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22 Stats That Show How The Emerging One World Economy Is Absolutely Killing American Workers
For a lighter side to the main article, The Onion made a valid point the other day: Nation's Lower Class At Least Grateful It Not Part Of Nation's Middle Class
"CHAPEL HILL, NC—A survey released Wednesday by researchers at the University of North Carolina found that despite the many challenges they face, the nation's lowest-income individuals are nonetheless thankful they don't have to endure the unique hardships of the nation's long-suffering middle class.
According to the report, the 46 million Americans who fall below the federal poverty line, though struggling mightily, are at least glad they don't have to live up to some rapidly vanishing American dream of advancing in their career, making more money, and improving their lifestyle, the way their middle-income counterparts do." Keep reading >
22 Stats That Show How The Emerging One World Economy Is Absolutely Killing American Workers
For decades our politicians have promised us that the "free trade" agenda would bring us greater prosperity than ever before. They insisted that merging our economy into the emerging one world economy would cause millions upon millions of new jobs to be added to the U.S. economy. Unfortunately, it was all a giant lie.
Trading with other countries is not a bad thing as long as the level of trade is fairly equal on both sides. When trade becomes very unequal, the consequences can be absolutely catastrophic. Since 1975, the United States has bought more than 8 trillion dollars more stuff from the rest of the world than they have bought from us. We are the only economy on earth that could have had 8 trillion dollars drained out of it and still be standing. Instead of leaving the country, those 8 trillion dollars could have gone to U.S. businesses and U.S. workers. If we could go back and have a "do over," how much more prosperous would we be today if we had kept that 8 trillion dollars inside the country?
But instead of pursuing a balanced trade philosophy, our politicians were so enamored with the emerging one world economy that they threw all caution to the wind.
So we have lost tens of thousands of businesses, millions of jobs and trillions of dollars of our national wealth.
And this emerging one world economy is absolutely killing American workers. It lumps them into a global labor pool with workers in other countries where it is legal to pay slave labor wages.
Just think of it this way. Imagine that you are a giant corporation that makes "widgets". You can make them in the United States, but you would have to pay your workers about $10 an hour, provide them with a whole bunch of benefits, pay very high taxes, and comply with a dizzying array of laws, rules and regulations.
Or, you could set up shop on the other side of the world where you could pay your workers a dollar an hour. Those workers would receive no benefits and you would have to deal with very little red tape.
Which would you choose?
The "giant sucking sound" that Ross Perot once warned us about has become a reality. Big employers are competing with one another to see who can outsource jobs the fastest, and American workers are the big losers in all of this.
As I wrote about the other day, right now there are some American workers that are actually personally training their replacements from overseas how to do their jobs.
If nothing is done about this, jobs are going to continue to pour out of high wage countries such as the United States and into low wage countries on the other side of the globe, and big corporations are going to keep laughing all the way to the bank as unemployment in America gets even worse.
The following are 22 stats that show how the emerging one world economy is absolutely killing American workers....
#1 One professor has estimated that cutting the U.S. trade deficit in half would create 5 million more jobs in the United States.
#2 The United States has a trade imbalance that is more than 7 times larger than any other nation on earth has.
#3 Overall, the United States has run a trade deficit of more than 8 trillion dollars with the rest of the globe since 1975. That 8 trillion dollars could have gone to support U.S. businesses and pay the wages of U.S. workers. Federal, state and local taxes would have been paid on that 8 trillion dollars if it had stayed in the United States. This is one reason why our national debt is getting ready to cross the 16 trillion dollar mark.
#4 When NAFTA was passed in 1993, the United States had a trade surplus with Mexico of 1.6 billion dollars. In 2010, we had a trade deficit with Mexico of 61.6 billion dollars.
#5 In 2001, American consumers spent 102 billion dollars on products made in China. In 2011, American consumers spent 399 billion dollars on products made in China.
#6 The Chinese undervalue their currency by about 40 percent in order to gain a critical advantage over foreign competitors. This means that many Chinese companies are able to absolutely thrive while their competition in the United States goes out of business. The following is from a recent Fox News article....
To keep Chinese products artificially inexpensive on US store shelves, Beijing undervalues the yuan by 40 percent. It pirates US technology, subsidizes exports and imposes high tariffs on imports.
#7 According to the New York Times, a Jeep Grand Cherokee that costs $27,490 in the United States costs about $85,000 in China thanks to all the tariffs.
#8 The U.S. trade deficit with China during 2011 was 295.4 billion dollars. That was the largest trade deficit that one nation has had with another nation in the history of the world.
