11-17-2021, 01:13 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-17-2021, 01:21 PM by Eric the Green.)
(11-17-2021, 04:45 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Unless you have a specialized CD player for music, all you need as a CD player is a DVD player such as one that you abandoned when you went to Blu-Ray. It will also almost certainly say "Made in China" even of it comes from a brand that you consider American, Japanese. South Korean, or European.
Should America end up in a war with China, then the quislings will not be so much the admirers of Mao but instead people who want to live like aristocrats in a nation in which fear and poverty prevail. These people would love to have America become 'great' -- if your idea of greatness is an aristocratic order. Just because America has never been a formal aristocracy does not mean that we can't end up with an aristocracy-in-all-but-name.There will be no aristocratic titles, but there will be the glaring hallmark of sybaritic indulgence in a land in which 95% of the people suffer for 2%.
If we are to get higher pay then we must deserve it not only with high productivity but also the willingness to pay prices rather than buy schlock. So get your furniture from an honest-to-God carpenter instead of from a box store. Buy clothes from a tailor instead of from a department store.
Above all, folks... read, read, and read! The old classical standard of excellence remains. That still leaves copious room for people not "dead white males".
I don't know if the USA can reclaim its industries and rein in the aristocratic bosses. Americans may not be willing to vote for a government that can accomplish this. But Reaganomics/trickle-down Neoliberalism must go, and the people must ditch it forever, or else submit to a China-dominated world. US industry certainly can't be rebuilt unless the bosses are contained and required to pay fair wages, because otherwise the industry will have no customers and no workers. The bosses will continue to oursource and roboticize. They have plenty of money already; they can afford to pay higher wages, continue to produce quality products, and contribute to society and education. Small business is a different matter, but they too can at least pay their employees the wages they need in order to patronize the small businesses in turn and meet their needs including if they are supplied by the big guys.
We need the industries to make quality products. Most if not all of the big box stores now sell imported products made from cheap labor overseas. These stores will have to change if cheap labor is restricted in the USA, and tariffs are high. Free trade is suicide, unless the nations involved are on a level playing field of the peoples' income, peoples' rights and the regulations required. Free trade is building a dangerous imperial tyrant competitor prepared to snuff out democracy and human rights. And Xi Jinping will have a tyrant ally if the likes of Trump is allowed to stage a coup like January 6th and take over the USA. The perpetrators of January 6th must be jailed.
I do need a music CD player next to my bed.