Five Graphs And a Video That Will Make Your Blood Boil: Lies of the US Propaganda Media, The US Jobs Crisis! The Mystery is Solved

Look at the graph below. Almost 30 million US jobs have been shipped away since the signing of NAFTA, according to the Federal Reserve. That’s your tax base for schools, police and other government services. That’s why classes are overcrowded and school district’s are finding it difficult to keep up with constantly rising prices.

The total number of jobs exported since Nafta was enacted into law in 1994.

When jobs are shipped overseas, the difference between the old higher wages and the new lower wages are redistributed into the pockets of rich corporate shareholders via rising corporate earnings, soaring share prices and skyrocketing dividend payments. That means the wages of nearly 30 million jobs and the tax base these jobs used to support have been redistributed into the pockets of the 1 percent. That’s precisely why CEO pay has gone up and up since Nafta and other free trade treaties have been enacted. Check out the graph below. Notice that the massive rise in CEO pay began in 1994.

It should also be pointed out that free trade treaties not only pave the way to redistribute your child’s education to the .01 percent richest of Americans, these income redistribution treaties also pave the way for US companies to create jobs overseas, rather than here, where they belong.

The US propaganda media tells us that the jobs are going away because of automation. This is a lie because nobody would have a job nowadays since automation has been occurring since the industrial revolution began, and for the most part, more jobs are always created by new technologies and automation. Think about computers. They replaced typewriters. Computers support far more jobs and job creation than typewriters ever did. Where do you think all that software comes from? The Internet wouldn’t exist without computers. So why is there a jobs crisis? Check out the graph below. According to the Federal Reserve, every year one to two million jobs are shipped away. That doesn’t count the jobs US corporations create overseas, rather than here, due to free trade treaties.

US corporations continue to ship millions of jobs overseas, and they continue to create them overseas due to free income redistribution trade treaties. Almost three million jobs were shipped away in 2009 and 2010. Probably another two million were shipped away in 2011, and even more in 2012. Did automation do that? I don’t think so. Did automation sign a free trade treaty so that US corporations could create jobs overseas rather than here? I doubt it.

Look at the graph of the Dow Jones Industrial Average below. Notice that when NAFTA was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in January 1994, the Dow took off, from just under 4,000 to up and up. Opening Mexico to free trade allowed US corporations to move production there and redistribute massive amounts of income from working people to the 1 percent in the process. It also paved the way for US corporations that produced goods in extremely low paying places like China to ship those items to Mexico, and in the process, this crushed Mexican production in such things as shoe manufacturing, but it was profitable for American companies, and the 1 percent. Record corporate earnings, due to redistributing income from working Americans to the 1 percent, has pushed the Dow Jones to record levels.

The Dow is over 14,000 nowadays. One reason is because of record corporate profits. How can that be since we have a weak economy? The world economy is also weak. So what can possibly explain the rise in the Dow? Since the demand for goods and services are historically pathetic, the only way for corporations to bid up their share prices has been to ship jobs overseas, and that means millions of them.

The result of free trade income treaties have been a financial miracle for the top 1 percent, and especially so for the top .1 percent. Those are the people who own the federal government, sheep dogs like Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden. Notice that a massive shift in income going to the 1 percent began, oh, judging by the graph, about January 1994, when Nafta was signed into law. That’s the result of your free trade treaties.

The rest of us are being driven into banana republic status since our income is being redistributed to the 1 percent.

One other point needs to be made. The graph below only goes to 2007. Since then the 1 percent has been stealing well over 88 percent of all income growth. That means the 1 percent are now stealing over 30 percent of all the income earned in the USA.

This is why free trade treaties are so popular among the 1 percent. This is why their propaganda machines, like Fox News, MSNBC, the Oregonian newspaper, the New York Post and the New York Times and all the major and cable propaganda networks love free trade treaties and why they lie to us by telling us that automation is the great job destroyer.

So we know free trade is the great job destroyer, the primary vehicle of income redistribution, and the great conduit of wealth redistribution.

