You have missed the most important economic story in the past 20 years

[Recursion]

It was not the fall of socialism. It was not the expansion of finance. It was the lightning-fast expansion of the Chinese and Indian middle classes.

Literally 3 billion people passed from less than $2/day to more than that over the past 20 years.

McDonalds is planning to open 1000 new locations in China, and 400 in India.

The entire world economy is changing, starkly, and we need to accept that fact.

[NCjack]

1. USA's capitalists sent them the factories, jobs, and customers to do it. Why? Because they love

money more than USA.

[Hoyt]

2. Our greedy Nationalists will say "that should be our middle class' money, screw rest of the world."

[tk2kewl]

4. so long as you've still got your's i guess

you are so generous with the livelihood of you fellow americans

[Hoyt]

5. I have nothing against people in foreign countries sharing in the world's wealth. Why do you?

[Recursion]

6. Right?

It's really disappointing how this conversation usually works out.

[tk2kewl]

8. really?

you really think neoliberal economics is about lifting the world out of poverty? if you want to share the wealth let's start be redistributing from the top down not the bottom up

[Recursion]

11. Yes, I do. The past 20 years prove that.

The past 20 years have seen the largest global reduction in poverty in human history.

Do you just kind of shake that off, or do you actually care?

[tk2kewl]

15. of course i care

we are increasing poverty in this country. that is important to me. our government has a responsibility to the citizens of the US first. If we weren't spending the overwhelming majority of our budget on killing, then maybe we could liberalize trade and finance while actually enhancing the well being of our own citizens at the same time. and maybe if we didn't actually let the major beneficiaries of globalization siphon all the profit to the top it would be even easier.

[Recursion]

16. No we aren't; that's a complete lie

we are increasing poverty in this country

That's a lie.

[tk2kewl]

20. U.S. Census Bureau

Poverty Facts
The Population of Poverty USA
In 2014, 47 million people lived in Poverty USA. That means the poverty rate for 2014 was 15%.

The 2014 poverty rate was 2.3 percentage points higher than in 2007, the year before the 2008 recession.

This is the fourth consecutive year that the number of people in poverty has remained unchanged from the previous year’s poverty estimate.

Source: Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2014, U.S. Census Bureau; Income and Poverty in the United States: 2014, U.S. Census Bureau

[Recursion]

22. OK, sure, it's higher than at a given point in the past

Fine, it's "increasing"

This is absurd.

[tk2kewl]

61. The 2014 poverty rate was 2.3 percentage points higher than in 2007

7 years in the past?... for my 8 yr old son that's a long time, but for me it's a blink of an eye

[Hassin Bin Sober]

81. Yeah, no fair counting the time after Wall Steet wrecked the economy!!

[HughBeaumont]

13. The neolibs cry "ZENERFOBIA" . . . .

. . . that somehow works when WE'RE the victims of zero-sum free trade and when it's OUR wages that are moving to third world standard and it's OUR livelihoods being sacrificed lovingly by the wealthy for "the greater good".

It's never the wealthy's money at stake. In fact, zero-sum free trade only gains them stock value, bonuses and perks.

Always funny how that works. Or not.

[Recursion]

14. There is no such thing as zero sum trade

It's never, ever existed, except in your imagination.

[HughBeaumont]

27. Well, OK. You said it, so it must be true.

PFFFFFFFFFFFFFT.

However, reality still prevails.

[tk2kewl]

17. yeah... i hate the poor brown people

while the Wall Street crowd pat each other on the back over caviar and champagne about how altruistic they are

[Recursion]

18. You sure seem to

That's for your own conscience to work out.

[tk2kewl]

21. how's the caviar?

[Recursion]

24. Can't get it here

I like caviar, though. How is it there, where you depend on the wages of Indians and Chinese being kept low?

[tk2kewl]

25. you mean where even my government employer hires

H1B workers to diminish the power of civil service union technologists while enriching firms that bill those workers out at at least 5x what they pay them?

[Recursion]

26. Sure, if that's how you see it. How's the caviar?

You asked; you can actually get it, I can't. So, how's the caviar?

(Also, governments can't hire H1-B's, no matter what you've heard.)

[tk2kewl]

28. i wouldn't even know where to find it.

do they carry it at Stop and Shop?

