Hewitt: Obama Loves Slave Labor
On his radio show yesterday, right-wing hatchet man Hugh Hewitt quoted Barack Obama making a point about infrastructure and then accused him of endorsing slave labor:
OBAMA: Everybody’s watching what’s going on in Beijing right now with the Olympics , Think about the amount of money that China has spent on infrastructure. Their ports, their train systems, their airports are vastly the superior to us now, which means if you are a corporation deciding where to do business you’re starting to think, “Beijing looks like a pretty good option.”
HEWITT: So their ports, their air systems, their railroads are all “vastly superior” to ours. 1-800-520-1234, I would like the hear from the engineering world out there that the ports and the airports and the railroads of China are “vastly superior” to ours. Now, first of all, I’m going to point out that slave labor or near slave labor comes cheap. Now you can buy a lot for what they’re paying the Chinese working peasant over there. And I’d love to hear from the union leaders of America as for what they think of Barack Obama’s endorsement of using near slave labor to build roads.
I don’t think “slave labor” is the right way to characterize the situation in China (though I’d be interested to know Hewitt’s views on trade with China if he thinks that’s what’s happening there) but there’s no question that it’s cheaper to build infrastructure products if you have a very low wage workforce available. But on the other hand, China’s workforce is cheap because the country is so poor. Our GDP per capita is $45,800 whereas China’s is $5,300 with Purchasing Power Parity adjustments. We could, in other words, easily afford to spend more per capita on infrastructure than the entire per capita output of China. No slave labor necessary.
Meanwhile, the point is not that we ought to precisely ape Chinese infrastructure priorities which would be impossible for a variety of reasons that have nothing in particular to do with the wage differential. The point is that when you’re thinking about what generates prosperity, you have to look at a full spectrum of issues. The conservative approach to development is basically to say that if we have very low taxes, no regulation, and no public services then business will be booming. Progressives say, no, that creating an environment with a public sector that’s robust enough to provide first-rate infrastructure, high-quality education, and a healthy workforce will attract more than enough business opportunities to make up for whatever negative impact is caused by higher tax rates.
UPDATE: Here’s some Hewitt audio:
Good times. It seems he went on to argue that the fact that China experienced a disastrous earthquake proves Obama wrong.
40 Responses to “Hewitt: Obama Loves Slave Labor”
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August 22nd, 2008 at 10:39 am
While labor as a whole is certainly cheaper in China, the construction industry amounts to slave labor. They employ migrant workers who live in substandard conditions (usually on or next to the property they are building). HRW did a good report on it.
http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2008/03/12/china18244.htm
August 22nd, 2008 at 10:45 am
It’s Hugh Hewitt. This is what you should expect. I truly don’t understand why conservatives don’t see that investments in infrastructure are good for business. It’s almost as if they don’t believe wealth generation can actually occur. The only way you can acquire wealth is by stealing it from others. It’s the zero sum approach that you also see from the Russians.
August 22nd, 2008 at 10:46 am
Travis:
While the report did highlight some important issues, I’m not exactly sure it amounts to slave labor. One of the key elements of forced labor is, you know, the forced aspect of it. For the most part these laborers are coming into the cities on their own will. They are well aware of the discrimination they will face, yet come anyway because even taking these factors into consideration, it’s STILL better than living in the countryside. While obviously the workers ought to be paid, I’m not sure their low wages and lack of benefits is a sign of “slavery” as much as it’s a sign of “being in a 3rd world country”.
August 22nd, 2008 at 10:55 am
So, wait — Republicans are now opposed to slave wage labor in China now? I thought they were all quite enthusiastically for that — particularly the Wal-Mart wing of the Republican Party.
August 22nd, 2008 at 11:00 am
All of China’s labor is slave labor. They don’t allow unions to organize workers. Workers have to rights. Their economy is pure unfettered capitalism operating within a communist totalitarian society. Environmental degradation is astronomical. Their ’smog’ is so bad many of their citizens wears respirators all the time. Its an American capitalist dream come true. They get to relocate their manufacturing to China where the government doesn’t allow unions; doesn’t allow worker safety provisions, isn’t charging the companies for health care premiums; no social security taxes, and maybe no corporate taxes as well; where they can pollute to their hearts content. Just the way it was in the U.S.A. in the late 19th century – the so-called gilded age. Thats what the republicans dream about all the time; returning to the good old days
August 22nd, 2008 at 11:09 am
See the latest from Brookings — http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2008/0722_infrastructure_brainard.aspx
for a good comparison of the types of specific infrastructure investment comparisons between U.S. & China
August 22nd, 2008 at 11:13 am
But you have to agree that Obama’s comments were stupid enough to be taken out of context. Can’t blame the irascible Hewitt for trying on such a bonehead endorsement of China.
http://www.political-buzz.com/
August 22nd, 2008 at 11:15 am
As if our corporations would hesitate to use slave labor if they could! LOL!
