The last major GE factory making ordinary incandescent light bulbs in the United States is closing this month, marking a small, sad exit for a product and company that can trace their roots to Thomas Alva Edison's innovations in the 1870s.
What made the plant here vulnerable is, in part, a 2007 energy conservation measure passed by Congress that set standards essentially banning ordinary incandescents by 2014. The law will force millions of American households to switch to more efficient bulbs.
Rather than setting off a boom in the U.S. manufacture of replacement lights, the leading replacement lights are compact fluorescents, or CFLs, which are made almost entirely overseas, mostly in China.
Going "green" means an even weaker U.S. economy.
I thought Obama wanted to keep jobs here in America?
scottm wrote:
Going "green" means an even weaker U.S. economy.
I thought Obama wanted to keep jobs here in America?
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The problem isn't caused by "going green". The problem is caused by American corporations like G.E. who choose to either produce or buy their production overseas from 'extreme low-wage & lousy working condition' sweatshops rather than making the products they sell here in North America. Since G.E. can make a higher rate of profit by producing *either* the older style incandescent or the newer "green" energy efficient bulbs in Chinese sweatshops and since maximizing profit for shareholders, regardless of the social and economic consequences for working people here or anywhere else for that matter, is their only motivation and reason for existence, that's what they do.
Although to play devil's advocate, I can see the problem for GE (and others).
With Chinese labor costs seriously undercutting the US, it only makes sense
for businesses to outsource overseas. Sure, they could make the product in
the US, but it'd carry a larger price tag. And then what happens when one of
their competitors starts to import a competing product for 1/3 the price from
China? We need a way to fix our trade deficit with China and provide a more
competitive environment for domestic products and services.
I agree with what you said about
corporations doing what they have to
do in order to compete, but that's
why tariffs and import duties exist
It's also why corporations - whose
obligation and duty - and only reason
for existence - is to maximize profit
and "return on investment for
shareholders" - regardless of the overall
social consequences for everyone else,
almost universally support and advocate
and lobby for, so-called 'free-trade'
agreements and oppose import duties,
tariffs and any restriction on their ability
to buy and sell and source labor, material
or product anywhere on the planet they
see fit. Free trade is great for maximizing
corporate 'profit on investment' and also
for lowering prices for consumers too, but
only so long as those same 'consumers'-
who also for the most part, ordinary
working people too, are prepared to lower
their own wages, working conditions and
living standards to those of workers in
Chinese, Indian, Mexican or Guatemalan
sweatshops, in order to "compete" with
them! As for me, I'd much rather pay 25
or 30 cents...or even a dollar more for that
matter -for a light bulb, so that I and my
neighbors and fellow citizens could have a
decent standard of living and jobs with
decent wages and working conditions and
'Free trade', 'open borders' and a 'common
market' works in places like the European
Union where there is more or less a level
playing field among the member countries.
However, here in the U.S and Canada,
other benefiting corporations by allowing
them to absolutely maximize their 'return
on investment' and "rate of profit", (note -
"rate of profit" is not the same as 'profit'
by the way) the U.S. and Canadian version
of unfettered, so-called 'free trade' with
low-wage 'sweatshop' countries - who
also have little or no human rights or
environmental standards either - and that
is pushed by *both* the Republicans and
Democrats in the U.S - and *both* the
Liberal and Conservative parties in Canada
too - does not in any way benefit ordinary
working people, either here in the U.S and
Canada, or those in the 'sweatshop countries'
who produce the supposedly "cheap" goods
that we consume either.