[Recursion]

29. Yes, in fact, in the seafood section

Next to the frozen shrimp, usually

[tk2kewl]

31. never had it

btw... how do you see the H1B situation I described? is it right for "bodyshops" to make a killing on hiring out IT workers simply because they sponsored the visas?

if we really need these people give them green cards and have them compete for the jobs without the corporate contractors that pay the campaign donations making money off their work

[Recursion]

32. Well, you lied about that so I stopped reading

You said your government hired them; governments cannot hire H1-B's. So I stopped reading at that point.

[tk2kewl]

35. they hire them

through contractos known in the industry as "bodyshops." Not a lie

[Recursion]

36. Oh, so a *contractor* hired them?

You're changing your story, I see. Tell the story again truthfully and I'll read it.

[tk2kewl]

39. sorry if I'm confusing you by being brief

I myself have interviewed many of these H1B developers. There is a contract in place with a "vendor" for this purpose. The value provided is almost always not worth the effort but the hiring happens anyway

[Recursion]

41. Honestly I'm still enormously skeptical

It's incredibly hard to be an H1-B-dependent company and get public contracts at the state level; Infosys can't do it. Tata can't do it. None of them have state-level contracts. I'm very curious who this mystery vendor was.

[tk2kewl]

42. I work for a muni

If you really need proof from me I can pm you the contact details

[Recursion]

43. If you want to.

Indian firms have wanted US muni IT contracts for decades and can't get them.

[tk2kewl]

58. I PM'd you so that you may confirm my account

This contract is not only used for project teams but also for individual hires which is more troubling to me than projects.

I also had an experience during the dot com days where i was required to down size my development team that was bloated by the of control management in order to have the company sold off to a Wells Fargo subsidiary. The remaining developers didn't want to stick around after that and the deal would have tanked if I was unable to convince a core group to stay on. I negotiated a minimum 6 mos severance for the remaining team members, and just as everyone suspected they were jettisoned within a year and development moved to India. This all happened in NYC right after 9/11... i quit over it.

[Hoyt]

19. Actually, we will do much better as world progresses, unless hatred/greed of some consumes us.

The Nationalism and greed exhibited here is disgusting.

If a Mexican, Indian, etc., gets a decent job some folks look at it as money out of their pocket. It's damn disgusting. Sorry.

[HughBeaumont]

30. If they get no job of equal pay to replace the one they were forcibly displaced from, it kind of is.

Search me how taking money away from the workers that drive an economy 2/3 reliant on consumer spending helps that economy. I imagine a magic formula is in there somewhere.

[Hoyt]

37. Denying people in other countries a chance, is disgusting. Most job displacements here, were not

because of trade. We lost out to foreign cars, because we made crummy, gas guzzling, expensive cars. Similarly, they beat us with electronics. We lost these kind of jobs the minute the first foreign car came here, along with transistor radios and Japanese finger traps.

[HughBeaumont]

49. That's intentional "parts without a whole".

There seems to be some stark denial about lower labor costs in right-to-work climes and Asian/Latin nations killing our progress here (which management, of course, writes off as "the price of remaining competitive&quot . Like our workers somehow aren't suffering due to un/under-employment thanks to job offshoring. There seems to be some stark denial here that the American worker always pays the price for the sins of the managers.

We're somehow asserting that US Steel Roll Turner pay is equal or better than Target shelf stocker pay. That's where these workers are going to, not another Roll Turner job. Either that, or they go into massive debt to retrain for a career that may or may not be there for them when they get out. Or try and win the small business lottery.

Is this the new grand scheme for an economic success going forward?

[Hoyt]

71. Job off-shoring to you, but a chance at a decent life for some "peasant" elsewhere. You can't see

past your own pocketbook. We live in a big world, not somewhere where America is Galt's Gulch or El Dorado.

[HughBeaumont]

73. AT THE PRICE OF A WORKER'S LIVELIHOOD.

No economy should have to make such concessions. That is NOT a free market if that's happening. That is not what SHOULD be happening. Your blatant dodge of that proviso is getting old. I don't give one INCH to the argument that workers here have to suffer to accommodate a neo-liberal Thomas Friedman-championed race to the bottom.

If you cannot see that job offshoring and automation are going to have enormous ramifications in a country that's never going to graduate from "Protestant Work Ethic" and will never lift a finger to accommodate the millions that are going to suffer from it . . . if you cannot see that this is and will be a major problem that's going to lead to catastrophe, then that is NOT on me. We are doing absolutely NOTHING for displaced workers. NOTHING.

