Trade agreements lower America's living standards to raise others. Angers me.

[appalachiablue]

26. K & R. The Investor Class is doing fine from the system and is already rationalizing

Last edited Sun May 10, 2015, 10:41 PM - Edit history (1)

how good Americans have it, as I've seen in the last couple years especially from business people, old men and hungry young men trained by RW think tanks that CSPAN airs perpetually. They don't care anymore, period. About us or this country, they're global for 20+ years. Plenty of politicians and those who are stock holders are also benefiting, from financial investments, school privatization, cheap labor at hospitals, hotels, stores, doctors offices, on and on.

The capitalists are locating to and opening up less developed countries for several reasons- to seek a lower corporate tax rate than the US, for the cheap labor and lax or non existent environmental and labor regulation = more profit, and also to create large populations of new consumers to buy their stuff. Stuff that they've never had before: computers, cellphones, TVs, clothes, refrigerators, cars, nicer homes, retail, vacation travel, recreation, luxury items, KFC, Taco Bell, Disney Stores, Hiltons, Hyatts.

We forget that this comfortable lifestyle of ours has been unknown to the approx. 350,000,000 Chinese and Indians who now make up their new Middle Classes. That number is larger than our entire US population of 320,000,000. So it seems to me that we're essentially on our own, except for a devoted handful of fighting leaders and our own resourcefulness and skill to survive. I've been watching affairs intensely for 5 years, for the sake of the young ones and it doesn't look good, the Cavalry isn't coming.

One thing, I hope I live long enough to see the reduction or banishment of the term 'globalization', which was in truth a total economic marketing concept/con having little to do with helping unite and assist others on the planet. It was meant to expand capital and free market neoliberal economics into developing societies to make them 'advance', to the point where they can buy goods and products and have a need for modernized infrastructure- transportation, communications, etc. which are another source of profit.

I have heard Tech execs from major companies on panels discuss the success they've had selling Tablets and Ipads to women in Africa, and they're serious. Those women hardly have shelter, wood for cooking and protection from violence and disease. Sorry for this rant dear, it's all very serious and sometimes unbelievable. Tomorrow will be better and beautiful I know!


Rep. Darrel Issa (R-CA), multimillionaire, businessman. May 7, 2015 CNN Money Interview.

*Excellent article by Canadian author and politician, Chrysta Freeland, The Atlantic, Jan. 1, 2011.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/01/the-rise-of-the-new-global-elite/308343/

This work stunned me in winter 2011 when I read it, but it was the foundation for making sense of some of the blitzkrieg era of change we are in. 'Technology is vaporizing jobs', as a poster wrote on DU yesterday.