"Wall Street told US manufacturers to move their production to China in order to increase profits from lower labor and regulatory costs, or Wall Street would finance takeovers of the companies, and the new owners would raise the firms’ profitability by moving production offshore. Large retailers, such as Walmart, ordered suppliers 'to meet the Chinese price.'
When the jobs were in the US, most of the gains in productivity went to labor. Therefore, real median family incomes rose through time, and the consumer purchasing power this income growth provided drove the US economy to success for ever more people. When the jobs were moved to Asia, the growth in real median US family incomes stopped and declined."
Paul Craig Roberts
"A credibility trap is when the managerial functions of a society have been sufficiently compromised by corruption so that the leadership cannot reform, or even honestly address, the problems of that system without implicating a broad swath of the powerful, including themselves.
The moneyed interests and their aspirants tolerate the corruption because they have profited from it, and would like to continue to do so. Discipline is maintained by various forms of soft financial rewards and social coercion."
Jesse
I don't necessarily agree with Paul C. Roberts on many things, but I know the above to be true. I saw it happening up close and personal. It was fairly obvious really to the objective and informed observers of history. Ideologues of all persuasions, not so much— they are always lost in some new era, with those things outside the boundaries of their reality proscribed by utterly inadequate models, selective facts, and self-defining truths.
The sophists in the professional class will say 'prove it,' and offer their tortured models and selective histories to show that this was merely the natural path of progress and technology, ie unavoidable. But they will feel your pain, from a distance.
I am afraid that things are apparently way past that point of arguing futilely about it with a mind to finding an organic remedy, if you have not noticed. Some have spoken about this for years, warning of your folly in vain. And now, ladies and gentlemen, a banquet of consequences is being served by the Mad Hatter, once again.The futures were gyrating after the bell as some big name companies like Paypal, Microsoft, Intel and Alphabet turn in their financial results.
The wiseguys want to unload a mass of big IPOs in the next two weeks, so they will attempt to support the markets as long as nothing happens to make that too difficult.
I suspect that the Republican dominated Congress will do their best to ruin the economy. I wonder how much Trump may fall into line, or pursue his own instincts and legacy.
The Democrats are virtually sidelined, as they only slowly begin to digest the consequences of the failure of their neo-liberal economics, world power ambitions, and the 'better of two evils' political strategies. As for their Republicans, they are obsequiously vile in the service of the moneyed interests.
Greed prevails as fear recedes. The 'establishment' is firmly mired in denial of their failing policies.
Something wicked this way comes.
Have a pleasant evening.