[Hoyt]

74. Americans first, I know, screw the rest of the world. We've taken more than our share of the world's

wealth, and you want more. Greed, Nationalism, and hatred are the main reasons we spend so much on the military.

[HughBeaumont]

77. OK, what income level would be acceptable for an average American family to make?

Name it right now.

$18,000/year? Where would you live? How would you educate yourself? How would you drive yourself around? How would you pay bills? What if you had kids? How would they eat? Would they dumpster dive or steal from orchards?

Hey, let's go even lower, since apparently, America's homeless are the world's Larry Ellisons . . .

How about $5000 a year per family?

What bridge would they be living under? That sure wouldn't afford them anything but a used van to camp in.

Would that satisfy you? How low should we go?

[Hoyt]

79. What income is OK for a Mexican "peasant" so you can have your desired income?

[HughBeaumont]

84. ANSWER THE QUESTIONS.

[The2ndWheel]

82. I would say you're not mentioning that everyone is sort of cool with it

The US won the 20th century, and got to write the rules. Nobody, including the UN, can tell the US Government no. The countries in Europe don't have to spend much on their own militaries anymore, because the US taxpayer is paying for what is basically the developed world's military, and so more of their money can go toward their own social programs. For the most part, all involved are ok with that setup.

[Hoyt]

83. True, but we like being in the world's military, it helps protect our Nationalistic greed.

[Octafish]

87. Not exactly.

Japan protected its markets and subsidized its industries -- automobiles, electronics, cameras...

The USA, thanks to Congress and various Presidencies, have failed to do so.

Get the story on cars: http://www.counterpunch.org/2009/07/03/detroit-s-collapse-the-untold-story/

[brush]

40. Bingo! Now that's the kind of response I expect on a progressive site.

Well done.

[tk2kewl]

66. if anyone were serious about lifting the third world out of poverty

we would be talking about a wealth tax to support things like infrastructure, health care, clean energy and jobs

[pampango]

69. Someone must be serious about it since it is happening. There being no 'invisible hand'.

You are right that people that were REALLY serious about it would enact a wealth tax to tap the wealth of the 1%. Along with the world's poorest 70% who have benefited greatly in the last few decades, the global 1% have prospered too. Serious people interested in lifting the third world out of poverty would not be harming the system that has played a role in those gains, but going after the 1% to fund infrastructure, health care, clean energy and jobs that will help the Western middle class that has suffered.

[whatthehey]

33. Well that and historical, and economic, blindness

The problem for medieval traders was finding anything the Chinese wanted from Europe in order to buy their goods at the end of the Silk Road. This was really only solved by the massive gold and silver finds in the Americas. Of all the precious metal Spain grabbed from the New World, China ended up with the most by a country mile. It was only the foolish insularity (ironic that) of the later Qing emperors and the military superiority of the West that temporarily moved the balance of economic power westward over the last century or two. And even now people piss and moan about the imports from China, then ignore the $150B in US exports. Same with "our" jobs over there (what exactly made them our jobs in the first place?) and the 1.7T in foreign investment, but forget the 1.1T in Chinese investment in return. Sure there is a negative balance in both, butthat's what happens between richer and poorer trading partners. Ironically, the very wealth transfer they decry will eventually lessen, and perhaps even reverse, that imbalance and the Chinese will worry about "their" jobs, which will still be a silly notion in either direction, going to the US service and capital goods sectors.

[Recursion]

34. ^^ Wisdom

I want to preserve this post in amber

[1939]

50. The British solved the one way payments problem

They began to sell opium to the Chinese for gold and silver and sucked all the precious metal right back out of China and impoverished the place.

[whatthehey]

59. Yep - that's the insularity of the Qing and western military might bit

If he'd just said ok go ahead let's share the Opium trade (it was already popular before the eponymous wars) and ooh by the way can I buy some war-ships and guns while we're at it, China probably wouldn't have had the horrible 19th and most of 20th century that it did. Again the irony is it was China's reluctance to allow foreign trade (except when forced to by wars it could never win because other than a decade or two in the 19th Century it wouldn't buy foreign military hardware, a practise it stupiudly abandoned with the doomed self-strengthening movement) that weakened it both economically and politically, a lesson our own isolationists should note closely.

[1939]

62. Opium

Opium "balanced" the trade. Before that, the Brits had a net outflow of precious metals to pay for Chinese tea.

