Tin Foil Hat: Was this economic recession engineered to permanently lower our standard of living?

[Spectral Music]

The one thing the globalist corporations want is cheap labor. They have outsourced, they have downsized, have brought in undocumented workers, they have done everything they can do to keep the cost of labor from rising at all. Now, the talk is all about unions having to give in: UAW, California Public Employees, etc. The net result of this economic "crisis" is the reduction of wages.

For example, One of the main conditions for the auto companies taking "bailouts" is to cut their workers' pay to that of the Japanese auto companies in the US. In other words, American companies and American unions are supposed to use a foreign company as their yardstick. With the fall of the dollar, it becomes cheap for foreign companies to set up shop in America. But American companies and the public sector still have powerful unions. Enter the economic crisis, the auto makers close to bankruptcy, and the unions as the first and only real target.

Then the California public workers are going to have to take unpaid time off to lower the cost of labor.

In the end, is this economic crisis all about the US worker becoming a low cost alternative for foreign corporations?

[Deja Q]

1. And yet India and China have been raising middle classes with lots of people rushing to be H1Bs

Save the tin foil hat; put it over a container of Jiffy Pop brand popcorn.

[billyoc]

10. Blake's 7?! Cut the shit!

Avon is the MAN!! :woohoo:

[shanti]

16. i hardly think

that the income of china and india's middle class compares to ours. we are moving DOWN to their level!

[PDJane]

2. Would that actually surprise you?

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

3. Read Naomi Klein's book, "The Shock Doctrine."

As tinfoil-hattish as it may sound, after reading that book I have to wonder.

[BrklynLiberal]

20. Yep. Very scary...

There are no coincidences or "accidents"

[madeline_con]

4. It's GOP union busting. They're saying, "Work for less or not at all."

They know they can outsource or get someone els to do the job for less here. I have to wax Lou Dobbish on this one, America's middle class is being destroyed in the pursuit of profit.

[Trajan]

5. I think you are correct ....

It has been a long term movement instituted by the conservatives since the 70's or before ...

A scorched earth philosophy that would just as soon send workers back to the dark ages than pay them a decent living ....

Our parents lived in a Golden Age .... I can see that now ....

[lostnotforgotten]

6. Raiding The Till For The Last Time To Shore Up Offshore Accounts

Seems plausible to many of us.

[DJ13]

7. Without a market comprised of consumers that can afford their products

....cheap labor becomes a self defeating goal.

[Spectral Music]

22. Maybe the emerging middle classes in India and China will buy the products we make?

They are already getting our raw materials, like our redwood forests, to build their cheap crap.

[Davis_X_Machina]

23. A 'middle class' Indian or Chinese...

..is by our standards desperately poor, and though numerous, even in the aggregate, have nothing like the purchasing power of the American middle class.

So, no.

[Spectral Music]

25. Just wait and see how far the American middle class is reduced in the next 20 years.

I bet that's the goal

[leftofthedial]

8. it is not tinfoil to believe that the capitalists who own this country and its politicians

have had lowering the median income of Americans as a prime objective ever since the 1930's.

[lligrd]

9. I Think It Was Engineered To Raise Theirs

At our expense, of course. The saddest part of it is, that those going along think they are part of the their when in reality, they are part of the our.

[Warpy]

11. No, it was engineered by a bunch of men focused on

quarterly reports who didn't care about long term goals because their jobs depended on increasing the numbers in those quarterly reports.

The war against labor has always been a war to fatten the numbers in that all important quarterly report by depressing wages and offshoring jobs.

Hedge fund paper was attractive because it promised to fatten the numbers in that quarterly report.

No one is more surprised by this collapse than the stunted men who engineered the whole thing by failing to see anything beyond a quarterly report for one corporation.

[Double T]

12. Take off your tin foil hate; NOT required when dealing with truths.

It is about slaves, slavery and slave wages. the corrupt corporate bastards don't want the responsibility of caring for US slaves so they're willing to give YOU barely enough money to 'live' on. They're going take away your retirement funds, your house, your car and your american dreams. An economy such as ours can not become part of a globalized economy without tremendous damage being done to wages, standards of living and retirement funds. The party is over BUT the american worker has not yet begun to fight; only when the government and the corrupt corporations have the american worker and consumer in a strangle hold will the american worker become outraged and fight back.

[lurky]

13. I don't know, but I think the massive bailout was at least partly

intended to prevent a future Democratic congress and president from creating any much-needed new programs, such as single-payer health. They may want to, but they will be so burdened by this debt on top of the debt from 30 years of Reaganomics, that the money just won't be there. Their hands will be tied.

[elifino]

14. The ultimate result of the rush to a global economy

Report a lower than actual cost of living increase = suppress the increase in wages and minimum wage.

[FarCenter]

15. The power elite are moving towards less inequality between countries and more inequality within

At the end of World War II the United States was left in a hugely advantageous position, with the largest manufacturing base in the world completely untouched by war, and with the world's gold in Fort Knox.

This was all the result of:

- purloining a continent of riches from the English, Spanish, French, Mexicans and Native Americans during 1776-1865,

- importing European labor and plundering the riches during the period of 1865-1914, and

- supplying goods and arms to the winning side in two world wars during 1914-1945.

Our advantages were not the result of our political system, our economic system, or the favor of imaginary beings.

The position is unsustainable in the face of competition with other countries.

During the last couple of decades, there has most likely been a shift in thinking about inequality -- if inequality between the US and other countries is unsustainable, and if the global resources are not equal to the task of improving global living standards to the US level, then a greater inequality within countries is the best solution for the power elites.

This leads towards a society more similar to Latin America or to India, where you have highly stratified and unequal societies.

Politicians from Texas and the Southwest, with the example of Mexico across the border, and with the example of poor suburbs around cities like Phoenix and San Antonio, are probably most comfortable with this solution.

[shanti]

17. and never forget slavery

n/t

[Hannah Bell]

27. yours = best answer. the inequality has to appear somewhere in the system.

cause that's how money's made.

if it's less between countries, it's more within countries.

[KG]

18. it was a culumnation of a 20 -year effort to permanently lower our standard of living

an americans cheerily went fell for every lie and myth along the way.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

19. No.

[killbotfactory]

21. High standard of living for all = less profit for some

In the name of "market efficiency" it becomes important to lower the wages of people with little bargaining power to a minimum.

When people form unions to collectively increase bargaining power, corporate America cries foul.

[surrealAmerican]

24. No. I think you are overestimating the intelligence and ...

... cohesion of the people involved, most of whom are only looking at their own short term profits. It's also important to remember that a recession is actually BAD for business, since it decreases the market for goods and services.

[dkofos]

26. yes

[Swamp Rat]

28. No. It was simply the greatest heist in human history.

[lifesbeautifulmagic]

29. i don't know the answer to your question, but i have heard free/fair trade

people actually argue that for free trade to work our living standard has to come down, so the rest of the world can come up. Don't ask me for citations, because I have none, I am remembering conversations from the mid-90's.

[natrat]

30. engineered to create unstable conditions to soften us up for facism,afterall the bush clan are nazis

[earth mom]

31. Anyone who doesn't know that the powers that be are trying to take this country back to the 1800s

and the days of the robber barons where people had NO rights or benefits, then they are NOT paying attention.

:grr: