[lemko]

(06-11-2015 04:30 AM)BlueOcean Wrote:  

The decline of small business is another problem. In the past, you could make a good living by running a restaurant, hardware store, or grocery. Now a few companies
have monopolized these industries, forcing out the small businessman. The path to middle-class stability is harder when we have Walmart, McDonalds, Costco, and Krogers pushing out the small family-run establishments.

Want to start a coffee place? Good luck competing against Starbucks.
How about a sandwich shop? Well Subway owns that.

Competing against these major players is hard because their economies of scale give them purchasing power to negotiate lower prices with suppliers, which allows them to undercut the mom and pop business.

The independent entrepreneur used to be the backbone of the country. He ended up being squeezed out by these soulless mega-corporations.

I'm not saying there isn't a role for huge corporations. Obviously you need large corporations to manufacture jets or build cars. When it comes to simpler
services like making hamburgers or brewing coffee, I wouldn't mind seeing more mom and pop businesses. I suppose you could say that this would raise prices,
but at least there'd be more opportunities for middle-class entrepreneurship.

Subway sandwiches taste like Styrofoam. There are far superior independent sandwich shops in my city. Same thing with pizza. Only rubes go to chain pizzerias like Pizza Hut, Dominos, or Papa John's.

[It_is_my_time]

(06-11-2015 06:52 AM)Disco_Volante Wrote:  

This is bad for the U.S., but worldwide you can't deny capitalism and trade has improved countries like China and India greatly.

If you are willing to move abroad to chase opportunities I don't think this is that big of a deal, just the reality that U.S. labor is more replaceable and you must adapt more to find decent work.

From 1950s to 1990s the U.S. was extremely successful, and normal people could attain a nice standard of living.....now everyone's expectations are still that high but the world has changed and it's much more difficult......human innovation has forced our hand.

You are delusional if you enjoy the benefits of air travel, next day delivery, and internet but you refuse to adapt when technology makes your workplace more competitive. There's a ying and yang to technology.

This is true. The USA enjoyed maybe the greatest economic surge in the history of the world from 1945 to 2000. Not just winning WWII, but having our competitors destroyed from it, gave us an advantage the likes may have never been seen before or will be seen again.

Now we are coming back down to reality a little bit and things are getting tough. It is correct to blame the elites for the mess they have caused by trying to fill their already bloated pockets. But they only get away with this because they can buy crooked and worthless politicians. And we see that when everyone is just handed the right to vote, without earning it, that crooked politicians flourish and grow in numbers.

I think the solution is a society in which only the adults who contribute get to vote. If you go outside of this parameter, then you start to run into problems of corrupt politicians breeding more corruption and soon a nation in a free fall.

[BlueOcean]

(06-11-2015 05:52 AM)Phoenix Wrote:  

^Anti-trust laws favour increased corruption, as the laws are shaped by lobbyists, of which bigger companies have more.

Microsoft didn't spend a single dollar on lobbying until the democratic machine went after them. Thereafter they were amply invested in it. There is nothing wrong with a 'monopoly' that customers choose.

Anti-trust laws were applied effectively and fairly in the early 1900s, under Theodore Roosevelt.

If our government is so corruptible that it can be bought by lobbyists, the solution isn't to stop regulation. The solution is do something about the corruption. I think up until the 1980s, the US had a fairly non-corrupt government with a high degree of corporate regulation. It was at that point that financiers and corporatists began to seize control, which had very negative ramifications for most Americans, especially blue collar men.

As for Microsoft, they spend a huge amount of money lobbying for tech visas for foreign immigrants. If they were unregulated, they'd flood the market with even more foreign workers, further exacerbating the unemployment situation.

[BlueOcean]

(06-11-2015 06:59 AM)lemko Wrote:  

(06-11-2015 04:30 AM)BlueOcean Wrote:  

The decline of small business is another problem. In the past, you could make a good living by running a restaurant, hardware store, or grocery. Now a few companies
have monopolized these industries, forcing out the small businessman. The path to middle-class stability is harder when we have Walmart, McDonalds, Costco, and Krogers pushing out the small family-run establishments.

Want to start a coffee place? Good luck competing against Starbucks.
How about a sandwich shop? Well Subway owns that.

Competing against these major players is hard because their economies of scale give them purchasing power to negotiate lower prices with suppliers, which allows them to undercut the mom and pop business.

