Jobs and families, a very big difference between Republican and Democratic leadership

[whereisjustice]

When a Republican endorses destroying American families and communities by sending jobs to the slums of Asia and Mexico, they'll tell you it's just simple economics. The CEO has the right to make more money by firing you and hiring slave labor in Asia if he wants to. It's just cold hard cash in their pockets.

When Democratic leadership endorses destroying American families and communities by sending jobs to the slums of Asia and Mexico, they'll tell you they are hurting your community in the most socially responsible way, by helping the more needy families of Asia and Mexico.

Do you want to sacrifice your children to satisfy the endless greed of a Wall Street CEO? Or do you want to sacrifice your children to the benefit of more worthy families in Asia and beyond?

Clearly one is better than the other. Please keep this important distinction in mind when complaining about losing your job to India or China. Stop being so selfish. Obviously if you cared about your job AND the world, you'd be willing to work for $7/day.

We just got more evidence that the middle class in America is dying. According to brand new numbers that were just released by the Social Security Administration, 51 percent of all workers in the United States make less than $30,000 a year. Let that number sink in for a moment. You can’t support a middle class family in America today on just $2,500 a month – especially after taxes are taken out. And yet more than half of all workers in this country make less than that each month. In order to have a thriving middle class, you have got to have an economy that produces lots of middle class jobs, and that simply is not happening in America today.

You can find the report that the Social Security Administration just released right here. The following are some of the numbers that really stood out for me…

-38 percent of all American workers made less than $20,000 last year.

-51 percent of all American workers made less than $30,000 last year.

-62 percent of all American workers made less than $40,000 last year.

-71 percent of all American workers made less than $50,000 last year.

That first number is truly staggering. The federal poverty level for a family of five is $28,410, and yet almost 40 percent of all American workers do not even bring in $20,000 a year.

http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/goodbye-middle-class-51-percent-of-all-american-workers-make-less-than-30000-dollars-a-year

[Trillo]

1. Interesting your post dropped to the second page.

It's often said the truth hurts, perhaps this is such a case.

[whereisjustice]

4. Yes, Democratic Party is willing to destroy the middle class inorder to support conservative

candidates who represent Wall Street and only Wall Street.

[pampango]

2. Trump knows we have much more to fear from Mexicans, Muslims, Chinese than we do from our own 1%.

I would hope that Democrats counter this with a view that taming our own 1% with progressive taxes, strong unions, better regulation and effective safety nets will help the 99% across the board.

Trump's win-lose mentality to international relations (of course, WE must win and YOU must lose) is in stark contrast to the model that FDR created in which international cooperation would result in a win-win for US and for THEM. Of course, international cooperation is not high on Donald's list of priorities. STRONG LEADERS don't negotiate or cooperate, they DO STUFF unilaterally.

If all we do is go after some foreign scapegoats (THEM) and don't focus on "progressive taxes, strong unions, better regulation and effective safety nets" we will be back in the pre-FDR republican era. We taught those foreign scapegoats a lesson back then; not that it did our middle class any good. International trade dried up but without "progressive taxes, strong unions, better regulation and effective safety nets" the benefits accrued to the 1% - which is why the 1% pushed Coolidge and Hoover to raise tariffs and kill trade; their industries were protected from foreign competition.

Today we trade less than practically any other country in the world. (We are #184 out of 186 countries.) Trade is 25% of our economy. Domestic commerce is 75%. (That proportion is reversed in Germany where trade is 75% and domestic is 25%.) Without "progressive taxes, strong unions, better regulation and effective safety nets" our 99% benefits from neither the 25% nor the 75% parts of the economy. With "progressive taxes, strong unions, better regulation and effective safety nets", we would benefit from both just as they do in progressive countries like Germany which trades 3 times as much as we do.

[whereisjustice]

3. India, China and Mexico are getting good manufacturing AND professional jobs from millions

this fact has devastated communities, increased crime, suppressed wages, and caused impossible but true profit to be concentrated into the hands of a few hundred people who own more than half the world's wealth.

