No doubt left (if there ever was any)...

From the beginning of the globalization frenzy, some of us have been saying that it is nothing more, or less, than a race to the bottom, in terms of wages paid to workers.

Some of us have understood from the beginning that the entire point of all the trade agreements that have been struck has been to reduce the wages paid to American workers, something that business would laud as an increase in efficiency.

Some of us have understood from the beginning that business interests in America have as their primary goal the depression of wages paid to American workers, and view with admiration the kinds of worker oppression seen in other countries—with forced labor only distinguishable as a matter of degree.

Some of us have always understood that if business could get away with paying their workers a bowl of rice a day as payment in full for their labor, as a kind of indentured servitude for the privilege of eating anything at all, that this would be seen as an ideal situation: cheap (nearly free) labor AND a bowed and broken “citizenry”—a real two-fer!

But rarely has it been so brazenly elucidated as it was in today’s New York Times, in American Wages Out of Balance:

“American workers are overpaid, relative to equally productive employees elsewhere doing the same work.”

“The global wage gap has been narrowing, but recent labor market statistics in the United States suggest the adjustment has not gone far enough.”

“the recession shows that many workers are paid more than they’re worth”

“It’s possible to run the numbers to show that American manufacturing workers should take average real wage cuts of as much as 20 percent to get into global balance.”

When will they admit that this was the goal all along, to depress American wages to the level of those in so-called Third World nations? Or don’t they think we care (or remember) anymore? (Bill Clinton, I’m talking to YOU!)

Any wage-earner who still believes that anyone has their interests first and foremost is sadly deluded. We “little people” are nothing but toast now, as the real players drink deep of their champagne while plotting their next moves. And make no mistake: we are of no consequence; it really is all about them.

By them I mean: those who are calling all the money shots, via their purchased toady politicians; those who would refuse to institute single-payer healthcare for all and who see nothing wrong with making people die for lack of healthcare; those who have been ceaselessly trying to destroy all social safety nets like pensions, Social Security, and unemployment insurance; those who want to “starve the government” of tax revenues, but then suck up all the remaining tax revenues by threatening to otherwise take down the economy with their “too big to fail” gambling enterprises. They will not rest until they bring every one of us to ruin and can scrape up our remains.

The sociopaths are in charge now.

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(Image: modified from sideshowmom)