The independent entrepreneur used to be the backbone of the country. He ended up being squeezed out by these soulless mega-corporations.

I'm not saying there isn't a role for huge corporations. Obviously you need large corporations to manufacture jets or build cars. When it comes to simpler
services like making hamburgers or brewing coffee, I wouldn't mind seeing more mom and pop businesses. I suppose you could say that this would raise prices,
but at least there'd be more opportunities for middle-class entrepreneurship.

Subway sandwiches taste like Styrofoam. There are far superior independent sandwich shops in my city. Same thing with pizza. Only rubes go to chain pizzerias like Pizza Hut, Dominos, or Papa John's.

Sure, but most Americans are rubes who want $5.99 sandwiches with huge portion sizes. If they weren't, Subway and McDonald's wouldn't have become multi-billion dollar corporations.

[lemko]

(06-11-2015 07:06 AM)BlueOcean Wrote:  

(06-11-2015 06:59 AM)lemko Wrote:  

(06-11-2015 04:30 AM)BlueOcean Wrote:  

The decline of small business is another problem. In the past, you could make a good living by running a restaurant, hardware store, or grocery. Now a few companies
have monopolized these industries, forcing out the small businessman. The path to middle-class stability is harder when we have Walmart, McDonalds, Costco, and Krogers pushing out the small family-run establishments.

Want to start a coffee place? Good luck competing against Starbucks.
How about a sandwich shop? Well Subway owns that.

Competing against these major players is hard because their economies of scale give them purchasing power to negotiate lower prices with suppliers, which allows them to undercut the mom and pop business.

The independent entrepreneur used to be the backbone of the country. He ended up being squeezed out by these soulless mega-corporations.

I'm not saying there isn't a role for huge corporations. Obviously you need large corporations to manufacture jets or build cars. When it comes to simpler
services like making hamburgers or brewing coffee, I wouldn't mind seeing more mom and pop businesses. I suppose you could say that this would raise prices,
but at least there'd be more opportunities for middle-class entrepreneurship.

Subway sandwiches taste like Styrofoam. There are far superior independent sandwich shops in my city. Same thing with pizza. Only rubes go to chain pizzerias like Pizza Hut, Dominos, or Papa John's.

Sure, but most Americans are rubes who want $5.99 sandwiches with huge portion sizes. If they weren't, Subway and McDonald's wouldn't have become multi-billion dollar corporations.

Sadly, you're right. I dated a girl who came from a very wealthy family who had never been to a McDonald's restaurant. She decided to give it a try, took one bite from a Big Mac and loudly declared, "Ewww!!! How can people eat this stuff?" A lot of folks go to these chain restaurants because they've simply never had anything better and have nothing against which to compare it.

[lemko]

If I was one of these tech workers being replaced by one of these H-1B visa folks, I'd teach them how to do the job in the most blundering, botched, bungled, and screwed-up way possible as the ultimate "f-you" to the company.

[BlueOcean]

Quote:

Sadly, you're right. I dated a girl who came from a very wealthy family who had never been to a McDonald's restaurant. She decided to give it a try, took one bite from a Big Mac and loudly declared, "Ewww!!! How can people eat this stuff?" A lot of folks go to these chain restaurants because they've simply never had anything better and have nothing against which to compare it.

Back when more places were family run, it was more typical for these places to compete on quality and variety. These days the competition is mainly on price.

Quote:

If I was one of these tech workers being replaced by one of these H-1B visa folks, I'd teach them how to do the job in the most blundering, botched, bungled, and screwed-up way possible as the ultimate "f-you" to the company.

In the past, when management tried to replace unionized blue collar men, it was common for "accidents" to occur. Machines would break, packages would get dropped, etc. Blue collar union dudes had a "don't fuck with us" mentality towards their management, which made it tougher to bring in scab workers.

If some of these replaced Disney tech workers intentionally screwed up the code of the programs and mis-trained their replacements, that might have the affect of diminishing employer enthusiasm for the H1b visa. Programmers can certainly "accidentally" write code that screws up the program or "accidentally" forget to mention some important details to their replacements.

If workers want fair treatment, they need to pursue unionization and aggressiveness towards management. Just being passive enables employers to abuse them.

