My spouse and I are investors in a small manufacturing company; he’s the president and has P/L accountability for his facility, part of a larger holding company of similar companies manufacturing capital equipment. Over the course of 25-plus years, my spouse has worked his way from entry-level product engineer to his current role; most of the folks in the business have similar stories and are not merely co-workers but friends.

They are frequently the last thing on our minds and the center of pillow talk; our biggest concern isn’t their wages, which are as competitive as they can be given the lack of new incoming purchase orders and flat work. Our biggest concern is health care, which represents 35% of total expenses and makes the firm less competitive in comparison to foreign competitors in the same products. Next year, without health care reform, the percentage will be higher and the firm may be priced out of the currently thin market for capital equipment. If the site had to shut its doors for lack of orders and work, the workers would flee to whatever other employer could pay them $16 to 100/hour so they could keep a roof over their heads AND pay for their much-needed health care.

Seriously, I hope you were being snarky; you would do well not to assume what kinds of backgrounds some of the commenters here have.

They also pay workers along a flatter income curve; my stepson’s Swedish girlfriend made the US equivalent of $16/hour as a hamburger restaurant worker (that’s what she called herself). She made enough at this one full-time to buy a new car and live on her own, which I seriously doubt the average worker at a “hamburger restaurant” here in the US could do.

I propose $100/hour minimum wage. That should take care of this problem. LOL. It is very risky and costly to start and run local, national or international business today. I wish some of you would try it. Put everything on the line. The competition is fierce the margins are low. The work never ends.

Why do people do it? I do not think that money (greed) is the number one driver. We really try to fill the need, judging by my personal experience. We should respect businesses of any size not vilify them, I think. They have enough challenges. You know we rich people are “working people” too and we too have children and wives. LOL.

What else can we do? I am about to hang it up. It’s just not worth it. Perhaps, your stepson’s Swedish girlfriend could come and take over the payroll, benefits and personal problems of 75 people. LOL.

As for the issue of wars, I did tend to move from a U.S. to a world perspective and back again, and caused some confusion in the process. We cannot totally compare the world of the 19th and early 20th century to today. The wars over colonial domination do not have the same intensity or take the same forms. But how can anyone look at the Iraq invasion and not see in it an attempt by the U.S. to assure control over major world oil fields, and a statement by the U.S. that it is and must remain the world dominant power? U.S. supremacy as a means of keeping world order is only another way of saying that global competition over markets and resources will only end up with another world war.

What I’m saying is that there is no way to prevent that, as the attempt to maintain U.S. political and economic supremacy is doomed beyond anything but a short historical period.

Economic nationalism means blindness to international and historical realities. Humankind is at a very awful and terrible crossroads. The previous administration played off very real fears of nuclear war in order to maneuver U.S. public opinion into supporting or at least remaining passive on its Iraq-Afghanistan policies.

We cannot maintain our blinders any longer. The de-industrialization of the U.S. did not have to happen as it has, nor at the pace it has, but it was an inevitability as other newer competitors began producing. To think otherwise is to share the small producer worldview of the artisan class of a previous century, who thought that their superior goods, and craft protectionism would protect them from the onslaught of cheap manufactured goods from England, or indeed, the United States, Japan, now China, Brazil, etc.

The catastrophically failed experiment of the Soviet Union has led most to think the problems of capitalism and war are no more. Anyone with an inkling of history knows that is not the case, and that we still exist on a razors edge regarding nuclear annihilation. Nor are we in control of that genie anymore.

We had better find a way to put together a world system that does not rely on the dominance of single nation-states, or alliances of nation-states. So-called smart world leaders played at that for the first half of the twentieth century at catastrophic cost. It is only the shadow still of that horrendous second world war that stays the politicians from believing, as the fictional Dr. Strangelove did, that we can survive the third world war. Diplomacy and treaties won’t save us, only serious, structural, fundamental change and a move from a world-view of cooperation instead of competition will give humanity even a shade of a chance.

no amount of economic nationalism will change that.

I highly recommend it.

Parents are under the mistaken impression that a) the way to make money for a kid is to go to college – and that any degree will do, and b)that any kid with two brain cells to rub together goes to college, and c)that anything other than a desk job is somehow humiliating

Parents also think that their kids should go to a “name” college, and then on to law school or business school.

How’s that working out for the Ivy grad living in your basement, Pops. [Not you, Toby; just a generic “Pops”.]

This was a fascinating book salon–great conversation.