More income means more wealth. So the 1 percent now own over 40 percent of all wealth in the US compared to 8 percent forty-five years ago. Take a look at the video below to get a good idea about the actual distribution of wealth, which are assets. The US is the 75th most unequal nation in terms wealth inequality in the world, and that was several years ago. It’s gotten much worse since then. And it’s getting worse. Want to reverse this trend? Take action. Get involved. Stop the newest trade treaty that’s being negotiated; the Trans Pacific Partnership. The Guardian newspaper calls it “NAFTA on Steroids.”

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The Great Government Scam in the War Against the Middle Class

The great American scam in the war against the middle class. What do Wall Street Senator’s Orrin Hatch and Ron Wyden and all of the Republican Party and 80 percent of the Democratic Party do for a living? They sponsor legislation that outsources and off shore American jobs, and the difference between the old higher wages and the new lower wages goes into the pockets of their masters, the 1 percent, via higher corporate profits, rising share prices and surging dividends.

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The Ponzi Scam: Why it Matters to Wall Street that the US added only 96,000 jobs in August 2012

That the economy added only 96,000 jobs in August is considered bad news, but nobody in politics, business or the media ever tells us why.

The answer is simple and would probably cause US citizens to get angry or at least wonder what the hell is going on. Some would wonder, “What kind of Ponzi Scam is Wall Street running?” Others might think, “What have we gotten ourselves into?” Or worse, at least from the point-of-view of the scam artists of Wall Street, average citizens in large numbers might suggest we do something about this scam.

To keep the Ponzi scam known as Wall Street from collapsing, the US population always needs to increase. That’s because corporate profits must always grow in the long run, because if they drop in the long run, corporate shares would nose-dive and corporate bond values would plummet. The shares of publicly traded limited liability corporations would then collapse to zero or nearly so, and this includes such heavyweights as Apple Inc. and Microsoft. The wealth of the 1 percent would vanish, and could evaporate nearly overnight. Wall Street would lay in ashes and the 99 percent of US citizens would be better off with the Wall Street parasite dead, but the plutocrats of the US government, like Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden, doesn’t like the idea of not worshiping and serving the interests of the almighty dollar.

One of the ways to keep the value of corporate shares constantly rising in the long-term is to keep the underlying population growing. More mouths to feed means more demand for goods and services, and this helps to keep corporate shares moving up, which keeps Wall Street in business. A decline in population would mean less mouths to feed and clothe and would send Wall Street reeling into a financial abyss until it became “valueless,” which is the same as saying “dead.”

That is why adding 96,000 jobs in August is considered bad. That number doesn’t keep up with population growth and it doesn’t help the current excess surplus of labor (the unemployed) obtain jobs already shipped away or destroyed by government income redistribution schemes. These scams redistribute income from the 99 to the 1 percent via federal legislation, such as free trade treaties, deregulation and privatization. (Those scams, by the way, are also intended to keep the values of stocks traded in the financial markets moving upward. But that’s a different story.) More importantly, from Wall Street’s point-of-view, people are less willing to immigrate to the USA if there are not enough jobs to support themselves. That idea sends chills up the spines of the parasites of Wall Street.

The US population continues to grow by tens of millions every decade. Does anybody think that’s a good thing? Endless population growth? The Chinese don’t, so they enacted policies more than a decade ago to limit population increases. But like a drug addict, Wall Street needs greater and greater population to sustain its Ponzi scam. The 99 percent doesn’t need the growth, not at all.

The US population pretty much leveled out a few decades ago, and so that’s why most of the US population increase since then (over 90 percent) has come from immigration. Immigration, both legal and illegal, serves corporate and Wall Street interests in two ways; immigration keeps the population and mouths to feed growing, thereby serving the needs of Wall Street; and it puts downward pressure on the wages, salaries and other compensation of US citizens, and the difference between the old US wages and the new goes into the pockets of the 1 percent via higher corporate profits, dividends and share prices.

In other words, the quest for ever rising corporate profits are what drive the need for population and GNP growth. Yes, it’s all about more and more money for the 1 percent; the necessary ingredient to keep the Ponzi scheme known as Wall Street afloat and prosperous. But it does so while driving more and more of the 99 percent onto the poverty rolls because it’s nothing more than an income redistribution scam.

