Elmer Smith and Djata Bumpus share some ideas about current Economic Issues

"Bruce pointed out something that I didn’t have space for or the time To confirm. He says that American textile manufacturers have been flocking to Haiti for the past Five to 10 years to produce apparel using workers that they pay less than subsistence wages... "

Dear friends,

We've been hearing from government officials a lot about "stimulus" packages and the whole bit in resurrecting the economy. On the link below, is a piece from Elmer Smith of the Philadelphia Daily News.

Elm and I are longtime and very dear friends - not simply colleagues. Therefore, we frequently share ideas about a variety of social topics. When the aforementioned piece on the link below was published the other day, there were some ideas, because of space consideration, he had to leave out. However, I thought it necessary to share this brief exchange with the readers of this blog, having his permission to do so, of course. After the link, our comments follow.

Cheers!

G. Djata Bumpus
http: /www.philly.com/dailynews/local/20100202_Elmer_Smith__Tax_credits_won_t_help_small_business_end_the_recession.html
*************************************
From: Djata Bumpus
To: Smith, Elmer L.:
Re: Tax credits won't work...

Yo Bro’,

That’s a very good piece, Elm. You and Bruce both made some great points.

However, an important point that neither you or Crawley mentioned is: We need quality employment that allows people to have an interest in the work that they do and the company itself. A pizza parlor chain owner is just a greedy bastard. Plain and simple. After all, what does it do for the community other than create low-paying jobs and gall stones for the customers? Those are the kind of punks that Wharton deliberately turns out.

We need workers’ cooperatives, for example. They already exist, to a small extent, in some progressive communities.

Another dear friend of mine has one such enterprise that fixes cars. That’s something the community needs – again, NOT PIZZAS.

Cheers!

Djata

RE: Tax credits won't work...‏
From: Smith, Elmer L.
To: Djata Bumpus

The real frontier is to produce what we call “good jobs”; they pay a minimum of $32,000 - which Is what it cost to provide even a modicum of food and shelter and a small savings for a family Of four, according to the U.S. Dept. of Labor. That sounds low to me. But when you consider that the greatest job growth is in jobs that pay half that, you can see the dangerous trend and the need for at least that.

Bruce pointed out something that I didn’t have space for or the time To confirm. He says that American textile manufacturers have been flocking to Haiti for the past Five to 10 years to produce apparel using workers that they pay less than subsistence wages. You’re right about Wharton and any number of these “business" schools. But the real culprits for me are guys who are going right from Wharton into major exploitations like the one Bruce describes in Haiti, or in call centers in India and Pakistan and everywhere else where American companies are exporting their manufacturing and even service jobs. It’s ugly out here my brother.