In the first hour “G20 in Action” with Richard Wolff, Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Massachusetts, and currently a visiting professor at the New School University in New York. His latest book is “Capitalism’s Crisis Deepens: Essays on the Global Economic Meltdown” and he’s the founder of Democracy at Work: democracyatwork.info.
In the second hour “Russia Our Friend” with Anthony D’Agostino, Prof. of History, at San Francisco State Univ. and author of “The Rise of Global Powers: International Politics in the Era of World Wars”
and “The Russian Revolution: 1917 – 1945”.
Sunday Show – July 9, 2017
12 responses to “Sunday Show – July 9, 2017”
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Not made in the USA
When Eid’s TV opened for business in 1973, 98% of the consumer electronics sold in the United States were made in the U.S.A. Today almost all of it is manufactured overseas.
The foreign corporations who dominate the American market today had inferior products before the 1970s. They invaded the marketplace, first by imitating American products and then by hiring top managers, engineers, and salespeople away from American companies, such as Zenith and RCA. They lured them by offering them much higher salaries and benefits. They paid them enormous premiums over their former salaries so far as to obtain know-how trade secrets, dealer lists and other proprietary information.
Once the foreign producers achieved significant penetration of the American market, they began to engage in price fixing schemes, primarily by offering much larger profit margins to the dealers who agreed to sell only at the corporate set “list prices” and by refusing to supply products to dealers who sold at a discount, for instance, an RCA TV with a wholesale price of $300 sold for $350 while, equivalent imported sets that wholesaled for $150 could only be sold at $500 according to the “list pricing” scheme.
Sales people were instructed to disparage American products as they were pressured to promote imports with much higher profit margins, and even given commissions directly from the manufactures. American made TV demo models were connected to deficient signals to make them appear second rate. Outright lies were told about the products under comparison, such as the claim that only the imported sets had the state-of-the-art “one gun” color picture tubes.
By the early 1980’s, Eid’s achieved gross sales twice that of the nearest Bay Area competitor. In 1984, one major foreign manufacturer, whose products accounted for millions of Eid’s annual sales, demanded that Eid stop discounting below the corporate list prices, or face being cut off from further supplies. This company made good on this threat after Eid refused, going so far as to pressure alternative distributors not to supply Eid’s TV with their merchandise.
Other major brand name electronics companies were recruited in this effort to stop Eid from discounting, along with several of the regional retail competitors, in effect forming a market controlling cartel against Eid’s TV. They went so far as to rent a fake storefront across the street from Eid’s TV, whose only purpose was to disparage Eid and his products. They never intended to back up the store with actual product. After Eid obtained several hundred color sets against the wishes of one large foreign corporation, bullet holes appeared in his store windows, and profanity graffiti was painted in front of his house on Euclid Avenue. He was forced to spend nearly one million dollars on security services in order to protect his family and employees. No governmental enity would do anything to stop these practices, even though they were overt violations of the laws against restraint of trade.
When Eid spent hundreds of thousands of dollars seeking protection from Federal and State courts to stop the foreign companies and their greedy retailers from interfering with his business, Eid did not get much help even after winning many suits filed against them. It only made them more angry and more determined to destroy Eid and his electronic empire. At the same time because of the large amount of money spent by these foreign companies and their lobbyists in Washington D.C., the Antitrust Laws were weakened by many and unjust rulings by Federal Courts “Judge Bork.” There went any hope for correcting these wrongs as well as making any consumer electronics in America.
The foreign corporations spent millions to influence the coverage of these issues in the news media, effectively suppressing stories concerning their anti-competitive practices while obtaining favorable and misleading reviews of their own products imports were granted the prized “top rated” label even when they were known to contain serious design flaws and manufacturing defects. Glowing reports about foreign made TV sets sometimes appeared in American magazines even before they were actually offered for sale. As a result, the whole American consumer electronics industry was destroyed.
The foreign manufactured products that are offered for sale may be inexpensive, but they are of low quality and designed to be simply thrown away rather than repaired. The objective is destroy American manufacturing and dealer services as well, in order to keep the U.S.A. from ever producing competitive products again.
Today the U.S.A. has recorded trade deficits of hundreds of billions of dollars with Japan and China; their agents of influence spend hundreds of millions of dollars to lobby agencies of government.
Many past U.S. Trade Representatives, Senators, and Congressmen have obtained high paying jobs with foreign owned corporations; some of them even worked for these foreign competitors before entering U.S. government service.
If the American consumer continues to settle for a marketplace controlled by a handful of huge corporations all selling the same throwaway junk, the consumer will find that “choice” is an illusion, and that all the decisions have already been made.
Today American consumers continue to mindlessly accept this state of affair, and assume large chains offer lower prices when in fact most of the businesses today utilize the bait and switch tactic. If closely looked upon, we find that all name brands are sold at the same price at most chain stores.
Remember whenever you buy foreign made products your allowing your neighbor to lose his job, and maybe the next job lost will be your own.
PROSPIRITY NOT AUSTERITY – HOW TO FIX THE U S ECONOMY.