See related story below.

Woe to the Democrats: The US Added Only 96,000 jobs in August–The Guardian UK</a

Thank you George W Bush for the Tax Cuts that Created the Lost Decade of the Middle Class — JohnHively.wordpress.com

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Where Have All the Good Jobs Gone?

John Schmitt and Janelle Jones of the Center for Economic and Policy Research reached a conclusion from their research. Their conclusions are incorrect, but the information is still impressive. A synopsis is below.

“The U.S. workforce is substantially older and better-educated than it was at the end of the 1970s. The typical worker in 2010 was seven years older than in 1979. In 2010, over one-third of US workers had a four-year college degree or more, up from just one-fifth in 1979. Given that older and better-educated workers generally receive higher pay and better benefits, we would have expected the share of “good jobs” in the economy to have increased in line with improvements in the quality of workforce. Instead, the share of “good jobs” in the U.S. economy has actually fallen. The estimates in this paper, which control for increases in age and education of the population, suggest that relative to 1979 the economy has lost about one-third (28 to 38 percent) of its capacity to generate good jobs. The data show only minor differences between 2007, before the Great Recession began, and 2010, the low point for the labor market. The deterioration in the economy’s ability to generate good jobs reflects long-run changes in the U.S. economy, not short-run factors related to the recession or recent economic policy.”

The reason why so many good jobs are gone is simple; they’ve been redistributed to the rich. Enact a free trade treaty, ship jobs overseas. The difference between the old higher wages in the US and the new lower wages is pocketed by the affluent via higher corporate profits, rising dividends and surging share prices. This income redistribution scam is achieved by manipulating the political markets, i.e. purchasing the rules of the game. That’s precisely how the 1 percent have stolen nearly 30 of the total national income compared to about 8 percent back in 1980.

When the jobs are shipped away and the income from them is redistributed to the 1 percent, opportunities are lost for the rest of us, and more so than just the loss of the jobs. When those jobs are exported via bribed-enforced legislation, we lose our tax base and government jobs go away, like police, firefighters and teachers. There are less opportunities for accountants, mechanics and attorneys in government.

And illegal free trade treaties are just one way the one percent manipulate the legislative process to achieve income redistribution from the 99 percent. There’s a ton of other ways. Deregulation, for example, allows corporations to jack up the prices they charge at will. The difference between what prices would be under real competitive conditions and the manipulated prices go into the pockets of the rich via the same route as free income redistribution treaties.

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Nafta on Steroids; The Trans Pacific Free Trade Income Redistribution Treaty

Where Have All The Good Jobs Gone? Center for Economic and Policy Research

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The 99 Percent Protest Obama’s War Against the Middle Class in Portland Oregon

President Obama came to Portland Oregon on Tuesday, fundraising, of course. There were protesters outside the Convention Center where Obama held his fundraiser. They were protesting the free trade treaties that are redistributing income and democracy from the 99 to the 1 percent. Click the link below to see the news report.

Demostraters Greet Obama in Portland Oregon

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Obama and Jobs: Hostage to Fortune

Based on his background as CEO, sole director and sole shareholder of Bain Capital, Mitt Romney says he can manage the US economy better than President Barack Obama. But as president, it appears that Wall Street Mitt intends to run the terribly weak economy into the ground even more by wiping out jobs and pensions and shifting production of goods and services overseas if his business experience is any indication of his intentions.

As CEO of Bain, Mitt redistributed income from working Americans to his 1 percent self by shifting jobs overseas. Wall Street Mitt pocketed the difference between the former old wages here and the new lesser wages there. As president one can assume Mitt intends to redistribute income from working Americans to his fellow 1 percenters by pushing legislation that redistributes more income from the 99 to the 1 percent.

An editorial in the Guardian newspaper said it best.

