(2) Free Trade / Offshoring

I am not an advocate of Laissez Faire capitalism; neither am I a proponent of free trade. I believe government intervention in the marketplace is necessary to protect our jobs and people especially since our markets are increasingly global.

American jobs and pay have allowed us to enjoy a much higher standard of living than most of the rest of the world for a long time. If we open our product markets to unfettered global competition, companies will be forced to cut labor costs severely. This will continue to happen until our product prices and thus pay rates reach an equilibrium in the new global market. Company profits will definitely go up and owners will make out. But because "trickle down" is nothing more than a pretext for justifying (selling) this to the masses the result will be irreversible lowering of the standard of living for the working classes (until it also reaches a global equilibrium) and the gap between the rich and the rest will substantially widen.

Offshoring produces the same result. If we allow our companies to shop for labor in the global market and move operations offshore to capitalize on lower pay rates we will see a drastic reduction in the standard of living the of middle and lower classes (the working classes). The standard of living of the upper class (those that own the companies) will rise however as profits go up. Republicans / conservatives will claim that if profits go up, then its good for the economy, the working classes and everyone. They justify this with the farce that the wealth will trickle down to the lower and middle classes (i.e., in terms of more jobs). Even if we assume they don't offshore those jobs (which is a complete stretch), the "competitive" rates of pay that are now offered will be lower and lower. Result: just as I said above - irreversible lowering of the standard of living for the working classes. Another negative side effect is that in addition to the lower pay rates, American employees will be subjected to progressively worse working conditions for blue collar workers and ever deteriorating corporate cultures for low and mid-range white collar workers. We're already seeing this at my company.

Now that more people are beginning to understand this, how will the Republicans / conservatives try to repackage it in order to deceive the working class into unwittingly voting against their interest again? Mitt Romney's advice is that the lower and middle classes should buy up as much stock as they can while prices are low. This is the golden secret. WTF!?!

Unfortunately, when the Republicans wrap this BS in patriotism and nationalistic pride there are lots of people who buy in. Add to this a few sound bytes from some conservative charlatan talking about his faith in God while standing in front of the Ronald Reagan diary and half the working class can be persuaded to vote completely against their interest. They'll even try to convince others that the Republican agenda is actually God's agenda and everyone else is bereft of morals. It's really scary to me how this fascism can be so overt but go unrecognized by the masses.