#9 Back in 1985, our trade deficit with China was only about 6 million dollars (million with an "m") for theentire year.
#10 U.S. consumers spend about 4 dollars on goods and services from China for every one dollar that Chinese consumers spend on goods and services from the United States.
#11 The United States has actually lost an average of about 50,000 manufacturing jobs a month since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.
#12 According to the Economic Policy Institute, America is losing about half a million jobs to China every single year.
#13 The United States has lost more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities since 2001.
#14 During 2010 alone, an average of 23 manufacturing facilities closed their doors in America every single day.
#15 Since the auto industry bailout, approximately 70 percent of all GM vehicles have been built outside the United States.
#16 As I have written about previously, 95 percent of the jobs lost during the last recession were middle class jobs.
#17 According to Professor Alan Blinder of Princeton University, 40 million more U.S. jobs could be sent offshore over the next two decades if current trends continue.
#18 The percentage of working age Americans that are employed right now is actually smaller than it was at the end of the last recession.
#19 The average duration of unemployment in the United States is nearly three times as long as it was back in the year 2000.
#20 Due in part to the globalization of the labor pool, only about 24 percent of all jobs in the United States are "good jobs" at this point.
#21 Without enough good jobs, more Americans than ever before are falling into poverty. Today, more than 100 million Americans are on welfare.
#22 In recent years the U.S. economy has embraced "free trade" and the emerging one world economy like never before. Instead of increasing the number of jobs in our economy, it has resulted in the worst stretch of job creation in the United States in modern history....
If any single number captures the state of the American economy over the last decade, it is zero. That was the net gain in jobs between 1999 and 2009—nada, nil, zip. By painful contrast, from the 1940s through the 1990s, recessions came and went, but no decade ended without at least a 20 percent increase in the number of jobs.
Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words.
You can get a really good idea of how nightmarish the manufacturing job losses have been in the United States over the past 40 years by checking out this map right here.
And if everything posted above was not bad enough, some U.S. companies even find themselves competing with slave labor here in the United States.
Seriously.
Prison labor is absolutely destroying some businesses here in America. The following comes from a recent CNN article....
Unicor is a government-run enterprise that employs over 13,000 inmates -- at wages as low as 23 cents an hour -- to make goods for the Pentagon and other federal agencies.
With some exceptions, Unicor gets first dibs on federal contracts over private companies as long as its bid is comparable in price, quantity and delivery. In other words: If Unicor wants a contract, it gets it.
One company that tries to compete with Unicor has been forced to lay off 150 people over the years because they lose so many contracts to them....
Wilson has been competing with Unicor for 20 years. He's an executive at American Apparel Inc., an Alabama company that makes military uniforms. (It is not affiliated with the international retailer of the same name.) He has gone head-to-head with Unicor on just about every product his company makes -- and said he has laid off 150 people over the years as a result.
"We pay employees $9 on average," Wilson said. "They get full medical insurance, 401(k) plans and paid vacation. Yet we're competing against a federal program that doesn't pay any of that."
But this is also the kind of thing that U.S. companies are dealing with when they try to compete with big corporations that are exploiting cheap labor abroad.
If you are spending ten times as much on labor as your competitor is, it is going to be really hard to survive.
That is why it has become so hard to find products that are made in America.
Most of our jobs these days are low paying "service jobs", cushy government jobs or jobs where people push papers around all day.
But those kinds of jobs do not create lasting wealth for a country.
Did you know that there are more tax preparers in the United States than there are police officers and firefighters combined?
Our economy is a giant mirage. We consume way more wealth than we produce, but we are able to keep the party going because we are riding the biggest debt spiral the world has ever seen.
But at some point the debt spiral is going to end and the crash is going to come.
Until then, however, those at the very top are still really enjoying themselves.
For example, one of the latest trends is for rich kids to show off pictures of themselves enjoying their enormous wealth on Instagram.
Something has gone very, very wrong with this country.
So what do you think about all this? Please feel free to post a comment with your thoughts below....
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Jerry Brown once said: "You cannot compete with countries that use 21st century technology and that pay 19th century wages."
Most of our trade deficit is with nations that simply do not allow U.S. manufactured products into their country. That includes Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China, Vietnam, Thailand, etc. That's easy to fix.
O.W.E. = ONE - WORLD - ECONOMY
Does that summarize things adequately enough?
The poetic justice would be if China would cut the credit card in half (especially if there is a trade war) and confiscate the corporations property and force them to build new factories in the U.S. again. Once they have enough workers and consumers there, I don't see why they wouldn't do that to get back treasury bond and mortgage backed security money. It could be China and the U.S. corporatuions will become the same entity, though.