“For a candidate who has made his own business background exhibit A in the argument that he could run the US economy better than his opponent, Mitt Romney has a case to answer over his involvement with Bain Capital. He plainly did not “leave” the private equity firm in 1999, if a series of filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission show him listed as the sole shareholder, sole director, CEO and president two years later. Instead of denying he had anything to do with the firm that helped other companies outsource jobs overseas, lay off steel workers and wipe out their pensions, Mr Romney could lay the matter to rest by publishing his tax returns and the minutes of Bain Capital meetings for that period.”

The Guardian goes on to ask a simple question; “But none of that means it is particularly clever for Barack Obama to keep on attacking Mr Romney over his asset-stripping days. It’s fine for his electoral base, but what about the independents he also needs to swing behind him? What these American voters will want to know in November is what Mr Obama has done to turn the jobs figures around.”

A point well taken since Obama has avoided taking the advice on these matters from people who always seem to be correct in their economic remedies, people like Nobel Prize economists Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman. Neither of these two, however, have identified the culprit for the weak US economy. That, of course, is the redistribution of income and wealth that has been legislatively enacted over the last thirty years.

Right now 99 percent of the US population earn about 73 percent of the total US income compared to roughly 92 percent 30 years ago. That means the 99 percent have less money to burn, which depresses wages and job creation. Free trade treaties are a primary culprit in the redistribution process.

Meanwhile, the 1 percent have increase their share from 8 to 27 percent over the same time through their political control of congress, and, of course, their presidents, including Obama. They use their money to purchase legislation to ship jobs overseas and deregulation, thereby redistributing more income from working Americans to themselves. In this way, the 1 percent have stolen 93 percent of total US income growth since 2009.

Click the link below for the rest of the story.

From the Guardian–Obama and jobs: Hostage to Fortune

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Charts that Show Tax cuts for the Rich Destroy Jobs and Weakens the Economy

As explained below, a lower top marginal tax rate destroys jobs and redistributes income from the 99 to the 1 percent. This process of redistribution weakens the demand for goods and services, which slows GNP growth. As the chart shows, the higher tax rates resulted in greater economic growth.

There’s a reason why the tax cuts for the rich slow the process of creating jobs. It’s because they destroy jobs (See below). That weakens the demand for goods and services, which means business firms hire less people. This graph shows that job creation slowed when tax cuts for the rich occurred.

Tax cuts for the rich are destroying the American middle class. When the rich receive their tax cuts, CEO’s find ways to attract that cash to their stocks by increasing their profits. Rising profits normally mean increasing dividends and share prices. Investors are inclined to sink their newly available tax money into investments with higher rates of return.

That’s why CEO’s race to ship jobs overseas, create jobs overseas and place downward pressure on the compensation of their US employees. The difference between the old wages and the new is redistributed into the pockets of the already affluent via higher dividends and share prices.

This allows the 1 percent to purchase more legislation that redistributes even more income from the 99 to the 1 percent, such as free trade treaties and deregulation. Free trade treaties result in more and more jobs being shipped oversea, or created over there rather than here. The difference between the old and new wages goes into the pockets of the rich.

The demand for goods and services has declined in the US because less people have money to buy stuff, unless they’re using their homes as ATMs during a housing bubble. Once that bubble burst, the demand sector was squashed, meaning less jobs can be created, and there’s still downward pressure on middle class wages and salaries.

The process means the destruction of local tax bases, layoffs of teachers, fire fighters, police and other government employees. The economy begins to collapse in slow motion over a period of several years. Only the New Deal and the Great Society programs hold the economy up.

That’s why, “In 1979 the middle three household income quintiles in the United States—that is, the population between the 21st and 80th percentiles on the income scale— earned 50 percent of all national income. But by 2007 the income share of those in the middle shrank to just 43 percent. Between 1979 and 2007 the Gini coefficient including capital gains, in the United States, climbed from 48 to 59, ranking the United States in the top quarter of the most unequal countries in the world.”

Tax cuts for the rich are also why the 1 percent received 93 percent of total US income growth from 2009 to 2011. Those tax cuts that began with corrupt President Reagan have been used to destroy democracy by buying politicians from both major parties, and paying them to pass legislation that redistributes more and more income from the 99 to the 1 percent.

