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Zalatix

(8,994 posts)
Wed Oct 17, 2012, 05:32 AM Oct 2012

The Rise of the Super-Rich Is a Global Phenomenon - Fueled by Globalism

I know it's tiresome for some folks to hear again that globalism is the cause of exploding income inequality.

However, it is the truth. The working class confronts this truth on a daily basis, so it's time everyone else did, too, until we get the message: globalism is an enemy of the working class, and the primary weapon of the plutocracy.

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/rise-super-rich-global-phenomenon-chrystia-freeland-123053176.html

The growing gap between the top 1% and the rest of the U.S. population has emerged as a major issue in this year's presidential campaign, but it's not likely to narrow much no matter who wins, says Chrystia Freeland, author of the new book "Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else."

As the title suggests, "the increase in income inequality" in the U.S. is not just a domestic development but "is happening in all Western industrialized countries," Freeland tells The Daily Ticker in the accompanying interview. "And crucially you're seeing the same phenomenon in the big emerging market economies."
Related: The Betrayal of the American Dream

Freeland says globalization is at the root of income inequality around the world. Both capital and labor are global therefore businesses leaders must maintain a global perspective, says Freeland.

"Inevitably that means the super-elite see themselves as citizens of planet earth" rather than as a citizen of their home country, which means they are less concerned with the health of the middle class in the U.S. or any other country they call home.

In the U.S. the gap between the very rich and everyone else "is wider than at any time since the gilded age," says Freeland.

Between 1979 and 2007, the top 1 percent of earners more than doubled their share of the nation's income over the previous three decades, according to the Congressional Budget Office report last year.
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The Rise of the Super-Rich Is a Global Phenomenon - Fueled by Globalism (Original Post) Zalatix Oct 2012 OP
They plucked the feather of Democracy to feather their orpupilofnature57 Oct 2012 #1
Wide-scale neo-feudalism. GreenPartyVoter Oct 2012 #2
K&R tk2kewl Oct 2012 #3
Exactly Right TheMastersNemesis Oct 2012 #4
It's absentee landlord syndrome. fasttense Oct 2012 #5
K/R moondust Oct 2012 #6
It's labor-cost/consumer-price arbitrage. reformist2 Oct 2012 #7
Right on the spot, the experts are calling it global labor arbitrage. n/t Zalatix Oct 2012 #9
Instead rMoney talks about monetary policy kwolf68 Oct 2012 #8
 

TheMastersNemesis

(10,602 posts)
4. Exactly Right
Wed Oct 17, 2012, 07:41 AM
Oct 2012

The assault on the American middle class is the same assault no workers in Europe as well. The same plutocrats and their allies have their hands in the destruction of European workers as well.

 

fasttense

(17,301 posts)
5. It's absentee landlord syndrome.
Wed Oct 17, 2012, 08:49 AM
Oct 2012

The landlords, the global elite, the corporations, the leverage buy-out thieves like Mitt, are allowed to let the property run down. They are allowed to pollute the water and air, they are allowed to dump their sewage on the side of the street. They are allowed to destroy the property then rent it out. They don't care what the condition of their properties are. They don't care that people have to rent the property and live in squalor because the people have no choice. They don't care that they are siphoning off rent payments from a local area that has no real economy. They don't live there. They don't have to see the mess, deal with the squalor or be accused by starving people.

In Ireland around the time of the potato famine conditions were very similar. Absentee landlords from England required exorbitant rents for shabby land and unproductive fields. They required their tenants to raise 30 head of sheep on one acre for their rent payment. The land would then be destroyed by overgrazing but the landlord's prices never declined. The landlords own all the land. In fact at times it was against the law for an Irish man to own land in Ireland. The absentee landlords would allow the land to be destroyed because they didn't live there. They lived in castles in England so they didn't have to see the mess, suffocate on the stench or hear the cries of the starving victims. They could still ship their 30 head of sheep out to England while the people who raised those sheep starved in squalor. It was no concern of the absentee landlord that people were dying because they lived away from the devastation they created.

That's what globalism does. It allows American corporations to spill poisons in India because CEOs like Mitt don't have see the pain and suffering. They don't have to be exposed to the polluted environment. They live somewhere else and they can destroy whatever property they own with absolutely no ramifications. But the people who live in the shadows of the squalor have no choice but to pay their rent and suffer at the hands of their absentee landlords.

reformist2

(9,841 posts)
7. It's labor-cost/consumer-price arbitrage.
Wed Oct 17, 2012, 09:03 AM
Oct 2012

They exploit dirt-cheap and non-union labor abroad and resell their crappy products back in America for roughly the same price as before. Maybe they knock 10% off the price to make you think you're getting a bargain.

The only good news is they can't do this forever. If they keep doing this, prices will collapse and so will their profits. But they will have destroyed the American middle class.

kwolf68

(7,365 posts)
8. Instead rMoney talks about monetary policy
Wed Oct 17, 2012, 09:13 AM
Oct 2012

The real cancer is how globalization allows mega-corps the leverage to externalize the factors of production, leading to depressed consumer prices in the short term, but also the exploitation of input resources (such as labor). Further negative externalities (for example pollution) are costs indirectly born by consumers (at least in nations where social power still exists on some level). Hence, move production bases to nations where individual rights are minimal (China) and feed the hegemonic beast. America tried this right after the Civil war, but we didn't like the taste of the turd and this was the first time our nation had a serious, legitimate socialist movement, which was inspired directly by capitalists. Corporations at the time saw the serious threat to their power from this movement and began to 'liberalize' their views, toss in a very strong President such as T.Roosevelt and the beast was slayed, at least until the 1980s.

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