LETTERS: JOBS GO ABROAD, THEN WE BUY THE PRODUCTS

To the editor:

The mindlessness of capitalism strikes again. Every now and again, something happens with our beloved economic system, something so egregious that I am filled with wonder that our working class has put up with it for so long.

Often it is an announcement that a factory is closing down in the United States and re-opening somewhere in the Third World. Such announcements, often made around Christmas, are usually accompanied with pious insistence that modernization or convenience or availability of work force or the desire to open new markets near the new location were the primary factors for the decision to close and move. If money is ever mentioned, it is usually to deny that it was a factor. This strikes me as strange, since the firm will now be dealing with a labor force typically in a country where demands by labor -- any demands -- are regarded as uppity and dangerous and are dealt with accordingly. As expected, this cowed work force works for peanuts -- a drastic decrease in the cost of the product, I'm sure you will agree -- and the price remains the same. We lose the jobs and don't even get a bone tossed to us. Even more miraculous to me is the fact that, when these goods are imported to the United States, our workers, with their famous shortness of memory, buy them as though nothing had happened.

DONN S. MILLER

Tamms, Ill.