Liberal Senator Ron Wyden of Wall Street and Wall Street Congressman Earl Blumenauer are cases in point. Both have been bought by Wall Street to sell out the voters who put them in office, the people of Oregon. Whenever legislation is up for a vote to redistribute income from the 99 to the 1 percent, Wall Street Ron Wyden always votes for it, but he’s a clever boy by calling it bipartisanship. There’s never anything bipartisan about it. It would be bipartisan if Wyden passed and got Republicans to vote to redistribute income from the 1 to the 99 percent, but he never has any intention of doing that. His Wall Street master’s keep him on a tight leash. Congressman Blumenauer votes for Wall Street almost as much as Wall Street’s boy, Ron Wyden.

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21,000 Affluent People Paid no income taxes last year and didn’t create a single job for anybody

The rich are making off like bandits because they are. The affluent have purchased enough legislation to ensure a constant redistribution of income from the 99 percent to themselves, they’ve bought tax breaks from legislators, free trade income redistribution treaties, income redistribution privatized government services, income redistribution deregulation, and you get the picture.

But here’s the more important thing. There’s not a schred of evidence that a single job has been created because of tax breaks for the rich. All the evidence points the other way; tax breaks for the rich destroys jobs. Think about thirty years of tax breaks for the affluent, and how many private sector jobs have been created because of them? Especially during the last twelve years? Try zero.

When the rich get tax breaks, that allows them to purchase the favors of legislators, which means income redistribution. The 99 percent has less and less money to buy stuff, which means layoffs, not job creation. The affluent have stolen 93 percent of total income growth in the USA for the last two years. That means the economy can’t grow jobs at any historically serious level because the 99 percent can’t buy goods and services since they’re only getting a teeny tiny slice of the income growth pie.

See related story

Big Paychecks and teeny tiny tax burdens

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Economy Shows Modest Growth–We’re Still in a Slow Motion Economic Collapse, Another Great Depression

The one thing not mentioned in the article below from the New York Times is that things are still deteriorating, economically speaking. The rich are still getting richer because the government at all levels, but at the federal level in particular, continues to redistribute income from working citizens to the affluent. Congressman Earl Blumenauer voted to redistribute income in this direction when he voted for the South Korea and Panama Free Trade Treaties a few weeks ago. Likewise, Senator Ron Wyden is another Wall Street legislative prostitute who bends over and serves the one percent. When Wall Street bends Wyden over and reams him full of cash, Wyden then reams us. He voted for the same treaties, plus the Colombia Free Trade Treaty. The story below tells us the economy is growing, but most people aren’t experiencing it. That’s because the rich are getting richer. Thank you Blumenauer and Wyden, my legislative prostitutes of the month, year and decade — John Hively

By SHAILA DEWAN
Published: October 27, 2011

Economic growth in the United States picked up in the third quarter, the Commerce Department said Thursday, in an encouraging sign that the recovery, while still painfully slow, has not stalled.

Total output grew at an estimated annual rate of 2.5 percent from July to September, still modest but almost double the 1.3 percent rate in the second quarter, the department reported.

The pace, however, was not brisk enough to recover the ground lost in the economic bust, lower unemployment or even substantially dispel fears of a second recession. Still, the report offered a small helping of reassurance.

“It ain’t brilliant, but at least it’s heading in the right direction,” said Ian Shepherdson, the chief United States economist for High Frequency Economics, a data analysis firm. “I want to see 4 percent, but given that people were talking about a new recession, I’ll take 2.5 or 3, thanks very much.”

The consensus forecast of economists shows continued growth at about a 2 percent rate for the rest of this year and all of 2012. That would be an improvement over the first half of this year, but a strong recovery would require a rate closer to 4 percent. In the 25 years prior to the recession, the United States economy grew at about 3.25 percent a year, though demographic changes have led to lower expectations for future growth even in a healthy economy.

This economy is still a flurry of mixed signals. Real income has declined, but so has the number of people filing for unemployment, a trend that continued in the number of new claims announced Thursday morning.

The stock market has rallied but consumer confidence has plummeted to levels last seen in 2008. That sentiment helped push pending sales of existing U.S. homes down for a third successive month during September, the National Association of Realtors reported on Thursday.