[whatthehey]

63. Yes indeed. The better response

would have been to accept that trade and not get into an unwinnable war against a far superior military. China's insistence on silver only for trade doomed them.

[tk2kewl]

7. what have you shared?

I share and cooperate through open source software projects. why should our country enter in deals that force people to give up their livelihoods?

and btw... i don't believe for one second that Goldman Sachs, et al capital investments are about sharing the wealth in the least.

[Hoyt]

23. Most of those doing better in India, China, Mexico, etc., aren't working for G Sachs.

[lumberjack_jeff]

45. The OP isn't talking about "the world's wealth". He's talking about my wages. n/t

[Recursion]

9. Our livelihoods absolutely depend on trade

Always have. Since white people first came here and genocided the brown people who were living here. And for that matter their lives depended on trade too, at least since the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex started ca. 1200 AD.

We can wish for a return to the magical 1950s (when the poverty rate was 5% higher) or we can accept the reality of the current world.

[tk2kewl]

10. we can create a better reality

[Recursion]

12. We are, right now. The Indian and Chinese middle classes prove that

We are actually making the world better

[revbones]

51. Wow. Just wow.

Rather than lifting all boats, you want a race to the bottom. Nice.

[Hoyt]

70. Lifting all boats in helping other countries progress. You Nationalists crack me up. You realize

to the rest of the world 80+% of the people in this country are the world's 1%ers. The greed is amazing and a big reason we have to spend so much on our military and similar crud.

[HughBeaumont]

75. Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiighhhhh . . .

I see . . . so if we don't live in mud hovels and eat breakfast bugs, we're just like Warren Buffett.


You know what political party makes those kind of arguments, right?

[Hoyt]

80. Actually, I'm making the argument that it's not just America's 1%ers who are greedy.

What you guys are saying might be considered "progressive" here, but to some Vietnamese who only got fire bombs from Americans, it's very right wing.

[awake]

3. I have news for you socialism is alive and well

"Communism" fell but not socialism you just have to look north to Canada to see it. Good point though about India and China

[pampango]

38. Is world prosperity a "zero-sum, us-vs-them" affair? Trump, et al would say "Yes".

He proposes that we have to take a chunk out of the hides of Mexico, China, India (THEM) in order for US to prosper.

My neighbors' prosperity does not make me poor. And I do not want my neighbors to be poor so that I can be rich. We are all in this together, no matter what conservatives profess.

I grew up in a world in which practically the entire populations of China and India lived in abject and almost universal poverty. The same was true of much of Africa. The US had the world's highest standard of living and Europe and Japan, initially recovering from war devastation, eventually caught and passed the US' middle class.

As an older person now it is hard to adapt to a world in which Asia may one day soon be as prosperous as we are. It reminds me of when, as a young person, older people would wax nostalgic about how much better the world used to be whwn that were young, when it seemed to me that the past was worse than the present.

Part of my brain (I consider it the 'Trump' part) tells me that my neighbors' recent prosperity must be responsible for my recent economic troubles. The other part of my brain (the Bernie part which thankfully is in control) tells me that it is my own bosses (the 1%) who are responsible for my problems, not the poor/middle class family living next door.

[The2ndWheel]

52. If we live on a finite planet, then yeah, it's zero-sum

It may, or may not, be human vs. human, as it can also include non-human life.

[pampango]

55. So we have to hold others down or kick them down, so that we can prosper?

Or do we figure out how all prosper within the limits of a finite planet?

In general I believe a society and a world with a healthy middle class (rather than extremes of rich and poor) is healthier. Shared sacrifice to preserve our environment is preferable to having one group that sacrifices a lot and another that does not and reaps the benefits of the others' sacrifice.

[Recursion]

57. Kicking down seems to be popular :/ (nt)

[The2ndWheel]

64. Well that's where we get into trouble

We're not good at figuring out who gets to tell who what they can or cannot have or do. Shared sacrifice sounds great, but it's tough to get anyone to sacrifice the things that they don't want to sacrifice. We can't get 10 random people to agree on everything, let alone a few billion.

[pampango]

68. Anything other than random 'shared sacrifice' or 'sacrifice just in poor, weak countries' will have

to be negotiated internationally like so many global problems require.