I AM going to call out the job killers (and you sound exactly like one of those) for the government legislation and supporting candidates like Hillary Clinton that incentivizes and encourages corporations to build the economies of India, China and Mexico while abandoning the citizens of the United States.

Of course I don't blame the worker living in a slum in India for the high prison rate in the US caused by job loses. A typical rhetorical trick from the conservative wing of both political parties is to call anyone objecting to the exploitation of the slave workforce in Asia and Mexico as "protectionists".

That's like saying global warming is just a liberal conspiracy and what we have is "weather, not climate change".

Unrestrained outsourcing to Asia and Mexico and insourcing by abuses of the H1B program is killing the American middle class and concentrating profits into the hands of the 1% who want all the benefits of our plutocracy but refuse to pay for it.

The trade imbalance exists because we made a deal with China and India that says - we'll send a corrupt and/or communist country with military ambitions in large global areas, trillions of investment in education and infrastructure so that we can exploit your unregulated indentured workforce to make our cheap plastic shit, write our software, manage our investments and insurance policies, bank accounts, read x-rays, paralegal work, basic research, etc etc etc. And don't worry, you'll never have to buy anything made in the USA but we'll give you a decent rate on T-bills so you can protect your profits with our banking system.

We are LITERALLY feeding our young to Mexico and Asia so that the 1% can become obscenely rich and control our lives with their self-serving government.

And that is true for Democrats AND Republicans.

[pampango]

7. We trade less than essentially every other country in the world. Trade is not our problem.

If trade was the cause of middle class problems, then the middle classes in Germany and Sweden would be worse off than the American middle class since their levels of trade are 2 to 3 times higher than ours.

China, India and Mexico don't seem to have shattered their middle classes and their manufacturing workers make more than their American counterparts and have much stronger unions.

If relatively small countries like Germany and Sweden have figured out to survive and thrive in a world filled with poor people, it must be possible for a big country like the US to do the same. If they have done it then it is not impossible to do. They did not do it by building physical walls with Mexico or figurative walls with China, India and other poor countries.

Our problem is that we abandoned the progressive policies that FDR fought for. Thankfully there are many progressive countries that have not abandoned those policies. The middle class in those countries are thankful.

[whereisjustice]

9. Its the job loses, its the job loses, its the job loses and the tax breaks that go with them...

If FDR saw the poverty and exploitation that goes along with sending millions of good jobs to factory slums he'd put an end to it.

Stop pretending he was in favor of sending virtually every job that isn't nailed down to a low wage hellhole in Asia at the expense of American families, increased crime and crumbling infrastructure.

[BernieforPres2016]

8. It's natural that trade is a much smaller % of our economy than Germany's

We are a huge country with an enormous consumer market of over 300 million people, one neighbor along our northern border, one neighbor along our southern border, and oceans between us and Europe and Asia. Germany sits in the middle of Europe, a country of 80 million in a continent of 750 million, and its economic model is based on exports.

Trade is never going to be nearly as large a percentage of the U.S. economy as it is for the German economy, nor should it be.

There are plenty of economists who think Germany's zeal for exports is a big contributor to why a number of European economies such as Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal are borderline financial basket cases. And Germany's economy isn't so healthy either.

http://europesworld.org/2015/02/23/germanys-sickly-economy/#.VvbkOmQrKu4

I agree with much of what you wrote, but I don't think using Germany's percentage of foreign versus domestic commerce versus that of the U.S. is meaningful.

[VulgarPoet]

5. Meet the new boss; same as the old boss.

Is there even a difference anymore? For the life of me, I can't tell.

[whereisjustice]

6. The difference on this issue is emotional spin. The end result is the same, lower wages, less

opportunity, more disparity and inequity, more crime and prison.

Hillary has made a nice living paving the road for good professional jobs to leave for Mexico and Asia.

They won't stop until America has a 3rd world underclass ruled by a first world 1%.

[appalachiablue]

10. The difference between the two becomes harder and harder to find.