The economy may be growing, but Americans cannot feel it.

“For most people, they’re unable to really make a distinction between a recession and just 2 percent growth, which means the economy is growing so weakly it can’t hire enough people to make a dent in unemployment,” said Bernard Baumohl, the chief economist for the Economic Outlook Group.

Thursday’s numbers showed a larger than expected increase in consumer spending, fueled by purchases of durable recreational goods like televisions. Personal spending increased by 2.4 percent, accounting for the lion’s share of the growth.

But business investment, which has been strong throughout the recovery, continued to grow as well, with a 13.3 percent increase in non-residential building and a 17.4 percent increase in equipment and software purchases.

Growth in residential construction slowed, but spending on furniture and appliances picked up. Government spending stayed flat, with a reduction in state, local and federal non-military spending canceled out by an increase in defense spending.

The growth rate was weighed down by a meager increase in inventories, which Mr. Shepherdson said he expected would turn out to have been higher than believed. The initial G.D.P. report is based on estimates and is subject to multiple revisions.The growth that economists expected in the first part of the year was dampened by shocks like blizzards, a spike in gasoline prices and the earthquake in Japan, which disrupted the global supply chain. Those effects were fading away by the third quarter, economists said.

But other risks still loom, from Europe’s debt crisis to the possibility that President Obama’s proposal for renewed stimulus measures, including a payroll tax cut, could fail to get through Congress.

“The better growth performance in the third quarter doesn’t mean that the economy can’t ‘double-dip’ back into recession,” wrote Nigel Gault, an economist with IHS Global Insight, ahead of the report. “But it suggests that it has more momentum than there seemed to be just a month or two ago, and underscores that the primary recession risks are from external shocks, with Europe the biggest wild card.”

On the domestic front, analysts seemed to be betting that the payroll tax cut would continue, but were divided on the odds that extended unemployment benefits would be renewed. The two programs together represent spending power equal to about 1 percent of G.D.P., though some of that money may go into savings or be spent on imported goods.

More pessimistic economists fear that the third-quarter growth will be unsustainable because housing values remain low and consumers, whose spending accounts for more than 70 percent of G.D.P., have little reason to expect that their financial situation will improve. The increase in consumer spending was accompanied by a drop in the savings rate and an inching upward of credit card debt, possibly to accommodate purchases that could no longer be delayed.

“That is unlikely to continue if the economy grows weakly because Americans are much more conscious about adding on a lot of debt to their balance sheet,” said Kathy Bostjancic, director for macroeconomic analysis at the Conference Board, which tracks consumer and executive sentiment. The negative outlook was beginning to spread to businesses, Ms. Bostjancic said.

“C.E.O. confidence is starting to melt away, along with consumer confidence levels, which have always been low,” she said.

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Ron Wyden: A liberal Senator Wages War Against the Middle Class

The time had come to fight power with truth. That’s why I raised my hand at a town hall meeting hosted by Oregon’s liberal Democratic Senator Ron Wyden. Last January, I’d driven thirty miles from Portland to St. Helens to ask one question. There were about 150 of us. I sat and listened as people asked a variety of questions. Nobody challenged any of the senator’s canned answers.

Wyden is a member of the senate finance committee. As chairman of the subcommittee on trade, the senator is in a position to determine the economic fate of millions of his fellow citizens.

I thought Wyden was a liberal, fighting for the good of the common man in the corridors of power in Washington D.C. I guess that was a long time ago, if ever. Nowadays, the senator is a plutocrat serving the corporate elite in their war against the middle class. The purpose of this war is to redistribute income from working people to the affluent. Like many Democrats and nearly all Republicans, Wyden has done his job well during the last thirty years.

Now, with the middle class staggered by job losses, along with thirty years of stagnant wages and declining benefits due in large part to trade policies that Wyden championed, the senator has decided to go for the kill. By all accounts, he intends to vote yes for the South Korea Free Trade Agreement this summer. Then he’ll vote for the Panama and Colombia free trade treaties when they come up for votes shortly afterward.

