How Long Before We Wake Up?

Corporations across this country have been devaluing our workers, tradesman, and craftsman for decades. They have destroyed the middle class in pursuit of optimal profits to feed executive bonus pools, thrown people out of their houses to cover their shady financial game playing, the perfect storm of setup – failure – cover up. Then, when they have filled the pool with their waste, beg us to bail them out and cut their taxes, under the threat of impending doom should they be allowed to fail.

Most interesting, is the population of voters who support this activity as the true free market. Victims of the corporate thieves, crying aloud to give the criminals every chance to improve their game. Founded on the promise that one day we may all be rich and desirous of lowest possible tax rates, the pirates scam us on every level. Yet, as in any pnzy scheme, any robbery, and hijacking… the only people who profit from this gracious-nous are those who run the game. Make no mistake about it, we are being gamed. Not only are we victims of the big con, we are being robbed by professionals, who pay other professionals to develop even grander schemes with which to make what yours… theirs.

When are we going to wake up? How many cities of abandoned manufacturing plants do we endure? How many people on the unemployment roles, how many lost in the system no longer counted do we accept as reasonable? How much further down the income scale do we allow ourselves to slide under the threat of imports? How much more are we willing as individuals to sacrifice while reading about how phenomenally rich they are  getting on our backs? Just exactly how much do we want to hand these corporate gas bags, before we realize that we are being duped, scammed, and robbed?

Let’s look at a contemporary issue – tax breaks. First of all, let’s get over the baloney about rich people spending saved taxes in any way that will build wealth for anyone else. They do not invest here in the USA as a rule. They take their money and build factories oversees, where they can exploit low cost labor to get rid of our own “over-priced” local labor. They use their money to buy congressman to protect their positioning, to keep us from controlling their outsourcing our middle class into oblivion, and to lobby for tax breaks, so they can invest more oversees, close more factories here, and exploit more labor in countries where corrupt governments whore their people out for kick backs and under-table deals. The wealthy do buy American – old cars, expansive mansions designed with little taste, filled with opulent and pretentious crap of no meaning, that supports a very very small population of specialists. The only trickle down one is likely to experience is when one is called at 2:AM to repair a broken toilet by the privileged who feel it their right to demand such service.

Set aside the bull argument about wealth redistribution. This is a marketing scam that sounds right, but isn’t. Ignore also the idea that the founding fathers envisioned a country where ones wealth is protected by government… that is not only baloney, it is simply factually incorrect. Our founding fathers financed this country out of their own pockets. They saw the wealthiest as being the most responsible for supporting the government, and the responsibility as nation builders. While their has always been a balancing act between the necessity of government at some level, and the desire to run free of government, there was never a point in the founding of this country when the founders saw the working class as principle financiers of government and supporters of the wealthy. Yes, we have far too many entitlement programs in place. Most are necessary due to the way we treat our elderly and our underclass, while allowing our corporate leaders to create conditions in the labor market that destroy upward mobility. We as a nation have failed to build a culture of caring for those less fortunate than us, failing to provide a place where the elderly have a productive place. We as a nation have allowed the corporate thieves to drag out working class wages down, while providing ample opportunities for unreasonable and irresponsible indebtedness that make it impossible for anyone to survive hardship – which is guaranteed to occur, either from loss of job or aging.  As long as this is our approach, there is no choice but to take from those who can afford to pay in order to avoid a growing proportion of our population from falling into third world status.

The first step away from redistribution of wealth is simple – reduce the disparity between those who have it all, and those who have no hope of getting anything. This starts with a healthy, well supported, growing labor market. A market that encourages skills development, craft perfection, and productivity participation. This can only happen if we have a place to sell our product, which means restriction of competitive forces that push our own labor out the door in favor of a higher profit from exploitation. Is this protectionist? Hell yes it is. The notion that we cannot employ such policy is antiquated. At no time very in the history of the USA have we faced such enormous masses of low cost labor, hungry to sell us cheap goods to enrich their own wealthy and ours, at the cost of our own employment. Asia as a whole outnumbers the population of the USA by SEVEN to ONE.  They need money as much as we do, and will do what they can to get ours wherever they can. For every individual here in the USA employed, there are seven in Asia alone in a position to work for less to do the same job. Just as we have a military to protect ourselves from intrusion of hostile military forces, we need legal and trade protection to keep us from being destroyed by an even larger force – low cost exploitable labor that displaces our own workforce.

One has only to look at the condition of three countries to realize our fate. England, who has completely lost its industry to foreign powers, has frightening chronic unemployment, and a continued erosion of its capacity to serve its own needs. Then we have France, who saw the end coming too late – moving toward socialism and communism to avoid the inevitable. Then we have Germany, who simply refused to allow itself to be crushed by the intrusion of foreign wears, who have maintained an active and growing manufacturing environment that encourages craft and tradesmanship, as well as science and technology. There is another we might look at – Rome. In the face of crushing financial disaster, they chose to maintain their wealthy elites, and allow their “people” to be crushed by intruders. In the end, thats all there was… and end. Australia too has trade protection policies, as do every one of the countries the corporations who prey on us use to en-richen themselves at our expense. There is no free trade with China, India, Malaysia, Germany, or Japan. All trade with these countries are restricted and regulated. Yet here, we consider trade restriction as somehow bad for our country? Yes, when every country we use to devalue our own workforce has restricted trade, while we have an open door policy, trade restrictions are bad. We need trade restrictions of our own to avoid the inevitable – which the last 30 years has proven in vivid living color.

We need to take control away from the corporations, now. The first step is another bad word in the pirates log – Boycott. Boycotting imported products that could and should be made here, like computers, cars, machinery, furniture, and clothing is a bid first step. Second, research into the corporations who are of foreign registry, like British Petroliem, who pay no taxes here, yet exploit our resources, is another. Then, look into the corporations who have systematically shipped our workforce oversees, like Ertl toys, Schwinn bicycles, Tecumsa motors, Sears Craftsman, and retailers like Walmart who dilute domestic value by low low pricing strategies founded solidly on importation of cheap products to dominate market share.  Then, look at the corporations who pay bonuses to their executives as they close facilities here to move overseas.

If we continue on the path we now travel, there will be little hope of future recovery. The economy is in yet another hole because we are blindly allowing the pirates and thieves to run the show. We need to wake up and stop pandering to them, stop accepting their paid marketing and lobbying for their own selfish interests, and look forward to what we want this country to be. This means waking up to the fact that hard work should pay, that artisinship, craft, and tradesmanship should be a highly valued asset, that the health of the largest possible population is worth more than the wealth of a few elites at the very top. We need to wake up to the fact that we are being gamed by professionals, who profit from selling us the story that their wealth is our concern.

How long will it be before we wake up? I am not hopeful. Currently, we have a population of future victims protecting and supporting the criminals that will eventually destroy them. We have a screaming silly lump of voters who actually believe that the government should be destroyed to allow the free market to thrive – while ignoring evidence that in the last 30 years, where the free market has indeed thrived, the working class has declined, the middle class has been crushed, while the largest growth in class is at the very bottom. Bleet and chant all you want, but the system as we know it is a failure, and the corporate leaders are the ones responsible. Take them down, and we take down the lobby influences that have created a government hostile to its own population.

How long? Likely never. Only when we have been gamed and played out will it likely be redressed. By then, we will be powerless to affect real change.

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