[Zep]

The big, clear version is here:

http://www.thrivemovement.com/images/inf...money.html

[Benoit]

(06-11-2015 07:29 AM)BlueOcean Wrote:  

If some of these replaced Disney tech workers intentionally screwed up the code of the programs and mis-trained their replacements, that might have the affect of diminishing employer enthusiasm for the H1b visa. Programmers can certainly "accidentally" write code that screws up the program or "accidentally" forget to mention some important details to their replacements.

The employers already know that the imported replacements will produce lower-quality work.

But they are cheaper, therefore better.

[ElBorrachoInfamoso]

If the American worker wants to force me to spend my money a certain way, screw him!

We all have to deal with competition. Screw this holier-than-thou false patriotism.

You shouldn't hire people of your own race/nationality etc. any more than you should date women your own age. These are just things that losers try to shame you into.

[It_is_my_time]

(06-11-2015 07:59 AM)ElBorrachoInfamoso Wrote:  

If the American worker wants to force me to spend my money a certain way, screw him!

We all have to deal with competition. Screw this holier-than-thou false patriotism.

You shouldn't hire people of your own race/nationality etc. any more than you should date women your own age. These are just things that losers try to shame you into.

Then the result is a globalism and no longer country, and for Americans that means a immediate and huge drop in living standards.

[Parlay44]

It's not just high end programming jobs that they're importing labor for. A lot of the minimum wage jobs at restaurants, boardwalk stands and mall kiosks are worked by temporary foreigners.

Any time I walk through a mall I'm approach by hot young Israeli girls trying to sell me hand cream. This shit really needs to stop.

[Simeon_Strangelight]

Tuth's post is fantastic - had to laugh at the sheer awesomeness of it:



For the current phenomenon I would like to point out the previous guilty parties - mostly the NAFTA, WTO and other international agreements.

Ross Perot was right of course back in 1992.

What he failed to mention is that those agreements destroy the local economies of the immigrant-exporting countries first. For example I remember that in the 1980s and early 1990s in most European countries it was strictly illegal to hire immigrants without permit. When caught, they did not punish the worker, they just severely fined the company / the employer. The amount was staggering back then and some companies rather went into bankruptcy than paying it. As far as I remember it was something like 1-2 years wages plus taxes for every worker they found. It was thus cheaper to hire legally since they did controls frequently whenever someone even called them on suspicion. Now all of this is gone and I have read stories of Spanish and Italian slave labor camps stacked with immigrants.

Another stepping stone that is being fast-tracked about now almost anywhere in the West is the Trans-Pacific-Partnership:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/obama-corpo...ou/5446131
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015/...alkom.html

Quote:

No single column can adequately describe this colossal betrayal – camouflaged by phrases like “free trade” and “win-win agreements.” For comprehensive analysis of the TPP you can go to Global Trade Watch (http://www.citizen.org/trade/).

Yes - the TPP is the biggie. It will make it legal to "insource" production facilities within the US and give it almost the same conditions like in rural China. Australia recently had a whiff of it when mining companies started importing workers. If you cannot export the factories and the place of work, then at least you can import the workers to do it on the cheap.

The end result just is the elimination of the middle class while society is left with the working poor, the non-working poor and the super-rich. I guess the upper crust does not care - if it becomes too bad, they move overseas or close off Manhattan.

And the situation is not improving - here closures of brick and mortar stores:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-05-02...000-stores

Quote:

The list below comes from information compiled by About.com, but I have only included major retailers that have announced plans to close at least 10 stores. Most of these closures will take place this year, but in some instances the closures are scheduled to be phased in over a number of years. As you can see, the number of stores that are being permanently shut down is absolutely staggering…