Free trade agreements are con games of the rich that enable them to swindle the vast majority of Americans out of their American dreams. The free trade income transfer scam is simple. These deals pave the way for corporations to ship jobs overseas. When they do, the difference between the old compensation in the United States and the new compensation overseas becomes profits. The newly available profits are then divvied up to the affluent as dividends and rising share prices. A job that costs an employer $50,000 a year in the United States costs $5000 or less in a lot of other nations. The difference is $45,000. That’s what the rich pocket. The American citizen who loses that job gets unemployment checks for a while, as well as an uncertain future. Wyden is not a dummy. He knows this.

The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) predicts the United States will lose over 800 thousand jobs within ten years if congress approves the free trade agreement (FTA) with South Korea. In other words, the affluent will get richer at the expense of the job losers. Imagine how many more jobs will be lost if congress also approves the FTAs with Panama and Colombia. Job losses from the three FTA’s could approach or exceed 1,500,000, especially if the results are similar to what happened after NAFTA became law on January 1, 1994.

Depending on who is doing the math and what figures they’re using, the experts have decided American job losses due to NAFTA are somewhere between 600,000 and 900,000. For example, Jobs with Justice has estimated the U.S. lost 766,000 jobs to Mexico from 1994 to 2001. More recently, an EPI study estimated the USA has suffered a net loss of 879,000 positions due to the treaty.

Lots of US corporations have taken advantage of NAFTA. Take General Electric (GE) for example. According to Business Week, the company has exported thousands of jobs to Mexico since 1994. This includes jobs making refrigerators and parking meters. However, not all of the positions shipped to Mexico are in manufacturing. By 2008, GE was hiring an engineer a day in Mexico. Those employees earned one-third as much as their U.S. counterparts.

Of course, there are plenty of other companies that manufacture their products in Mexico and then import them to the United States. For example, some Craftsman power tools are now made in Mexico and are then exported to the USA. This brings us to another point. Plenty of U.S. corporations manufacture goods overseas and then export them to the United States. Most Nike shoes are made in Vietnam and China and many of them are then exported to the United States. My Hewlett-Packard computer was manufactured in China. Thousands of other things are manufactured abroad by U.S. corporations and are then exported to the United States.

This brings us to an unfortunate truth about trade deficits. Much of the total US trade deficit is with US chartered corporations that have exported jobs, or created jobs overseas that would otherwise have been established here had it not been for investment clauses in trade treaties. This is especially true with respect to deficits the United States has with developing nations, such as China and Mexico. The same will be true with South Korea, Colombia and Panama.

Obviously, this is not necessarily valid about US trade deficits with more advanced countries, such as Germany, Japan and Canada. However, one has to remember that US companies ship many of their products to developed countries from their factories, contractors and sub-contractors in less developed nations. In other words, the shipping of jobs from the USA to lower wage countries also contributes to the US trade deficit with more developed nations.

All of this means trade deficits are a rough tool to gauge the redistribution of income in the United States. The larger the trade deficit, the more income is being redistributed in the USA from working citizens to the affluent. That’s why the trade deficit and the mal-distribution of income exploded upward in tandem after President Ronald Reagan began his war against the middle class thirty years ago. The United States total trade deficit of nearly $17 billion in 1981 has exploded to nearly $500 billion in 2010. During this same period the richest 1 percent of Americans saw their chunk of national income rise from less than 9 percent to almost 24 percent. This was not a coincidence. It was cause and effect.

The EPI projects growing trade deficits with South Korea, Colombia and Panama if the trade deals are approved by congress. This leads us to an unspoken truth. The real purpose behind these FTAs is to redistribute more income from working Americans to the affluent. In other words, on behalf of the rich, Senator Wyden is preparing another frontal assault against the middle class during the summer of 2011. That’s why I was in St. Helens.

These weren’t the only thoughts racing through my head. I didn’t want the senator to redistribute my son’s future to the affluent, just like he’d done to other Americans when he voted for NAFTA, as well as the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). I hoped he might respond to reason.

An hour or so into the meeting, the senator announced he only had enough time to take three more questions. Tons of hands shot up. One of those was mine. I figured there was no way I’d get called on. Then the aide to the senator made a critical mistake; he pointed his finger at me.

