According to the Economic Policy Institute, from 1997 to 2007, 235 thousand automobile bodies and parts were off-shored as our trade deficit ballooned to 32.2 billion dollars. However, the profits flowed into American corporate coffers even as the dollars flowed into the hands of foreign workers. Even those days are past us now as Chrysler is taken over by Fiat, a foreign auto manufacturer. While it is true this arraignment will keep some American jobs, Robert Scott from the Economic Policy Institute concludes that 900,000 jobs will be lost through this type of bankruptcy. The result will be tax payers subsidizing unemployed American workers while a foreign country reaps the benefits. Manufacturing profits will flow to non U.S. corporations along with lost jobs and America’s prosperity.
- In March, the BLS recorded the largest increase in unemployment since 1983, 663,000 lost jobs.
- Since 2006, the employee to population ration as declined 3.5% to 59.9%, the steepest decline since the great depression.
- Long term unemployment, people unemployed for 6 months or more rose to 24.2% and there are now about 4 workers for every job opening.
- And now GM is announcing even more plant closings due to slow demand.
Since we embarked on Supply Side Economics and Milton Friedman style free market policies in the 1980s, we have seen our economy and country decline. U.S. equity from the end of World War II through the 70s began to erode and disappear in the last 8 years. We have even squandered a trillion dollars from the Social Security Trust Fund to fuel the fires of declining demand for labor and foreign wars. And some say retirees who have paid into this fund will just have to live with their losses. That is the “free market” after all. That is the new mantra from our corporate brethren; that Americans will have to learn their new place.
In 1975, a blue collar worker could support a family of 4 on a single salary, yet today demand for labor has reached a point where 2 or 3 full time workers are needed to support the same living standard. In reality, even that standard is not the same.
- How can a mother or father read a book to a child after working 80 hours? Over the past decade, Americans have worked more hours than any country in the industrialized world, even Japan.
- How can a parent explain to a child what a healthy dinner looks like if that same parent is so exhausted they cannot cook dinner even for themselves?
- How can we espouse family values when parents work 2 or 3 jobs?
- And now that there are no jobs, how can a parent teach working values when they cannot even find a job or pay their own bills.
And what have we as Americas gained?
- For the majority: cheap, low quality, chemically laced consumer goods purchased using a credit card because we have no money.
- For a few, less than 1/10th of 1%, the gains of these policies are wealth beyond imagination; untaxed and ill gained.
Why would we expect a healthy society when 99.9% of Americans and American jobs are put last?
Several weeks ago I overheard a conversation from a manager at a financial institution. The firm’s goal is to have 90% of jobs off-shored by this summer. The same firm is inundated with foreigners on H1B Visas. Yet the same firm could not exist without American demand for their product. It is Americans that keep this company in business.
How can we survive as a nation if our leaders allow corporate profits to strip Americans of a living wage? This kind of behavior must be punished if we are to maintain a moral and free people, because morality is based, in part, on the ability to make acceptable living choices. The difference between a foreign worker lay-off and an American worker lay-off is this:
- A foreign worker can return to their country.
- An American worker is already home.
Imported high tech workers directly compete with jobs in the U.S. and this is not slated to change until 2010. Why should I tell my children to go to college? It is not difficult to educate an American worker. Take a scrap of paper from the drawer and write this phrase: “Welcome to Wal-Mart”. Then tell the graduate “congratulations, you are now part of the American work force.”
Most Americans are not economists. They do not understand what has happened to their lives. They only feel the pain. They do not understand “free trade” is another word for poverty. And why would they understand? They are told each and every day that global trade is beneficial and cannot be stopped.
This is a lie.
The global market has turned American workers into a commodity, like pork bellies, Yellow Corn Number #2 or a barrel of oil. The rule of supply and demand is simple, unambiguous and unarguable. If supply for any product increases, the price for that same product decreases. For workers, that product is called, “A Wage.” As long as Americans are forced to compete globally with workers who have subsidized healthcare or slave labor, America’s labor value will be weak.
To put it another way, until we place tariffs on goods imported into the United States, we will continue to operate as a third world country, where raw materials flow off shore to be processed and profits flow into the hands of a few powerful people. I continue to hear each day that we must compete in the global marketplace. My question is simple: Why? I cannot seem to get a good answer. Are our leaders saying that Americans cannot produce goods? Certainly this is becoming the case as our education system degrades with our roads and bridges, but it is not true quite yet.
Our economy will never recover unless we put American workers and manufacturing in first place over greedy corporations and paid off politicians. How far does America have to sink before we get this change? We cannot wait another minute. Our future depends on putting America on a level playing field.