Internationalistas - Life in a Red Border State

Catching up with old clippings, mine in this case, not the ones I send out to others, following in my mother's footsteps.

NYT dateline January 22, why Apple is responsible for 700,000 jobs, but only 20,000 in the US of A. Sounds bleak, but would you want to have a lifeless job at Foxconn - the Chinese contract manufacturer where you live in a dorm all week, work 12 hours a day. When they want to change over production they can rout you from your bed at midnight, feed you some green tea and a biscuit, and back to work.

I have to wonder how this global equation makes any sense. Yet surrounding me at the mile-high airport in Denver is a pod of 20-something computer support people tethered to laptops; and another bunch of young Asians talking excitedly.

red state interlude
A pilot sat next to me on the plane and has concerns living in a Red State, like his mother, who lives out in the sticks of Arizona, and needs to be armed to protect her home from over the border intruders.

What would that guy have wanted, I asked him about the intruder standing at his mom's dining room table? A glass of water perhaps, was his reply.

Really ?! Is that why she needed to take weaponry training? I suppose my option would be to give the guy a glass of water.
end red state interlude

Do we even stop to take care of our own? It may be too late for the Foxconn slaves, tethered to Chinese jobs unless they can reach escape velocity (or age out of that system..)

But what about us here? I've always said we should pay the true cost of production. What about that ipod I am listening to right now - what if it was built on American assembly lines. Is that worth something?

Or is it cheaper and easier for the party in control (either one) to pay off unemployed workers so they can buy ipods and imported tomatoes. How does this make any sense?

Help me Obi-Wan Kenobe, you're my only hope.