All paths lead back to American billionnaire greed.

who predicted a "Giant Sucking Sound" so many years ago..........Perfectly logical given what we were watching.....
And nobody listened......

there was blatant disinformation shared frequently right here on DU.

TPP was meant to counter China's influence by organizing with the smaller countries in Asia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Pacific_Partnership

I remember the disinformation.

when laws required the final document to be released and approved by Congress.

Doubt I’ll ever get over that, not to mention mention what 8 years of trump will do to country.

Hope we don’t similarly screw ourselves in midterms.

The problem is that there has to be legislation in place such as NAFTA and GATT that allows greed to be fertilized into a massive beanstalk in the first place.

Both parties are to fault allowing this, which is sad on our part.

While the nation slept........

Bought Staples, then got China to make cheap products for them, causing their American manufacturers to shut down.

Last edited Sun May 11, 2025, 09:05 PM - Edit history (1)

It’s always someone else’s fault.

mostly republicans on this front. The legislature and executive branch need to make the rules of the game conducive to this happening for the businesses to take advantage of it.

definition of Fascism is the merger of Government and Corporations......

It is becoming more obvious every day that Corporations and Putin are the ones truly running the Republican Party and Trump

…can’t stand the ba$+@ rd…
…just sayin’

All while the cashed billions in government contracts and subsidies.

so instead of upgrading equipment and facilities here, they just built shiny new ones offshore. Instead of continuing to pay the most productive workforce on the planet, they paid a lot less for a less productive workforce plush shipping costs on top ot it, mostly because they hated unions, even if their businesses had never had to deal with a union.

Republicans are the ones pushing the "they stole our jobs" narrative because whipping up hate of the "other" suits their purposes, they talk about punishing other countries with tariffs when it's the US population who will have to shoulder the cost of them.

It's a jorse shit narrative, but we knew that. The problem is that so many hateful Republicans are buying it.

and labor regulations in the US that are meant to keep people and our environment safe.

...due to outsourcing.

It's odd that no one ever seems to talk about that.

Insatiable consumer desire for "cheap stuff" will always drive the quest for less expensive manufacturing & create opportunities for businesses (& business owners) who want to capitalize on that desire.

…and capitalism has unfairly redrawn the playing field

Corporations used to be in a race to the top, trying to make the best......now they have been in a race to the bottom..(as in Bottom Line Profitability)

Made in Korea. Oops Koreas wages went up
Made in Taiwan. Oops Taiwans wages went up
Made in China. Oops Chinas wages went up
Made in India, Bangladesh, Viet Nam.

Confessions of an Economic Hitman. By John perkins

Free trade:

1) Creates more American jobs than it loses,
2) Keeps domestic prices low,
3) Makes the world a much more peaceful place. This is the most important.

Free trade DOESN'T:

1) Result in a net loss of American jobs.

Tightly restricted trade is a critical tool for any dictator.

By claiming free trade is bad, we are validating Trump's talking point.

on steroids. This is one big world and we are a small part of it.

No one has ever been able to point to a sustained economy under that governing model - at any point in world history - because it isn't functional. Its all about greed and 'whoever dies with the most toys wins'.

And thats why Vance scares me more than Trump. Trump is a man child stomping his feet and demanding fealty as he spends $10s of millions of taxpayer money a month playing golf while blathering about dolls and pencils.

Vance is in the pocket of Peter Thiel and the like who won't be happy until they hoover up the Treasury into their own crypto accounts.

Trump is erratic. That crew is dangerous.

and very good point.

So the whole talking point is stupid.

The problem isn't jobs, it is good paying jobs. More to the point, it is the class warfare as the rich keep wages low and gain most of the benefits from labor. People are working, but the benefits of that labor are becoming more and more concentrated in the few. This is a huge problem, the major problem.

Very difficult to be struggling with buying food and paying bills and think clearly about anything. I’ve been there. You blame anyone that’s handy. In the end though, it was the bosses who wouldn’t pay fairly unless you were a buddy. And people in charge that cut pay so they can have fat bonuses.

Yes, American companies outsourced jobs to countries with cheaper labor. But also, foreign companies themselves have sometimes created better and/or cheaper products, which stole market share from American companies. So there really are two ways we lost jobs to other countries.