Trolling again, eh? I think it more along the lines of displaying pigheaded stupidity, but I'll humor you for now. Anyone lacking a basic sense of self-preservation doesn't deserve much, but it is a holiday and perhaps you'll get something out of this, though I really, really doubt it. All of this is utterly simple and, in my view, irrefutable.
In the US, before globalization, in the 1940s and 1950s, industrial manufacturing accounted for nearly 30% of GDP. Agriculture is not included in this figure even though it is of course a sort of manufacturing. I doubt that manufacturing, excluding agriculture, is more than 10 percent of GDP today. And I am equally sure that a significant percentage of our current industrial production lies in the military sector, which creates little wealth. It creates things that explode, thereby becoming economically useless. There are a few exceptions, like GPS, but on the whole, the military sector creates little wealth despite the pouring of huge amounts of capital into it.
Manufacturing creates wealth. A significant portion of our wealth-creating system, mostly capital, was shipped overseas when trade barriers were lowered. Developing nations were the main recipients of this largesse because labor costs were lower. Multinationals promoted this scam not only because it raised their profits by lowering labor expenses but because of numerous other advantages: lax environmental enforcement, political regimes even more corrupt than ours, safety requirements which were significantly lower, etc. Globalization indeed helped our multinationals but if you think they are good citizens of the USA, you are more self-deluded than I ever thought. They are stateless sharks, simply looking for profits wherever they may be.
The products created overseas were of course cheaper and were sold to us at places like Walmart, creating a false 'new' prosperity, the kind of prosperity you love but clearly don't understand. In the meantime, as globalization has gained steam, countries like Japan, China and Korea amass huge stores of capital.
Since the shipping overseas of capital and jobs creates unemployment and lower paying jobs here, the 'new' prosperity requires new sources of financing for consumption to take place, ergo, the rise of credit cards, home equity credit, second mortgages and a host of new ways to have consumers burn through the wealth they had accumulated before globalization took their jobs away or created lower-paying jobs. All for people like you to consume on unnecessary doo-dads manufactured overseas and to feel 'prosperous' and 'rich' as a result. Trust me, because you have books that surround you, a couple of TVs, a home (which has undoubtedly tanked in value), and drink imported beer, you are not rich.
In case you have not noticed, we are in an economic crisis, one that began when the consumer's biggest ATM, his home, started to fall in value. What happened to that globalized prosperity? It is disappearing as the debt incurred to support consumption has overwhelmed consumers.
So, yes, the consumer, Joe Six Pack, you, are indebted up to eyeball level, with jobs that do not pay as much as before, if employed at all.
But, hey, all this stuff is cheaper! Isn't life grand looking out that window, seeing absolutely nothing except birds chirping, flowers blooming, all while economic termites are eating up the ground beneath you and huge storms gather? And globalization in a sense was the trigger in my view that set off all these firecrackers.
Underclass? Please don't make me laugh, please don't embarrass yourself with this crazy spin on things. |
