The United States used to be a nation whose population, through hard work and sound policy, grew wealthier over time. Now, we are a nation whose middle class has nearly disappeared, whose workers’ wages have stagnated, and whose plutocrats become greedier and wealthier with each passing year.
A quick look at the facts reveals why this has happened and continues to happen. America has become a less productive nation over time. Unfortunately, only the rich are enjoying any increase in wealth. The rest of us, though we work harder than Americans did in the past, enjoy no more wealth than the previous generation of workers did decades ago. CEOs make hundreds of times what their workers make, whereas half a century ago they made 20-25 times the salaries of their employees.
This is accomplished largely through “free trade” agreements. Since workers in other countries work for wages as low as a dollar per hour, and since those countries do not require the same health and safety standards we lobbied for and achieved here in America, it pays business owners to move their jobs overseas.
“Free trade” is uncontrolled, unrestricted access to our economy, tariff- and duty-free, with products produced in foreign countries at wage rates much lower than ours, sometimes as low as $4 per hour. “Free trade” is thus forcing us to outsource most of our manufacturing, enriching the individuals and companies that do so, and turning more millionaires into billionaires while our own labor force – the middle class – evaporates.
How could workers’ wages possibly rise when they have to compete with wages that are far less than half of those made by American workers? This raises the question of why politicians keep getting us stuck in these “free trade” agreements to begin with? The answer is simple: because they are paid to. The campaign contributions that determine, more so than the will of the public, who will be elected and who will be sent home, come from the very people getting rich off of free trade.
That is the situation we face. The wealthy in our nation are just getting more wealthy. While most Americans struggle to pay our bills with increased costs of living, the wealthy see their riches increase at an incredibly fast rate. A portion of this extra wealth is then donated to politicians who obediently pass more “free trade” agreements to keep the cycle going. The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), for instance, is being negotiated without any input from the voters who will be expected to live under it, but all the big business leaders have lobbyists sitting at the negotiating table.
The only way out is for “We the People” to unite and demand change.
