European Camcorders

[vidarh]

I hope I did not offend by saying "suckered", We seem to have done the same to ourselves. The unions are running the jobs out of town as well as high cost.

Yes, they're running low paid jobs nobody in the west are willing to take at low enough costs out of town. So?

Long term, the Chinese are doing the same. Just like Indian software companies are now increasingly outsourcing to the Chinese because Indian programmers are rapidly becoming too expensive, the Chinese have already started looking to Africa and poorer Asian countries for outsourcing both software development and manufacturing.

Give it 20 years, and there will be Chinese moaning about the exact same things as in this thread.

Know what? It doesn't matter. The jobs that get exported are the ones that are easy to move around. They'll keep going to the lowest bidder currently capable of providing the infrastructure and services.

Yes, Western unemployment rates are high now, but they are regularly during recessions, and then they bounce back. Europeans and Americans have never been as wealthy as a whole as we are now, *because* we're increasingly outsourcing the low skilled jobs and replacing it with stuff that gives a higher return on investment.

[vidarh]

Having been a Union Shop Steward in my time, there was a point where I had great belief in the Unions, but along came Maggie Thatcher in the 80's and with her the end of Union power in this country and a culture that prevails to this day of looking after number 1... :madashell:

Gave up a long time ago defending my fellow workers when too many of them became spineless gits who loved to complain about the way they were miss-treated in the workplace but they never had the guts to back it up with action...

Used to think of myself as a proud socialist but these days I'm happier being called a communist...

I think of it differently. Most working class people are in fact *not* looking after number 1, and that's the big problem.

If they were looking after number one, they wouldn't let the right wing get away with increasing inequality. Instead most people get suckered into some twisted idea that it's somehow "fair" that they produce most of the value but don't get the return.

Socialism (at least the Marxist kind) and communism is largely about making the working class realise what the rich has known all along: If you want to do well, you need to gang up with like minded and stand up for yourself, or someone else is going to grab whatever they can.

The difference is that for most people it's never going to be viable to reach "the top" so their best bet is to band together and fight for improvements for the class as a whole, so they also need to realise that "looking after number 1" means working as a team.