General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: How can a person who fights for the TPP be considered a friend of the 99%? [View all]joshcryer
(62,269 posts)The problem is that US manufacturing is on the decline (and has been for decades), we dominate the world through the Military Industrial Complex and markets, particularly finance, real estate, insurance, rental, and leasing property. As well as the service industry.
There's a reason that the US wants stringent intellectual property requirements in there. And there's a reason they're tying up environmental regulations in there. It forces those countries to buy our intellectual property relating to clean energy, as we're on a roadmap to be clean by around 2050.
Now, addressing the 99% issue, well, TPP certainly helps only the rich, and it does shit for the environment, because it will enable us to further outsource our pollution. But that's really a symptom of our society as it stands. Rather than paying our workers a living wage, we pay them beneath what it is to live, because our products come from a place where those workers have even worse living standards and insane work hours. So us greedy people, we sit back, fat and happy, exploiting the world with the largest most insanely overpowered military, largest GDP by far, and we elect politicians who create things like the TPP so that we can retain our hegemony.
Is that good? No. Do I support the TPP? No. I'm just explaining why it exists.
If you want to stop it bring manufacturing back home and raise the minimum wage to one that supports a society that isn't importing its goods from effective slaves in the rest of the world. Taking a couple of decongestants won't clear up a lung infection, you need some serious anti-bacterials. TPP is a distraction, it's the symptom as opposed to the cause.
And of course, that's exactly what the people in power want it to be. A distraction. You'd rather write post after post about how horrible it is without discussing why it's being sought.