180 Abercrombie & Fitch (by 2015)

75 Aeropostale (through January 2015)

150 American Eagle Outfitters (through 2017)

223 Barnes & Noble (through 2023)

265 Body Central / Body Shop

66 Bottom Dollar Food

25 Build-A-Bear (through 2015)

32 C. Wonder

21 Cache

120 Chico’s (through 2017)

200 Children’s Place (through 2017)

17 Christopher & Banks

70 Coach (fiscal 2015)

70 Coco’s /Carrows

300 Deb Shops

92 Delia’s

340 Dollar Tree/Family Dollar

39 Einstein Bros. Bagels

50 Express (through 2015)

31 Frederick’s of Hollywood

50 Fresh & Easy Grocey Stores

14 Friendly’s

65 Future Shop (Best Buy Canada)

54 Golf Galaxy (by 2016)

50 Guess (through 2015)

26 Gymboree

40 JCPenney

127 Jones New York Outlet

10 Just Baked

28 Kate Spade Saturday & Jack Spade

14 Macy’s

400 Office Depot/Office Max (by 2016)

63 Pep Boys (“in the coming years”)

100 Pier One (by 2017)

20 Pick ’n Save (by 2017)

1,784 Radio Shack

13 Ruby Tuesday

77 Sears

10 SpartanNash Grocery Stores

55 Staples (2015)

133 Target, Canada (bankruptcy)

31 Tiger Direct

200 Walgreens (by 2017)

10 West Marine

338 Wet Seal

80 Wolverine World Wide (2015 – Stride Rite & Keds)

I've left the list for gravity. Of course internet sales are taken bigger cuts, but that tells only part of the story. The reality is that disposable income is falling. Replacing "entitled" American workers with cheaper foreign ones does exactly that.

[BlueOcean]

(06-11-2015 07:59 AM)ElBorrachoInfamoso Wrote:  

If the American worker wants to force me to spend my money a certain way, screw him!

We all have to deal with competition. Screw this holier-than-thou false patriotism.

You shouldn't hire people of your own race/nationality etc. any more than you should date women your own age. These are just things that losers try to shame you into.

Well these American companies benefit from paved roads, policing, military protection, rule of law, court system, and other benefits provided from the general taxpaying public. Now when these companies are being asked to hire the children of the people who built this country, they complain and say there are "worker shortages" in the US.

[Grizzly Bear]

(06-11-2015 02:14 AM)Tuthmosis Wrote:  

[Snipped brilliant post.]

Oi - you lazy sod! Start writing for RoK again. This is sort of quality that'll scare George Soros into dumping millions towards an anti-neo masculinity fund.

Feminism, immigration and politicians are pawns in the game of chess and should be treated as such.

There's no possibility of change without stepping into the temple and chasing out the money-changers.

[zombiejimmorrison]

(06-11-2015 02:14 AM)Tuthmosis Wrote:  

The government is these rich fucking capitalists.

But don't worry: the free hand of the market should fix this problem.

You have some good points in that post but there's too much conflicting ideas. We don't have a free market if the capitalists are the government and vice versa.

If capitalists are buying politicians, that would mean that the politicians are the ones with power, they posses the legal right to initiate force in a given geographical area, in essence the government is the only entity to have power to initiate force. When you have this corruption at the center of society, corporations are going to donate massive amounts of money to politicians in return for political favors, economical purposes, contract favors, no question, its called crony capitalism or "mixed economy".

Corporations do have a certain amount of power but if you compare it to the power of the state its inconsequential, not to mention corporations are regulated by the laws enacted by governments. Any business is subject to the laws of any given country.


The only true free market capitalism is a Laissez-faire system. Transactions between parties are free from government interference. Capitalism is not a shitty trading system, its the one system that created the massive abundance of wealth for everyone. When governments come in and poke around, print currency and make there own fiat currency, high taxes. That's when problems start to happen. No corporation can invade a country and profit from it, you need governments for that.

Furthermore corporations do not have nuclear weapons, they do not have a prison industrial complex, they don't have the capacity to indoctrinate children for 12 years of their existence, they don't have the capacity to tax at will, they don't have the capacity to counterfeit or print money, these are all powers held by the state. Feminism, the thing we hate the most here and by all accounts has ruined society and relationship between genders is a government subsidized ideology. Thanks to the wealth of free working men.

[It_is_my_time]

(06-11-2015 08:11 AM)zombiejimmorrison Wrote:  

(06-11-2015 02:14 AM)Tuthmosis Wrote:  

The government is these rich fucking capitalists.

But don't worry: the free hand of the market should fix this problem.

You have some good points in that post but there's too much conflicting ideas. We don't have a free market if the capitalists are the government and vice versa.

If capitalists are buying politicians, that would mean that the politicians are the ones with power, they posses the legal right to initiate force in a given geographical area, in essence the government is the only entity to have power to initiate force. When you have this corruption at the center of society, corporations are going to donate massive amounts of money to politicians in return for political favors, economical purposes, contract favors, no question, its called crony capitalism or "mixed economy".

Corporations do have a certain amount of power but if you compare it to the power of the state its inconsequential, not to mention corporations are regulated by the laws enacted by governments. Any business is subject to the laws of any given country.