Please read carefully, while most Americans are suffering from the terrible economy with lots of unemployed and under employed, the fact is the U S now as a whole is richer than ever but the money was shifted up to few hand on the top mostly the wall street people and their multi national corporations and what IS even worse is that these identities are not recycling the money back into the system as they did in the past to create jobs which generate taxes…No money have been invested into the society including schools , small businesses . cities ,counties. And so on to create jobs.
Up to the year 1980 the US had great and very comfortable middle class, but from then on, few people who called themselves economists including Milton Freedman ,Erick Green span ,David Ruben ,and few other took over the U S economy and use their influence and money to sell the American people bill of goods which amounted to what all of us now know as voodoo economics which pretty much destroyed the US economy and with that it put an end to the great middle class the country once enjoyed .
They did that by selling people on what the y called trickle down economy and Reaganomics as mean to create jobs but in fact what happen was exactly the opposite and it destroyed jobs instead but their real intention was to have tax cuts for the wall street and their wealthy friends as well as multi national corporations .
To maximize the profit of the wall street they shutdown factories including the US steel all of consumer electronics companies including R.C.A. ,Zenith , and twenty others, as well as the Automobile companies who were weakened and many went out of business, they allowed foreign companies to take over theses great American companies. They even let Japanese ,Korean, and other foreign companies to use price fixing schemes to make their products more profitable which constituted unfair practice with the American manufactures and most went out of business as result. with that tens of millions of American jobs were lost. They also exported jobs and use the misleading term outsourced, and most of these exported jobs are done by slave labor in China, India, and many other countries. They even went further by firing top experts and scientists who created and made the Silicon valley and bought people mostly from India on Hi and EI2 visa who took over the jobs of the American scientists but work for much less wages. They also coerced the government into international trade like G.A.T. and N.F.T.A. which did lots of harm to the U S economy as well as that of Mexico.
They created the bubble after bubble economy including the saving and loan scandal where millions of Americans lost their life savings. They used all kind of fraud to create the real state bubble that led to millions of Americans to lose their homes and near decimate the US economy.
They have used their casino other wise called the Stock Market to rob the American people of their life time savings, in their planned and periodical crash., many of my friend lost lots of money including Emy Peterson who lost over one half million in the last stock market crash.
The only way to fix the U S economy is to invest all the money back into the society to create millions of living wage jobs and put an end to the monopoly of the wall street
The fact is the free trade was never free and the fair trade was never fair and the whole mess started when Roland Reagan and his Neoliberals Milton Friedman crowed puppet masters sold him on their voodoo economics, Reaganomics and trickle down economy. they shut down manufacture, exported jobs, destroyed unions, all was to shift the wealth to the top few elites and their Wall Street goons, while destroying the great American middle class and sending most Americans to to the poorhouse and homelessness.
Beside destroying millions of jobs in the U S, NAFTA destroyed near all the family owned farms and small factories with the loss of near all jobs, with that it all lead to the drugs trade and violence and the mass migration to the U S and the subsequent hardship for millions of Mexican people.
That piece of plastic, the so called credit card totally changed the nature of America from country of savers and middle class to a country of debtor and poor, when they are robed by the Wall Street loan sharks interests that steals up to 30% of their livelihood and often to their economical demise and bankruptcy.
Russia did not invade or take over Crimea. The majority are ethnic Russians who preferred to rejoin to Russia.
Neo-Cold Warrioring is thematic to the Sunday Show. Same regarding Syria.
Dennis does much better with Flashpoints.
There’s no evidence, but any reasonable person would agree that Russia “hacked” or intervened in our election? Puleezzzzzzz.
Interesting to see my comments in agreement having been not approved or removed.
Phil you are such pathetic guy. by erasing my comments you deprived KPFA audience from extremely valuable personal experience and knowledge of how the American people were roped by the Wall Street strangle hold on Donald Reagan when in fact I personally fought Reagan policy which allowed the Japanese companies to use price fixing schemes to drive all consumer electronics manufactures out of business and that cost my company in excess of 50 million dollars when I filed law suits against near all Japanese companies to prevent them from using price fixing and group boycott against my company.
Leo Strauss, university of Chicago Neoliberals so called economists lead by Milton Friedman and Erik Greenspan totally destroyed the great American middle class when they sold Ronald Reagan on their voodoo economics, Reaganomics and trickle down garbage. they changed the U S economy from consumer based to shareholder economy where all the advantage and money goes to their wealthy shareholders and their goons and crooks of the Wall Street….To maximize their profits they closed near manufactures and send jobs to slave labors in China and elsewhere, shutdown unions, entered in all unfair trade deals, engaged in their criminal bubble after bubble scandalous false economy and their gambling lose, lose for casino they call the stock market . and so on with that all they shifted all the wealth to the very few, while sending most Americans to the poorhouse and rampant homelessness….The fact is the U S today is richer than ever but the money is shifted to few less than 1%,,,,50 million adults Americans have a total net-worth less than ten dollars, and much greater number Americans are having real hard time making ends meet as the cost of living specially housing sky rocketed tens of folds while wages has been on constant decline……
Phil you are such unpleasant and obnoxious guy, but you must remember that the AIRWAVES belongs to us, the people.