American’s ability to create for their children a world, better than the one they found is passing. American’s current economic troubles, which more and more of its citizens are facing, is not an anomaly, it is a trend. America has been losing manufacturing jobs since the 1850s when Japan took over the textile market. No country can sustain such losses forever. America is at a turning point in its history. Its economy can no longer sustain the dreams of the inhabitants of the Post-Industrial America.
We pass laws that limit the potential for harm that results from corporate greed, but allow foreign corporations, not limited by our laws, to compete freely in our markets. We pass laws that say that it is unconscionable to pay a worker less than a minimum wage and then allow products to be imported into our markets from countries paying orders of magnitude less than that minimum. We impose environmental and safety restrictions on American companies and then import goods from countries that devastate ecologies and kill or maim their workers. American corporations, through payroll deductions and benefits, are used to finance our health care and as a source of revenue for out government, yet we allow foreign goods to be sold in our markets without bearing any part of our health care or our government services.
This was fine when the rest of the world was recovering from the devastation of the Second World War. It was fine when much of America’s current competitors were still third world nations. But the world has changed. America in now part of a global economy and it has squandered its head start. Competitors now have an industrial base as good or superior to ours. We have shared or had stolen our technological advantage. It is pure hubris to think that America can, through tenacity and ingenuity rebuild our economy without addressing basic economic inequalities we ourselves have imposed on our markets.
Your show has been a forum to educate as well as entertain, to discuss the problems of our time and seek solutions. Please to not shift our focus to a scapegoat. Greedy bastards have been with us always. Some of our finest institutions bare their names. Mellon, Carnegie, and Rockefeller come to mind. As satisfying as it is to blame those like Madoff whose overriding greed destroyed the lives of thousands, he and those like him did not cause the collapse of our economy and if they were all cast into the sea tomorrow, our country would be only marginally better off.
The problem is systemic (of, relating to, or common to a system). Economics (a social science concerned chiefly with description and analysis of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services) is the study of that system. The problem is not attributable to individuals; it is the direct result of our trade policies. The American economy cannot recover without a fundamental change to the parameters our government places on the American Capitalist system.
This is not an argument over socialism vs. free market. It is a matter of survival. Our current trade policies guarantee that wages for the vast majority of American workers will fail meet the needs of their families or serve as a tax base for their government when it is forced to provide food, housing, and medical care for those families of workers who cannot earn a living wage.
We pass laws that limit the potential for harm that results from corporate greed, but allow foreign corporations, not limited by our laws, to compete freely in our markets. We pass laws that say that it is unconscionable to pay a worker less than a minimum wage and then allow products to be imported into our markets from countries paying orders of magnitude less than that minimum. We impose environmental and safety restrictions on American companies and then import goods from countries that devastate ecologies and kill or maim their workers. American corporations, through payroll deductions and benefits, are used to finance our health care and as a source of revenue for out government, yet we allow foreign goods to be sold in our markets without bearing any part of our health care or our government services.
This was fine when the rest of the world was recovering from the devastation of the Second World War. It was fine when much of America’s current competitors were still third world nations. But the world has changed. America in now part of a global economy and it has squandered its head start. Competitors now have an industrial base as good or superior to ours. We have shared or had stolen our technological advantage. It is pure hubris to think that America can, through tenacity and ingenuity rebuild our economy without addressing basic economic inequalities we ourselves have imposed on our markets.
Your show has been a forum to educate as well as entertain, to discuss the problems of our time and seek solutions. Please to not shift our focus to a scapegoat. Greedy bastards have been with us always. Some of our finest institutions bare their names. Mellon, Carnegie, and Rockefeller come to mind. As satisfying as it is to blame those like Madoff whose overriding greed destroyed the lives of thousands, he and those like him did not cause the collapse of our economy and if they were all cast into the sea tomorrow, our country would be only marginally better off.
The problem is systemic (of, relating to, or common to a system). Economics (a social science concerned chiefly with description and analysis of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services) is the study of that system. The problem is not attributable to individuals; it is the direct result of our trade policies. The American economy cannot recover without a fundamental change to the parameters our government places on the American Capitalist system.
This is not an argument over socialism vs. free market. It is a matter of survival. Our current trade policies guarantee that wages for the vast majority of American workers will fail meet the needs of their families or serve as a tax base for their government when it is forced to provide food, housing, and medical care for those families of workers who cannot earn a living wage.