The only true free market capitalism is a Laissez-faire system. Transactions between parties are free from government interference. Capitalism is not a shitty trading system, its the one system that created the massive abundance of wealth for everyone. When governments come in and poke around, print currency and make there own fiat currency, high taxes. That's when problems start to happen. No corporation can invade a country and profit from it, you need governments for that.

Furthermore corporations do not have nuclear weapons, they do not have a prison industrial complex, they don't have the capacity to indoctrinate children for 12 years of their existence, they don't have the capacity to tax at will, they don't have the capacity to counterfeit or print money, these are all powers held by the state. Feminism, the thing we hate the most here and by all accounts has ruined society and relationship between genders is a government subsidized ideology. Thanks to the wealth of free working men.

Agreed, I wouldn't call these elitists "capitalists". I would call them "global elitists" or "global bankers". They are not capitalists, in fact they seek to destroy capitalism because it renders them powerless in an true free market where some 12 year old kid in a garage builds a better mouse trap than they produce and he takes them all down.

[BlueOcean]

Ross Perot warned us about globalization, free trade, and illegal immigration. He gave us a chance to vote for someone who was legitimately patriotic, accomplished, and had answers to America's economic problems. We ignored him and voted for Clinton, who pushed through NAFTA and a large scale H1b expansion. Clinton also pushed financial deregulation in 1999 (that's a separate topic though). Under Bush and Obama, there's continued to be a push for free trade and foreign workers.

The TPP is garbage. It shows what a phony Obama is as president. He talks a good game about "hope" and "change", but acts like a member of the Chamber of Commerce. Democrats are supposed to be the party of the working man. It's ridiculous to see Obama pushing this monstrosity, while Hillary Clinton looks on silently. Despite all this, there are millions of retard Americans who find Obama and Hillary to be "inspirational." WTF????

Another scam the rich run is to allow lots of foreign money into the local real estate market, which happens a lot in Australia and Canada (to a lesser extent, US and UK too). They do that to pump up real estate prices, which allows real estate speculators to make a huge amount of money. This has the unfortunate side effect of making it tough to afford a home. Home prices in Vancouver (Canada), Sydney (Australia), and Melbourne (Australia) have been pumped up to a crazy degree by foreign money, especially from China. The workingman gets priced out of owning a home, but some millionaire gets to make a few more million by flipping real estate to Hong Kong buyers.

[speakeasy]

(06-11-2015 07:59 AM)ElBorrachoInfamoso Wrote:  

If the American worker wants to force me to spend my money a certain way, screw him!

We all have to deal with competition. Screw this holier-than-thou false patriotism.

You shouldn't hire people of your own race/nationality etc. any more than you should date women your own age. These are just things that losers try to shame you into.

You are representative of the type of capitalist that would sell his own neighbor down the river to make a buck. Tell me why it's fair that H1B visas should be abused? You realize that these visas are for finding labor for jobs that can't be filled by locals, right? Not for firing workers and replacing them with foreigners.

I'm willing to pay more to ensure that Americans can have a first world standard of living.

[lemko]

(06-11-2015 08:48 AM)speakeasy Wrote:  

(06-11-2015 07:59 AM)ElBorrachoInfamoso Wrote:  

If the American worker wants to force me to spend my money a certain way, screw him!

We all have to deal with competition. Screw this holier-than-thou false patriotism.

You shouldn't hire people of your own race/nationality etc. any more than you should date women your own age. These are just things that losers try to shame you into.

You are representative of the type of capitalist that would sell his own neighbor down the river to make a buck. Tell me why it's fair that H1B visas should be abused? You realize that these visas are for finding labor for jobs that can't be filled by locals, right? Not for firing workers and replacing them with foreigners.

I'm willing to pay more to ensure that Americans can have a first world standard of living.

Amen, brother! Amen!

[Simeon_Strangelight]

(06-11-2015 08:11 AM)zombiejimmorrison Wrote:  

The only true free market capitalism is a Laissez-faire system. Transactions between parties are free from government interference. Capitalism is not a shitty trading system, its the one system that created the massive abundance of wealth for everyone. When governments come in and poke around, print currency and make there own fiat currency, high taxes. That's when problems start to happen. No corporation can invade a country and profit from it, you need governments for that.

Laissez-faire system was widely in place for a good century or more in many Western countries. It produced 70 hour workweeks and factory workers working in shoe factories while being unable to afford shoes.