August 22nd, 2008 at 11:16 am
el Cid wins the thread. The GOP backed shipping our manufacturing to China and now they’re complaining about Chinese wages? They’re not simply unscrupulous in what they complain about. They’re stupid.
August 22nd, 2008 at 11:16 am
But what’s weird is Obama’s point, at least in the quote, was that we need to invest in better infrastructure if we want to be more competitive in the market. That corporations will invest where the government has invested in infrastructure. Doesn’t that sound like the same kind of point that, say, Mitt Romney would make?
August 22nd, 2008 at 11:18 am
No I don’t have to agree that his comments were stupid. His comments were HONEST. And in America it is TABOO to suggest that we have any problems at all. Shut up and sing.
August 22nd, 2008 at 11:18 am
Too wordy, Matt.
The proper response to that argument from Hugh Hewitt is, “Hugh Hewitt wants American infrastructure to fall apart and kill people, just like the I-35W bridge in Minnesota.”
And then when people complain that you can’t know what Hugh Hewitt really wants, you reply, “That may be, but we know exactly what *happens* when their *policies* get implemented.” It’s no accident that the party that wants to drown government in a bathtub gave us Katrina, Iraq, and the current economy.
August 22nd, 2008 at 11:24 am
Matt @ 7: “But you have to agree that Obama’s comments were stupid enough to be taken out of context.”
Not if you’re interested in defending Obama against bullshit, you don’t.
There are two principles here:
1) Anything can sound stupid taken out of context.
2) Republicans will attack anything in a campaign (which is to say, at any time), and if there isn’t a natural in-context reply, they will make one up.
So, no, you don’t “have to agree” with any Republican frames and attacks.
Unless you want to.
August 22nd, 2008 at 11:28 am
This. This. This.
August 22nd, 2008 at 11:34 am
Once again Mr. Yglesias is providing cover for a poor choice of words from Senator Obama. Joe Klein is right. Obama off the cuff is a dangerous combination. The calm, cool, and thoughtful approach to important questions just isn’t surfacing.
The comparison of the United States to China on infrastructure was so stupid. China can’t even distribute concrete accordingly to keep up with the pace of their political decisions. Read the reports filed by Yellow Trucking executive committees at their shareholders meetings.
Senator Obama serves his candidacy well when he sticks to analogies that actually connect with the people he wants support. Michelle Obama talking about $10,000 summer camp for her daughters to mothers in households that take home roughly $60,000 in income is yet another example of the disconnect that is real between the Obamas they want us to know, and the Obamas they actually are.
Look, curl the lip, nibble on it, tilt your head, and tell the people “you feel their pain.” At least President Clinton understood how to connect an issue with an audience.
If you want to the tough love for Obama employed in private, fantastic. Help your guy. But these defense tactics in public are abysmal.
You can do better.
Come back to planet Earth. The transfer of manufacturing to China is a global event supported by Republicans, Tories, Labor, Democrats, Christian Democrats, Socialists, and even Communist parties. Your talking point perishes in a quick death. There are better talking points you can use. I doubt George Lakoff is using them.
August 22nd, 2008 at 11:37 am
Or you’re Senator Hillary Clinton and you made the arguments first.
The Lakoff approach doesn’t work when the comments emit from your own house.
August 22nd, 2008 at 12:28 pm
Hewitt is just stretching for something, anything, to say, because this is good politics on Obama’s part–Americans during my lifetime have been consistently afraid of someone or another catching up with us economically, and these days China is the biggest worry. Fortunately, telling his fellow Americans the solution to keeping ahead of the Chinese is more infrastructure investment is actually comforting–we know we can do that, and it even creates jobs along the way.
August 22nd, 2008 at 12:29 pm
Is Hewitt still do his one man performance art piece as “The Most Ill Informed Republican Operative on the Planet”? I love that character, it never gets old. The writing is so well done. God bless the NEA.
thesebastards.blogspot.com
August 22nd, 2008 at 12:43 pm
Hugh Hewitt is the kind of guy who would molest and kill the four-year old girl next door and somehow manage to blame it on Bill Ayers whom he would’ve had over the house for an interview. It’s not just that he’s a moral pervert and a pathological liar, a mountebank, a pompous juvenile, a poltroon of evil intent – it’s that he’s Hugh Hewitt – a strand of white plague that could wipe out half the world.
August 22nd, 2008 at 1:15 pm
The transfer of manufacturing to China is a global event supported by Republicans, Tories, Labor, Democrats, Christian Democrats, Socialists, and even Communist parties. Your talking point perishes in a quick death.
First, the point wasn’t that the GOP did it exclusively.