I stood and fidgeted for a moment. Earlier, the senator had answered my question when he told a woman he hadn’t made up his mind on which way he was going to vote on the South Korea FTA. That was nonsense. He’d had years to decide. That brought up another question and it wasn’t all that simple. After the aide called on me, I had a few seconds to organize my thoughts. Then I steeled myself and said what I felt needed to be said:

“I don’t understand your position on the free trade agreement with South Korea. Numerous studies show these trade agreements redistribute income and wealth from working people to the rich. That’s one of the biggest problems today. The rich have more of the national income than possibly at any time in our history. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich called this the biggest issue of our time in his most recent book. The demand for goods and services is weak in the United States because of it. This trade agreement is going to ship more jobs from the United States to South Korea according to the Economic Policy Institute. Everybody knows the difference between the old wages here and the new wages in South Korea are going to be redistributed to the rich via greater dividends and enhanced share prices.”

I started gesturing with my hands as I continued, “Look what’s going on around you. Look at your country. There’s massive unemployment. The demand for goods and services is weak. How can we have a robust economy if people can’t buy stuff because their jobs have been shipped overseas? People have gone without jobs for years. Much of the tax base has been shipped overseas. That’s one of the reasons why they’re tens of thousands of people protesting in the streets of Madison, Wisconsin. These treaties only make the wealthy richer at the expense of the rest of us. They weaken the demand for goods and services in this country.”

At this point, I wanted to say, “Your position on this treaty is complete bullshit.” However, I held my tongue and opted to say something a tad nicer, “Your position on this treaty is completely silly.”
As I began to sit down, the senator stood ramrod straight. Then he pointed his finger at me and said, “Sir, I said I haven’t made up my mind on the treaty.”

My posterior hadn’t even hit the chair when I began to rise with my hand in the air. I was indignant. I was going to say, “That’s my point. How could you not have made up your mind?”

At that exact instant, just as the senator was beginning to defend his position with his earlier answers, two of his assistants appeared like magic at my sides. They asked for my name, if I wanted to provide any additional information and several other things. After about thirty seconds, I sat down and told them, “No, you can’t have my name.” I figured the assistants were there to distract anybody who asked a question that might make the senator uncomfortable. So I shooed the assistants away. Then I realized something.
It didn’t matter what anybody in the audience said. We were working people. The senator didn’t care that the South Korea FTA was going to redistribute income from working people to the affluent and weaken the demand sector of our economy even more.

I figured Wyden had already laid the groundwork to wage war again against the middle class on behalf of his biggest campaign contributors: Nike shareholders, hedge fund managers and investors, as well as other affluent institutions and people. Income redistribution: that’s how the wealthy have gotten richer while sucking the middle class dry. In addition, this scheme gives the affluent more money to purchase additional lobbyists and senators.

As the senator finished his rebuttal, I realized the future of our children was on the line. The time had come. I decided to get politically involved in the hope that enough committed voters might change Wyden’s mind.

In April, I attended a meeting with one of Wyden’s assistants. Everything he said indicated the senator intended to vote for the treaty no matter how devastating it was for the majority of Americans.
I now spend more time working as a volunteer with Oregon Fair Trade, an organization aligned against free trade income redistribution treaties. I got involved with Portland Central America Solidarity Committee (PCASC), which is against the treaty. They’re taking direct action against any members of congress not opposed to the South Korea FTA. Along with others, these groups are informing voters and taking part in protests. And they’ve had success.

Oregon Congressman David Wu was sitting on the fence on the South Korea FTA. These groups got him to change his mind. This proved one truism.

We can stop the rich and their plutocrats in congress. If we educate enough people, if we get voters to say enough is enough, we have a chance to stop this latest rich man’s scam. The time for action is now. Stand up for yourselves and for your children. Get involved. Go online. Numerous organizations are defending the vast majority of Americans against members of congress intending to vote yes on these trade treaties. The lists are long. We can stop this summer’s free trade income redistribution con game. Sign up, get active and stop the madness.

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