>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Justin Schwartz" <jkschw at hotmail.com>
>
>No, I've alwys said that ll the military we need is the National Guard and
>the Coast Guard--gotta protect ourselves against them rambunctious Canucks
>and hostile Mexicanos, not to mention the Nicaraguans just three days
>drive
>from Brownville, TX. But really, coastal defense is about all we need.
>
>=================
>Except that even if we got rid of the imperial dynamic in the US, the
>overhang/interia of the system is not going to eliminate for a long time
>the anger of those who've been wronged by it and, in all likelihood, are
>going to continue to try and seek revenge.
>
>Granted we don't need a big war machine to prevent this--it can't--but how
>would you prevent further attacks on the US without some form of
>projecting power into other States?
I rather doubt that there will be any revenge on Americans once the USA ceases to be an empire, though a good number of Americans may be, alas, ideologically trapped in such a nightmarish fantasy. In reality, the more colonies a nation loses, the securer it becomes, and the higher its working class's living standards will go up. Workers in Japan and Western Europe have certainly fared better since their elites lost colonies than in their imperial pasts; they have also done better than American workers who are still tragically stuck in the Empire.
***** Study: U.S. employees put in most hours
August 31, 2001 Posted: 2:07 AM EDT (0607 GMT)
By Porter Anderson CNN Career
(CNN) -- You're not imagining it. The United Nations' International Labor Organization (ILO) has the proof:
"Workers in the United States are putting in more hours than anyone else in the industrialized world."
Lawrence Jeff Johnson -- the chief labor market economist who has led the ILO team in producing its new "Key Indicators of the Labor Market 2001-2002" study -- also says American workers are, per person, more productive than their counterparts in other countries.
"But we're not the most efficient, when you compare it per hour, looking at the Belgians and the French."
It seems almost cruel to mention this to our Stateside readers on Labor Day weekend, but Johnson says the Europeans' comparatively long vacations -- four to six weeks per worker -- may have something to do with this. "Maybe they're not so stressed" as American workers, who on the average may get two weeks' vacation....
..."But if we're working ourselves to death in the United States," he asks, "why are we increasing the hours? Almost every year we increase the hours of work. American workers put in long hours to make up the gains" in efficiency seen in France and Belgium....
...In hard numbers, what Johnson is saying is that his ILO statistics show that last year the average American worked 1,978 hours -- up from 1,942 hours in 1990. That represents an increase of almost a week of work. And it registers Americans as working longer hours than Canadians, Germans, Japanese and other workers.
What's even more concerning, especially to Johnson and his fellow ILO analysts, is that "the increase in the number of hours worked within the United States runs counter to the trend in other industrialized nations," he says. There, "we're seeing a declining number of hours worked annually."
Using the most recently available data, the ILO has determined that the average Australian, Canadian, Japanese or Mexican worker was on the job roughly 100 hours less than the average American in a year -- that's almost two-and-a-half weeks less. Brazilians and British employees worked some 250 hours, or more than five weeks, less than Americans. Germans worked roughly 500 hours, or 12-and-a-half weeks, less than careerists in the States.... <http://www.cnn.com/2001/CAREER/trends/08/30/ilo.study/> *****
It is hard for workers to live in an empire; it is often miserable for them to live in colonies and neo-colonies. The best economic position to occupy in the capitalist world economy today may be to be an imperial has-been. -- Yoshie
* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Anti-War Activist Resources: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osu.edu/students/CJP/>