries in need.
If we hadn't outsourced nearly all of our manufacturing with job-killing free-trade agreements, we would have had the capacity to manufacture testing kits for the COVID-19 disease and not been waiting on Communist China to send them to us (the lack of test kits, rapid testing and investigative contact tracing is the reason we lost the ability to spot and contain the virus). We also would have the ability to manufacture the N95 face masks, shields, gowns, gloves, lifesaving ventilators and other equipment the medical community is in a panic to have to meet the life-threatening challenges of the crisis. While we are supposedly among the world's leading manufacturers of specialized lifesaving ventilators, supply levels are woefully inadequate and must be urgently ramped up to meet demand and for preparedness in the future.
The net effect has been a significant drop in our homeland production and our growing dependency on foreign production. Regrettably, producer-corporations have unnecessarily extended their supply chains and finished goods manufacturing to all parts of the globe and invested in lower-cost foreign production in order to boost short-run profits and share prices for their owners. As a result, the American economy is exceedingly vulnerable to external shocks to our supply chains as the world's supply chains are fixing to buckle and freeze-up, thereby causing production and incomes to fall abruptly. In turn, shrunken incomes and cash flows will collapse the edifice of non-productive debt and speculation that has been piled atop the American economy.
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