Second, I didn’t construct it as a “talking point” but as a “stunned and exasperated point”.
August 22nd, 2008 at 1:44 pm
Companies like countries with good infrastructure and I’m pretty sure that the CEOs can sleep at night regardless of how that infrastructure was built.
August 22nd, 2008 at 2:16 pm
In addition to there being a serious argument about the deplorable conditions that Chinese workers endure, Hewitt also has a point about the earthquake. Indeed, this is something that is true in much of the developing world– they can build shiny new buildings, but that doesn’t mean that they would meat western building codes.
In California, we have retrofitted our freeways so that they will stand up to pretty strong earthquakes. (We learned to do this the hard way, by the way, with all sorts of bridge failures including, most tragically, the destruction of the Nimitz Freeway in the Loma Prieta quake in San Francisco in 1989.) Do you think Chinese freeways are retrofitted in the same way, or are they more likely to suffer massive destruction like the freeways in Kobe, Japan did during their big quake?
Hewitt, fundamentally, is correct that infrastructure costs ARE cheaper in China. (Also, you have a totalitarian dictatorship that can spend far more money than a government elected by tax-conscious Americans could.) A broken clock is right twice a day.
August 24th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
This is for mpowell….. and anyone else who believes this stupid statement…..
Your comment in regards to the way conservatives view things, “The only way you can acquire wealth is by stealing it from others.” shows that you obviously have the brain capacity of a Nat and that you probably really believe your statement true, as you are more than likely the typical lazy I want a hand out type of guy. You believe that only if the government takes from others and gives you what you need that you will be able to be happy. Let me tell you something pal, I owned a business for 22 years and had as many as 11 people working at a time, and these people were unskilled labor that were all paid in excess of $25 an hour for their dedication and hard work. Some of these people were with me for close to 17 years and the day we closed down, they cried. I did very well for myself, and did so while making sure those who worked for me were also taken care of….oh and did I mention, that as an added bonus I bought lunch everyday, took them to dinner at least once a month and bought a brand new jet ski for the foreman? We all worked hard, including me, and I think it’s way past time for you liberal whiners to pull your head out and start looking at the countries entrepreneurs in the true perspective of what they are and do for the likes of you. Without those who are willing to put up everything they have to create business and wealth, you would be living in the Little House on the Prairie syndrome and whining because you had it so hard. The true conservatives of this country try hard to make it what it is, and the liberals do nothing but complain and tear it down. I know liberals who have more money than everyone you know put together, and they have it because they are connected, and you better know, that they don’t give a damn about you. You had better figure out really quick that politicians in general only want your money and your soul, and those of you stupid enough to buy into their schemes will get what you deserve. Coming together under the guidelines of common sense is the only way we are going to save this country. Unfortunately, your only agenda appears to be you, and it’s about damn time you woke up to the realization that those like you back in 1933 believed that a man who said he was going to initiate change, make everything better, take care of everyone, spread the wealth etc. etc. duped 50% of the population into believing that he was their savior and they had the right to what everyone else had. Yes, he was elected into office, socialism turned into communism, and before he was done, murdered 11 million people, allot of them were people who voted for him. Your precious Obama is not far off on this agenda, and should he get elected, taxes will skyrocket, everyone will be paying to fund socialized medicine, your retirement investments will be taxed, gasoline taxes will rise, and of course he wants us all to learn to speak Spanish, not my words, his, and thus socialism will be born in the USA. If you love socialism and this is what you want, move, get out, go somewhere that will cater to your sick twisted mindset, but once you are gone, and find out what socialism is, it will probably be too late for you to return….. or maybe you would like to move to Africa and live where over 30,000 people die a day because their government bankrupted the country doing just what the politicians are now doing here, and now they live in a disease infested latrine with no food, no money, and nothing to look forward to but dying. But maybe we should take a moment to whine about those ancestors who were brought here as slaves and gave a heritage to those who followed, of not living and dying in Africa. What you fail to be realize, is that the conservatives fought to free the slaves, not the liberals, and many conservatives died in this battle for freedom, not only during the war, but after, during the second half of the civil war as many blacks, as well as whites who believed that the black people should be free were murdered in their homes and in the streets with no accountability for those who killed them. You people better start coming to the realization that you have had it pretty damn good here in the USA, but things are changing, and this country as you know it, could be gone in an instant. It’s time you and people like you stop complaining and wanting to change it into something that will ultimately be not only your destruction, but also the destruction of everyone who lives here.
I think it would do you good to reflect on the words of the poem written by Pastor Niemoller:
When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for the Jews, I remained silent; I wasn’t a Jew.
When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.
A final quote by Anthony Daniels:
“Commerce is despised by intellectuals, and to call something commercial is practically to condemn it as trivial and worthless. But remove commerce from the streets, and you are left with something more dead than Pompeii.”
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