Cross Trickle Economics 101
Unless we work there, we tend to detach ourselves from union negotiations between rank & file and management as something that ain't on our side of the fence. Why does it matter if the UAW fights for big 3 auto jobs and workers rights anyway, I work at a cafe, or a barber shop, grocery store, city hall, salon, hospital...you get the idea. I don't build cars so the rights of auto workers don't affect me, right?
Wrong, way wrong!
A worker is a producer. A producer who earns income from a job becomes a consumer. A consumer is a customer. You see, they are all the same person. That is simple , market economy.
I call a properly working economy that operates this way "Cross-trickle economics." Cross -trickle understands that a community sustains itself because people get jobs and earn a paycheck. With that paycheck, they purchase goods and services. Good jobs, those with dignity and security, allow a person to buy a home, drive a car, start a family, eat out, take a vacation,...be the stake holders of a community.
So when GM, Ford, Chrysler, GE, Boeing, Caterpillar...deny workers rights and cut jobs in the name of investor dividend "profit," they take away community builders, stakeholders...and customers, theirs, yours and mine.
Cross-trickle economics works when we buy what we build, build what we buy, whenever its possible.
But, when the definition of economy takes a corporate, Wall Street mentality, companies answer to investors. Investors want to see growth and a return on their investment; Nothing inherently wrong with that. However, because we live in a global economy, the ability to invest in foreign workers and resources is a great frontier of possibility.
With improper safeguards and inadequate laws to protect domestic workers from loosing their jobs, and thus their ability to be the community builders that they want to be, a corporation can find that work somewhere else more cheaply, under different work rules and workers rights....so dometic shops close, schools suffer, teachers, police, fire, municipal services get cut...and rich get richer from disinvesting in the homeland... our towns stores get boarded up, Walmarts, complete with cheap,foreign goods replace them and and people go hungry.
Worse, the very people who we elect to "lobby" for us, the ordinary citizen are bought and paid for by the corporations that benefit from laws that get enacted to make all of this perfectly legal.
Cross-trickle economics would contend that the real market opportunity and potential for maximum return on investment rests in the dignified relationship between employer, producer and government policy.
Just as Henry Ford knew when he initiated the 5 -dollar- a- day work wage, far above the normal fair rate at the time. He knew that if he treated his employees fairly with dignity and security, he'd profit from a good work force and a great customer base.
It's not that we cant expand into foreign countries, taking advantage of vast markets, but wouldn't we all be better global neighbors if we saw that potential as a means to help countries become self sufficient, trading cultural specialties and resource abundances that would be mutually beneficial?
I'm no economist, hell, I don't even have a college degree. I am however, a businessperson, who has a small cafe on a main street in Any town, USA. I may not have all the data, know all the laws...but I do know that what I say is the closest thing to how most people feel...
And, this is nothing new, it's just become more widespread. Heck, Highland Park, Michigan was one of the finest city in the world to live in fifty years ago. Look at it now. Our citizens have been abandoned and left with no means to sustain themselves in the name of expansionist corporatism for a long time...We are now seeing that mentality invade more than just a minority...we call it the middle class.
How are corporations and politicians going to reconcile the fact that so many people are hurting and unemployed? It can not be Wall Street v. Main Street. It must be an intersection and a merging of these two integral roads. We know this can be done.
There isn't a choice.
How do we do that....?
I submit that it is a 3-pronged approach and it entails the perspectives of cross-trickle economics and the cooperative relationship between our communities/ ordinary citiizens, corporations and politicians.
AJ O'Neil
10/09/11
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