Fuck that... ya'll can get paid slave wages here in the Good Olde USofA.
Just go look for an entry level job fresh out of a solid 4 year program with a Magna Cum Lousy in High Energy Media Teleportation Communications and a minor in Homemade Beering
Fucking wonderful.
And no, don't give me any of that who the fuck would choose to study that crap and then expect... because most of the people graduating form university today have no practical skill-sets whatsoever as they've been detuned to reality, brainwashed and propagandized to death respecting the sole rights of the Gay Lesbian One Eyed Snail Darter and secretly wish to become the next Hunter S. Thompson, ingesting infinite amounts of every single hazardous and dangerous substance that's been known to man since 1733 while believing in infinite entitlements and bountifulness wealth created by others who will pay their way, no questions asked... Fucking demagoguery.
It's OVER.... Fucking OVER
Over is good. On with the beginning, again.
What's coming in America is going to absolutely shock the bujeezus out of the elites, particularly those in New York and D.C. What's coming is violent street crime.
Crime like they haven't seen in decades -- or maybe even this century. That's what happens when the rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer. Crime is a factor of the rich/poor spread. Period.
And then there's real estate: In the 1990's and 2000's urban redevelopment saw rich urbanites push deeply into previously impoverished areas. Now, in cities like New York and D.C. you have multimillion dollar properties sitting a stones throw from poor neighborhoods. Needless to say, this is an explosive recipe.
I used to ask friends in New York about their decision to buy real estate in Brooklyn. The answer they gave (with no irony) is that "Real Estate always goes up", and that "Brooklyn is getting safer".
And then the most contradictory comment of all: "Besides, Brooklyn is filled with properties that used to be gorgeous 100 years ago".
What?? Used to be? Ok and then what happened? The real estate tanked for the better part of a century and crime took off.
This is where we're going again, and soon. It will begin with murders and street crime. And it will then extend to break-ins and a general sense of insecurity. And then white flight will begin in a cascade.
Urban crime is just getting started... And the descent of the American worker is the first step down that road...
Ammo Slammo!
Government is buying nearly a billion rounds of ammunition for domestic use and most people don't give a rip. We reported earlier this week on how the government is now trying to cover its tracks on massive arms purchases for a variety of federal agencies including Social Security and the Weather Service (dismissed as a clerical error, but we're not buying it).
Until this morning I was pretty open-minded about this, noting it was an anomaly but not necessarily one which should be taken as a leading indicator of "bad stuff to come" but as a data outlier.
Today, however, we can move into the "bad stuff coming" category with near-certainty since the federal government has now taken to redacting (blacking out, covering up) key portions of their massive ammo purchases DELETING things like quantity.
An example looks like this:
[CHART THROUGH LINK, SEARCH BY DATE]
We're not idiots - the 450-million rounds involved in the previous DHS purchases, plus the ICE purchase above, was already a matter of public record...a disturbing record, but public nonetheless.
This is right off publicly available documents on the Federal Business Opportunities site (here).
I don't know about you, but when government starts to stockpile ammunition - nearly a billion rounds between agencies - three bullets for every man woman and child in America - seems to prove the notion that government is scared crapless about some big and evil coming to a country near you around year-end since that's the "emergency" due date being used on some solicitations including the one for Capitol Police. (600,000 rounds on an emergency basis before year end.)
The Matter of Patriotism
While the paranoid faction of the PowersThatBe are arming up for a - well, they're not saying what kind event - we note in passing that their behavior is fo sho giving aid and comfort to our enemies.
This is evidenced by the high-profile coverage being given this story by Iran's Press-TV. This is public relations suicide. Or, is that the point? Hmmm...
What's the old saying? When government fears the people it's called Democracy. When People fear their government, it's called Tyranny. But then I suppose you knew that, already.
Oh, and we're sure you'll be sleeping better knowing that Social Security is getting what?
[CHART THROUGH LINK, SEARCH BY DATE]
Yep, 174,000 rounds.
Sure adds a sobering dimension to the fiscal cliff we walk over in early 2013, doesn't it?
But the "training rounds" isn't playing well among our readers. Example:
"A retired RCMP fellow belongs our local gun club. He said that the Mounties shoot only 12 rounds twice a year to maintain their gun qualification! I do think that is still more rounds than is required of weather forcasters."
Inserted from <http://urbansurvival.com/week.htm>
If you don't believe him, Google "Detroit."
pods