value added (long and acidic)

[telebob x]

Jon Ford said:
“, the absurd statement about how the US builds great products for the 
world,at a great savings in energy, pollution etc., when in fact the 
opposite is true--we are increasingly relying on foreign workers and plants, 
foreign energy and natural resources, to do our "dirty work" for…”

********************************************************************
OK Jon-

Here's only one  “value added” schema to illuminate my argument-

Product  Exported from USA-	  Corn		2.5 billion bushels   exported
(This corn is fertilized by imported  nitrogen)


In today’s global market, the economic success of the entire agricultural 
sector depends on international trade. One of every five rows of corn grown 
in the United States goes overseas. The USA also exports ‘value-added’ corn 
products such as meat, dairy and poultry products, corn gluten feed, 
plastics and corn syrup. There is no other sector of the U.S. economy where 
the link between trade and prosperity is clearer than in agriculture.

NITROGEN
Ammonia
Most of the traded ammonia is used to manufacture fertilizers but 
considerable quantities are used to produce industrial chemicals. Between 
1986/88 and 1996/98 world ammonia trade increased from 8.2 to 11.2 million 
tonnes N.
The main ammonia exporting regions in the 1996 to 1998 period were the FSU 
(36% of world trade), Trinidad, Mexico and Venezuela (19%), the Near East 
(12%).
The main importers were West Europe, the USA, and certain Asian countries.  
Etc etc
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There are literally 1000’s of products manufactured in the US by US 
companies utilizing raw materials and energy imported from the rest of the 
world. Should I mention (Boeing) aircraft, machine tools, electronics,  
petrochemicals, steel products, and so on ad infinitum? There is 'value 
added' in every one of these products.

This is not to say that people in the United States do not receive a 
disproportionate amount of the world’s goods and services.  We are rich.  We 
should be.  We have worked hard, and we work smart. We live in comfort 
compared to many cultures in the rest of the world.  However, if you have 
spent much time in Western Europe, you can see that comfort and riches are 
hardly confined to the North American continent.  We (and the Europeans) use 
the energy of the world to create products that are sold back to the world 
at ….yes A PROFIT…. so shocking. (But not unusual to see that we use an 
disproportionate amount of energy and materials to create these products.)

Jon you seem to find that to be offensive. Even more, you seem to resent the 
success that the USA has enjoyed over the last 200 years and feel that our 
success is built on the bones of crushed economies and the labor of the 
oppressed in world sweatshops….

Well Jon it just isn’t true.  Whatever our flaws, and whatever crimes we 
have committed against the world, they shrink before the success of mere 
free markets and democracy.  It is not a zero sum game.  Our labor, capital, 
and ingenuity have created this wealth.  It is not wealth that had to be 
'stolen' from others. (Though 'we' did have to take the continent from the 
Native Americans..but I am sure the Neanderthals resented the rise of modern 
Homo Sapiens too.)  The Marxist paradigm has been shown to be empirically 
vacant.  Marx was good at describing inequities and the flaws of 
socio/economic models, but his solutions were naïve in the extreme and 
ultimately wrong…as proven in the laboratory of experience. You seem to be 
forgetting that.

So you can call my “value added” comment “infamous” but I will be happy to 
stand behind it any day, and yes, you can say I belong to the “My country 
right or wrong.” Even if that is not exactly true….It certainly IS MY 
COUNTRY and I am happy to be considered American wherever I happen to be in 
the world.  As to whether we are “right or wrong”…when we are right, I 
support it, when we are wrong, I will work to change it or modify…but I 
would never rush to blame my own country for the ills of the world.

The remarkable thing is that you seem to posit that the “International 
Corporate Model is an American invention, and that we are the main 
villains…if there are actually villains. You seem to find the whole idea of 
labor for ‘profit’ to be execrable, and worse, you find the fact that people 
desire goods and services to be problematic as well.  Perhaps you would like 
things to be produced in OZ under the guidance of saintly sorts who never 
exploit a cheaper labor market or a geopolitical advantage? This is almost a 
Ted Kazynski like argument.

I will ignore the ‘ad hominum’ attacks in your retort, except to say… please 
check our website at

www.ticonet.com

and make your judgement about the horrid nature of what we do.  I don’t 
notice people attacking the phone company for allowing naughty things to be 
said on its wires.  Our job does not include patrolling the morality of our 
clients.  People like to play games, and I would really hate to live in a 
world designed by the moralists…like the Taliban or others who like to tell 
people what they should be doing…or what constitutes correct thought.

The weird thing is….I now have the feeling that you Jon, and a few other of 
the “blame America first”  crowd, seem to have more in sympathy with Bin 
Laden than you do with ordinary Americans, and I find that repugnant.

Cordially…and you can stuff it too,

tele




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