Here are some excerpts from the Forbes article "America's Car Capital Will Soon be Mexico."
<http://www.forbes.com/sites/joannmuller/2014/08/20/americas-car-capital-will-soon-be-mexico/>http://www.forbes.com/sites/joannmuller/2014/08/20/americas-car-capital-will-soon-be-mexico/
[I guess they mean after Japan and Nissan, or Germany and Volkswagen?] followed by my comments/questions.
"Today automakers still like the young (average age: 24) and comparatively cheap (about $40 per day) workforce."
Slave labor and exploitation! And yet I know young Mexican men who work for less in these foreign companies.
"The capital city, also named Aguascalientes, is choked with traffic circling the pedestrian plaza, with its charming Spanish colonial architecture. Just outside the city, however, Aguascalientes looks like any other sprawling southwestern suburb, with shopping malls, hotels and industrial areas, including a new Texas Instruments plant."
Is this a good thing? What about parks and green spaces, organic gardens? Worker-owned co-ops where workers aren't exploited? I thought those sprawling suburbs were a dying breed and the malls are ghost malls in the US. Is this also the future of Mexico?
"The governor helped engineer a deal where the government sold the land, just 4 miles from another Nissan factory, to the Japanese carmaker for next to nothing."
I wonder whose land that was before the government owned it and gave it away "for next to nothing" for car manufacturing. Instead of subsidizing the car manufactures, what if the government gave the land for next to nothing to an alternative energy plant, worker owned co-op, maybe for organic agriculture?
"Across the street, connected by a newly built bridge, is a logistics center where railcars are standing by to transport vehicles to the U.S. and Brazil (Nissan ships to 50 countries from Mexico). Between the two plants in Aguascalientes, Nissan is cranking out one vehicle every 38 seconds, which is on par with its flagship plant in Kyushu, Japan."
And how does all this increased rail traffic effect ordinary Mexicans? What's happening to the strong Longshoreman's union in the US as less and less is being exported from US ports, except oil and fracked gas.
Capitalism is a set of entrenched values promoted by those who have billions to spend on the propaganda that relentlessly turns the wheels of this increasingly destructive economic model. We have a lot of work to do. On that Sat, Aug 2nd, I stayed back at the hotel mostly alone with the art exhibit as others went to Delores Hidalgo. As attendees were taking a break from our work of [talking about] moving beyond capitalism, a group of about 10 Japanese businessmen were at the same hotel meeting for hours. What were they working on?
Alternative media such as Democracy Now, TruthDig, etc are my choice for "news" but it's a wake-up call to read the likes of Forbes. It reinforces the need for resistance in addition to building a new world.
Susan
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