June 17, 2008

Wall Street Journal interview demonstrates Obama’s total ignorance of basic economic forces
by Bill Levinson

The following speaks pretty much for itself, and we have provided the entire statement so there is no chance of taking words out of context. The thought that someone who is so ignorant as to believe that automation and technology harms workers–the exact position of the Luddites two centuries ago–could even conceivably become a Senator, let alone President, is truly frightening.

Barack Obama on Economics: ‘We’re Going Through a Big Shift’
June 17, 2008

…WSJ: You talked about the last eight years and the question of redistribution goes way back …

Sen. Obama: Oh, there’s no doubt about it.

That’s why I say that the combination of globalization and technology and automation all weaken the position of workers. I would add an anti-union climate to that list. But all weakens the position of workers, particularly blue-collar workers, in the economy, and some of it is just historical. You know after World War II, we were in this unique position where Europe was decimated, Japan was decimated. China was off the grid because of Mao. And so we didn’t have a lot of competition out there, and now other countries are rising and automation has supplanted a lot of work that used to be done by middle-class workers.

This is what we might expect from a political science major who experimented with Black Nationalism (per his own book, “Dreams From My Father”) and who may still subscribe to it. He believes that technology and automation “weaken the position of workers” and supplant “a lot of work that used to be done by middle-class workers.” The idea that automation supplants workers is the foundation of abject poverty, and indeed actual slavery, as shown by a brief history of the evolution of labor.

Thousands of years ago, people lived lives of subsistence because their hands were their only means of production, and their legs the only means of transportation. They could in fact own only what they could carry. The domestication of animals like horses and oxen allowed a much higher standard of living even though one animal could “displace” several men from backbreaking labor. The ancient Romans and Chinese, however, had ideas similar to Mr. Obama’s. Both societies invented animal-drawn reaping machines that could do the work of several slaves or peasants, but they dropped the idea for fear of idling the slaves. In other words, Mr. Obama’s ideology is a basic foundation of actual slavery.

The next step up from slavery was the laborer who worked for slave wages, e.g. as a 19th century coal miner or cotten harvester. He was free to change employers but, because all he could offer was his physical labor, he could earn barely more than a subsistence wage. The Luddites were willing to accept this as the price of “job security,” even though a machine that did the work of ten men might allow one man to earn the former (low) pay of five or ten workers. Technology and automation as deployed by the Ford Motor Company created the American middle class by empowering the blue-collar worker, the “bitter” small town person who “clings to guns and religion” who is now the backbone of the Democratic Party, to earn more than a subsistance wage. Automation and technology provided the laborer with discretionary income while bringing the cost of what were formerly luxury goods to everyday status. While it took fewer workers to produce a given amount of goods, the goods became less expensive while more people could afford them. This was not merely Henry Ford’s theory, it was how he sold millions of automobiles to autoworkers who could at last afford the product they made. This, in turn, created more as opposed to fewer high-paying jobs.

In short, Barack Obama lacks even the basic competence (in addition to the basic personal character as shown by his long membership in a racist church while surrounding himself with anti-Semites and racists) necessary to hold any decision making role in any government, whether local, state, or federal.