But no one can deny that during our US history from the early 1900s until today, this country has flipped from having unchecked capitalists' power to unchecked government power.
Although I can understand where the sentiment is coming from, I don't see the facts actually supporting the "gov't is to blame" mentality.
I say this due to the amount of funds numerous corporations have poured into lobbyists and other financial incentives (i.e. lucrative jobs and speaking engagements once they leave office, ...). Essentially, they've bought our government for decades. It's in the billions now, and has grown every year since the early '80's.
Think of all the Free Trade Agreements rather than fair trade that's allowed for this. Think of the demonization of unions (few bad apples held up as the norm, and causing corporations to go broke when in reality they were posting record profits) that were used to get legislation that weakened Unions, coziness of say the oil and gas industry with the Dept. of Interior inspectors (hint: Deep Water Horizon), the Citizens United ruling by the US Supreme Court (no campaign donation limits), ....
Buying enough politicians have given them "behind the scenes" control over US policy and law they've never had previously. They still retain control this way, but have a lower degree of responsibility/culpability in the public's perception.
Not to say these politicians don't have any culpability, as they're the ones that sold out afterall. But once bought, they're not really calling the shots that create US policy, whether it be economic, foreign, ...
And in corporate outsourcing/exportation of the industrial base, wages have either stagnated or been reduced from previous levels, while the cost of living has continued to rise overall. Not good for the domestic market, as at some point, there won't be any disposable income in any but the top 1% income bracket (lucky if they can cover their basic necessities).
No , but when we stop exporting intellectual prowess we can stop exporting the jobs that come from them.
Even when the intellectual personnel exist in the US, most of those jobs have already been exported.
Just look at the electronics industry. Barely any is still made in the US, and what is (military, industrial, and medical), is looking to go. Plenty of engineers in the US, they just don't want to pay them remotely what they're worth, as they can get them cheaper overseas.
Even Boeing is looking to manufacture their aircraft in China.
This has been a problem for awhile now... the decline of the "work ethic" among our younger generations. The willingness to put in a hard day's work and the pride in workmanship is not as prevalent today as it was 20-30 years ago.
Keep in mind though, those kids were raised by parents who had blue collar jobs (machinists, tool & die makers, auto workers, canning workers, ...), that worked hard and were screwed over by the companies they were working for during the time they were still raising those kids.
So it's not unexpected that those parents taught their kids that manual labor, even skilled, wasn't going to get them anywhere in life. So they put the concept of "Go to college" into their kids instead. It's not a wonder really that they abhor manual labor of any kind.
Now my dad did teach me how to do various forms of manual labor, and I still do them (actually working on a building now for a family member), but I don't do that as a day job. But due to what I saw both he and my mom go through, I went to college and became an engineer.
Only to experience the "Great Outsourcing", and go through the same **** as my parents.
well its been sped along by free trade agreements that make it easy for a company to say "take a 50% cut in pay or your job is going to Mexico". all too often the guys will take a cut, the company ends up screwing them over and going to Mexico or some other place anyway.
This is what I notice. Even happens with professionals, so it's not limited to what most would think of as blue collar positions.
True. Greed is a HUGE part. CEO's and "major" shareholders want a bigger slice of the pot. BS! Lets get back to basics and start making stuff here again. After all, how the hell do those CEO's think people are going to buy their company's products if they have no jobs?
As I stated, I'm no union basher. The Teamsters did ok by me when I worked for UPS. I just think at the time, it should have been different.
No reason to come back en mass though as things currently are.
Here and there, a few companies are beginning to in-source, but those instances were financially motivated.
Generally speaking, I don't see this happening without a financial incentive, such as implementing tariffs, or better yet, penalties for overseas manufacturing and close the tax loopholes that are currently incentives for them to continue with the outsourcing models they're currently using.
