Woe to you who are rich

Woe to you who are rich

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The Largest Export Product From the US Is What? Four Graphs That Will Make Your Blood Boil

What is the largest export product in the United States since NAFTA? The answer is simple: Jobs and with them, the US tax base that supports government services, such as roads, police and schools. These exported jobs are also what is fueling the recent gains in the stock market because the difference between the old wages and the new lower wages goes into the pockets of the 1 percent via higher corporate earnings, rising dividends and surging share prices. Coincidentally, the graph only shows job losses via export until 2010. This trend has had increase since then.

The United States is importing more manufactured goods, primarily from jobs that have been exported, or created overseas, by US corporations. In other words, the imports we purchase from overseas are from jobs that used to be, or would’ve been, in the US, in the absence of the free trade treaties that have paved the way. The difference between the old wages and the new lower wages overseas goes into the pockets of the 1 percent via higher corporate earnings, rising dividends and surging share prices.

Some of the jobs have been lost to automation, but most have been exported.

Manufacturing gone south since and because of Nafta and other trade agreements

Free Trade Agreements Mean Jobs Are Evaporating All Over the World

Cumulative Jobs Exported Since Nafta became law. These figures are from the Federal Reserve. Notice, Fed officials don’t suggest these jobs have been lost to automation.

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The Fix the Debt Campaign-Who These Lying, Corrupt, Morons Are Beholden to

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Is Stupidity Circular Reasoning?

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Is Senator Elizabeth Warren Preparing to Take on the Banksters Where Others Are Too Scared?

Senator Elizabeth Warren wrote a letter to the corrupt Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. She “demanded to know why the government keeps accepting financial settlements from criminal bankers when they could instead be taken to trial, convicted and locked up.”

The letter was also sent to corrupt US Attorney General Eric Holder, the person most capable and completely unwilling to deal with the crimes of Wall Street. SEC Chair Mary Jo White also received a copy.

Senator Warren put the matter bluntly, “..…I believe very strongly that if a regulator reveals itself to be unwilling to take large financial institutions all the way to trial — either because it is too timid or because it lacks resources — the regulator has a lot less leverage in settlement negotiations and will be forced to settle on terms that are much more favorable to the wrongdoer.

The consequence can be insufficient compensation to those who are harmed by illegal activity and inadequate deterrence of future violations. If large financial institutions can break the law and accumulate millions in profits and, if they get caught, settle by paying out of those profits, they do not have much incentive to follow the law.”

In other words, Wall Street banks rip off main street citizens, make big profits in the process, and then get assessed tiny penalties that are paid for with the money they stole from us. Doesn’t sound like much of a deal for the 99 percent to me. It’s a scam aided and abetted by the federal government.

We all know the answers to the problems outlined by Warren. The US government has been completely corrupted by big money, through both chambers of congress, both political parties, the white house, and all the way to both liberal and conservative wings of the US Supreme Court. That’s why and how the whole economic game has been legislatively rigged against the 99 percent. Elizabeth Warren is our champion.

The letter is below. It should also have been addressed to Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden, as well as Wall Street President Barack Obama.

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The Seven Rules of Life

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Middle Class Senator Bernie Sanders Explains the Causes of the Deficit

Bernie and the Deficit

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Video: Massive Smog pollution in China in 2013

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Are Free Trade Supporters Right? Does Free Trade Curb Pollution?

One photograph is worth a thousand words

US corporations have shipped hundreds of thousands, probably millions, of US jobs from the US to China. These corporations exported jobs from the US in part because they could avoid US environmental laws. The result is that the US has exported massive amounts of pollution to China, and with all the health benefits and carbon emissions, and I mean that sarcastically if accurately.

In February 2013, the Guardian reported that, “Beijing residents were urged to stay indoors on Thursday as pollution levels soared before a sandstorm brought further misery to China’s capital.

A thick blanket of smog covered large swathes of the country in the morning, causing residents to once again dig out face-masks as China’s grueling winter of pollution continues.

The noxious haze saw the US embassy’s air quality index reading for Beijing hit 516 at 6am, signaling air quality worse than the highest classification of hazardous.”

That’s one of the cool things about free trade if you’re a member of the 1 percent. Profits before people, the environment and life itself. In other words, those who support free trade while claiming that it helps the environment are lying, and they know it.

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Why the Corporate and Political Elite Insist Population Growth Is Good; or Is the US Getting Set to Enter a Great Depression?

The answer to the title above is simple; constant population growth equals constantly growing corporate profits. That’s not necessarily a good thing for the 99 percent.

The US economy is dominated by a Ponzi Scheme known as Wall Street. As corporate earnings rise, stock prices generally rise. If aggregate corporate profits go down, as they always must in time, then that 15,000+ value we see today with the Dow Jones Industrials can drop to 8,000 or less, as it did during the Great Recession.

Now imagine what would happen if the economy never came out of the Great Recession, like during the Great Depression. In October 1929, the Dow Jones was close to 400, up from less than 100 in 1921. The Depression hit that month, the economy entered into a sustained decline, the Dow dropped and dropped until it was less than 50 in October 1932. That’s a lot of speculative profits that were wiped out. The Dow began climbing with the election of FDR on November 8, 1932. But what if FDR didn’t win and the US continued down the same path? There’s a good chance the Dow would’ve dropped to a value of zero.

One way to avert such a calamity is to have constantly increasing population. As population grows, there are more people to feed, which means constantly growing demand for goods and services, which helps corporate profits rise, which keeps the Dow growing. The government will even feed and house tens of millions of people in order to keep demand up.

If, however, the US population was to decline, especially in the long-run, so too would the demand for goods and services. That means corporate profits would begin a long term drop. The financial markets would plummet in the long run. Paper profits that have grown over decades would vanish like smoke.

The birth rates of US citizens began to slow a few decades ago, and to compensate, your government opened the floodgates of immigration to compensate for that. Of course, there were other factors for doing this, as well. More immigrants meant a downward push on wage growth. The difference between what wages would’ve been in the absence of higher immigration and what they became with greater immigration went into the already fat wallets of the super rich via higher corporate profits, share prices and rising dividends.

This is not to suggest that immigration is always a bad thing, especially if there is a rising tide of prosperity for all. However, immigration during a time when there has been a massive redistribution of income and wealth flowing from the 99 to the 1 percent probably isn’t a good thing for the 99 percent. But it is good for Wall Street and the 1 percent, and for the reasons cited above.

If population growth continues to slow, and last year it grew only 0.7 percent, and middle class income continues to stagnate, then the current record rise in the Dow Jones Industrials suggests it is a bubble caused by redistributing income from the 99 to the 1 percent.

In other words, it is possible the current pathetic economic expansion is ambling down a road that ends at a very steep cliff. This brings us to a question.

Was the Great Recession just a blip on the road to an even greater Depression somewhere down the road a few years from now?

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