Sacrifice will happen. It's a matter of whether it is negotiated and shared OR just allowed to happen in which case it will be skewed against the poor since the rich can protect themselves from sacrifice much better than the poor can. As someone who lives in a Western country, just 'allowing it to happen' will probably result in less sacrifice for those of us in the US so there will be even less support for a negotiated approach.

[The2ndWheel]

72. And that's where it gets complicated

What would you be willing to sacrifice for the greater good? Not something you don't have, not something the 1% has, not something you don't really want anyway, but something you like having and use in your own day to day life.

[pampango]

85. I think most liberals are willing to sacrifice for the greater good. I'm pretty typical in that way.

I think that is one of the distinctions between conservatives and liberals.

Conservatives want lower taxes so they can buy more stuff for themselves. Liberals are generally willing to pay higher taxes (as long as the revenue is used to help the needy) and sacrifice some of the things they might otherwise buy for themselves. That type of liberal approach is typical in progressive countries with high taxes and strong safety nets, a lot rarer in conservative America with regressive taxes and a weak safety net.

[jwirr]

76. Your second paragraph is one of the most beautiful statements

I have ever read. Thank you.

[pampango]

86. Thank you. n/t

[lumberjack_jeff]

44. Define "accept that fact" n/t

[Bradical79]

46. From $1.99 to $2.00 a day? How big a difference are we talking here?

Need some context, because $2.00 seems like an arbitrary number. Honestly, I'd heard about it, but it was only in the context of a pro-free trade agreement article with lots of misdirection and misleading statements surrounding it.

[Recursion]

47. Mostly from about $1 to about $3

Like, tripling their income.

[Bradical79]

48. Do you have a source?

Last article I'd read had it at $1.98 to $2.01.

[Recursion]

53. I'm sure you did read that

Please, tell me your "source" first.

[Bradical79]

67. It's your thread

I didn't save a link because the article was no good. No reason to be hostile. You're the one trying to convince us of... something. I just want the same information you have. Why do you think that's too much to ask?

[Csainvestor]

54. The walton family made 150 billion offshoring american jobs

Are we Supposed to be happy that the billionaire class double their net worth over the last eight years, that they quadrupled it over the last 20. collectively they are worth almost 3 trillion dollars but the middle class has shrunk in the US.

You represent the worst of neoliberal economics, bring wages down for the middle class while we create robber barons.

[jwirr]

78. You may not know it but you just confirmed what the OP

said. It is not the small rise in middle class workers in China that are to blame for our problems. And as you say Walton Family are the ones taking all the profits. The Walton family and a lot of other 1%ers who are getting filthy rich off of both the Chinese and India and us.

[Trust Buster]

56. Digitalization and large container ships have shrunk the world.

There's no reversing that trend. Rising wages across the globe will be our only salvation IMO.

[pampango]

60. Liberals: We're all in this together. Conservatives: Keep those poor people and their problems away

from me. Donald: Walls, tariffs and mass deportation will do the trick. Perhaps the conservatives were right.

Liberals build bridges. Conservatives build walls. Perhaps the conservatives were right.

Liberals care about poor people no matter what they look like, what language they speak or where they live. Conservatives care about themselves, those people who look like them, speak like them and live like them. Perhaps the conservatives were right.

Conservatives with their divide-and-conquer, us-vs-them BS have nothing positive to offer. They want to hold on to their dominance in a changing world, just like they want to hold on to their dominance in our changing country. Perhaps the conservatives were right.

To clarify: the conservatives were and are not right. Liberals were and are right. Going conservative-lite now will not win us anything.

[Hortensis]

65. Lots of us have been watching, Recursion. This didn't happen yesterday.

Certainly those interested in foreign affairs, economics, social sciences, or environmental issues, or just have the thirst for knowledge typical of many on the left, or perhaps have a special interest in the lands of their own heritages, have been noticing, accepting, and in some respects very pleased, even with all the new problems to solve.

I am among the latter. If it weren't for global warming and disappearing fresh water, big if-onlys, I would be fairly sure we were on the cusp of a wholly unprecedented global golden era. As it is, good people around the planet are busy using the medical and technical revolutions to increase the wellbeing of literally billions of people. Which brings new problems, etc, etc.

[Rex]

88. LOL!

Nice try...I give it to you, you never give up on that neo-liberal dogma.

[tenderfoot]

89. "It was not the fall of socialism"

Where has socialism fallen since 1996? I'm not following. Canada? Sweden? Finland? Where?