Libertarianism was likely designed & financed high above by the mega-wealthy as a fake alternative - and one that was already existing in reality.

https://realcurrencies.wordpress.com/201...economics/

Quote:

How the Money Power created Libertarianism and Austrian Economics

Now to be fair I know where you are coming from - been there too myself at one time, but the people's idea of free market simply is a myth. Really free open markets work only in ridiculously small samples where furs, berries and simple products are exchanged in an economy without money.

Why without money you ask? Because the biggest control factor is the creation of money. If most money is created out of debt, then the ones holding the debt are owning it all.



After centuries this is still the most crucial and fundamental point of the economy. Now I don't want to move the thread again into one of those issues questioning the time value of money etc. Those discussions are useless unless you have taken a good hard look at a site like Realcurrencies. Any country which implements sound usury free money without demurrage could literally wipe the floor with most others over a relatively short period of time.

But it won't happen and people will still cling on to their fake solutions.

[Samseau]

I am a libertarian in principle. But where libertarians fail is that they do not address the feedback loop between big governments and big business. Moreover, shrinking the government today would accomplish nothing as big businesses have grown out of control.

Originally, the US kept big businesses in check because there were many checks and balances in place for people to use against big business. All of those checks and balances are gone:

- The senate is now totally done by popular vote, instead of state legislatures resulting in eternal demagogues sitting in Senate for life.
- Women can vote (in addition to their lousy moral judgement... they suck at math!).
- The "commerce clause" has been reinterpreted by the US Supreme court to mean anything.

Big businesses have since exploited the election cycles to enrich themselves at the expense of the public. Free trade agreements are anything but free, as US companies must comply with insane regulations while foreign governments do not. Also foreign companies can devalue their currency against the dollar, screw their own people over in order to make sure they are enslaved forever while keeping US workers in the unemployment line. Our "American" businesses are more than happy to exploit this unfair system by keeping the shit laws in place for their own gain.

At this point it's fucked up beyond repair, and nothing can fix the system without a complete overhaul. But when you consider the average "American" is so fucking stupid they vote for guys like Clinton, Bush, and Obama, what kind of revolution would come out of this? Let's face the grim reality: the average American is either too stupid, apathetic, or selfish to actually form political groups in self-interest.

So now we have a very dangerous situation: the 10-20% of politically minded citizens realize they are on their own. At some point this country is going bankrupt, we all know that. When the day comes, these politically minded citizens are going to take shit into their own hands and feed on the 80% of dumb masses in order to survive. I expect to see militias, gangs, and city-states form across the USA. Things that will return to Western Civilization once forgotten:

- Slavery, especially sex slavery (the women aren't viable for marriages and men need to reproduce somehow)
- Looting and pillaging
- Local farms and food sources
- Military education for nearly all males
- Extremely intense racism
- Autocratic rule by military elites
- Complete breakdown of trade

By the end of the century, the West is returning to the Second Dark Age. Islam will rule Europe, Anarchy will rule America. China and Russia: ??? Africa: Probably some mega-warlord will own the whole continent.

[memcpy]

Then you've got computers and robots replacing humans. Which in the video below shows, how companies are replacing jobs that require analyzing vast amounts of data and handing them over to computers. Eliminating the need for data analyst type jobs.

video covers:
-effects of smart cars on industries
-robots in hotel
-effects of tech on the middle-class
-future of tech
-cognitive "thinking" computers replacing workers

Companies will continue to outsource and automate business. Companies like Amazon couldn't live without automation and robots.

Effects of tech + outsourcing should be interesting in these coming years.

Then this just came out today
Driverless Trucks to Hit Alberta’s Oilsands Region Replacing $200,000/yr Operators; Big Layoffs Coming

[SlickyBoy]

(06-11-2015 06:35 AM)Days of Broken Arrows Wrote:  

Had left wingers in this country stayed true to their '60s goals of fair labor practices, we'd still have strong unions and none of this would be happening. But the left degenerated into identity politics and now counts big victories as people losing jobs, not keeping them. Guess that's progress.

See the diagram of the airlines above to check the progress of how the Unions protected jobs. Ditto for steel, and hell, even the auto industry is in trouble in spite of owning the Democrat party. Unions benefit the union leaders while giving a false sense of security to the life long lemmings in the rank and file.

[MatineeMan]

Americans are Indian ironically.

If Americans seriously care though you will stop supporting the 2 big plutocratic corporatist parties. Even with all the money the party machines need voters.

Stop voting until they change.