The American South is a 3rd world hell hole, and they are dragging the rest of the country down with them.
The American south (with some help from trickledown economics) is literally killing this country.
America has become a RINO: rich in name only. By every measure, we look like a broken banana republic. Not a single U.S. city is included in the world’s top 10 most livable cities. Only one U.S. airport makes the list of the top 100 in the world. Our roads, schools and bridges are falling apart, and our trains—none of them high-speed—are running off their tracks. Our high school students are rated 30th in math, and some 30 countries have longer life expectancy and lower rates of infant mortality. The only things America is number one in these days are the number of incarcerated citizens per capita and adult onset diabetes.
Three decades of trickledown economics; the monopolization, privatization and deregulation of industry; and the destruction of labor protection has resulted in 50 million Americans living in abject poverty, while 400 individuals own more than one-half of the nation’s wealth. As the four Walmart heirs enjoy a higher net worth than the bottom 40 percent, our nation’s sense of food insecurity is more on par with developing countries like Indonesia and Tanzania than with OECD nations like Australia and Canada. In fact, the percentage of Americans who say they could not afford the food needed to feed their families at some point in the last year is three times that of Germany, more than twice than Italy and Canada.
The destruction of labor has been so comprehensive that first-world nations now offshore their jobs to the U.S. In other words, we’ve become the new India. Foreign companies now see us as the world’s cheap labor force, and we have the non-unionized South to thank for that. Chuck Thompson, author of Better off Without Em, writes, “Like Mexico, the South has spent the past four decades systematically siphoning auto jobs from Michigan and the Midwest by keeping worker’s salaries low and inhibiting their right to organize by rendering their unions toothless.” Average wages for autoworkers in the South are up to 30 percent lower than in Michigan.
advertisementIn Sweden, the minimum wage is $19 per hour and workers enjoy a minimum of five weeks paid vacation every year. In the U.S. the minimum wage is a tick above $7 per hour and workers can expect no more than 12 days of annual vacation. So guess what? IKEA has set up a factory in Virginia. Volkswagen has set up in Tennessee, and the likes of Hyundai, KIA, BMW, Honda, and Toyota have all set up in the South to take advantage of the world’s latest cheap labor source. Moreover, the profits of these foreign companies goes toward stimulating their economies instead of ours.
So, it’s amusing when Republicans blame Detroit’s bankruptcy on liberal policies because nothing could be further from the truth. Detroit is bankrupt thanks to the Republican business model that has turned the entire South into a third-world banana republic. A business model that the rest of the country is forced to compete with i.e. lower wages, low corporate tax rates, low property taxes, and low environmental and labor protection, which results in a migration of industry and jobs from the northern states, which means a shrinking of the tax revenue base in cities like Detroit. Since 2000, the population of Detroit has fallen 20% and property tax revenue has plummeted 26%. Take this as an illustration of how we are in a never-ending death spiral race to the bottom.
If you haven’t read the David Simon thing in the Guardian you really should. Fact is the capital has defated labour. Now it’s honing in on the government as well.
Market Capitalism is the best economic system for generating wealth, but it is a terrible social system. So as wealth grows and gets distributed to less people society falls apart. Humans are now worth less. You need a market capitalism economy and a socialist government as a check.
Simon has a great line about Capitalism grasping defeat from the jaws of victory.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/08/david-simon-capitalism-marx-two-americas-wire
Thanks for “shareholder primacy” Milton Freidman, and thanks to Bill Clinton and Tom Caper for being a boosters of the world’s single most disastrous idea.
At least Freidman understood that the War on Drugs was racist big government control move. I think Freidman understood the dicotomy Simon is explaining. Capitalism is good for economic decisions, but a disaster for every other human, cultural or social enterprise.
I suppose, if you wanted to be charitable you could say that Freidman never thought his despicable theories could ever be fully implemented.
I’m not that charitable.
During the last year with data available, which I could find, I believe this was 2010, we sent close to $70 billion in economic aid to the world and many billions more in military aid. These figures don’t even count off- the- books payments, (bribes), by the intelligence community. Can you imagine what our country would look like if we could spend just a part of that here on infrastructure, education, etc.? ( Obviously, we can’t/won’t/shouldn’t reprogram it all.) So….Karzai….don’t want to sign the Security Agreement, huh? Ok, we’ll just take our $4 billion a year, which, btw, keeps you in power and go the hell home. Good luck with that!
If history is any guide, those unspent billions would simply go to the Walton family and the other 400 or so people who make up the 1%.
or the billions that are going to the top 1/10 or 1% right now with the monetary easing policy of $85billion a month to the banks. Why does this guy love the 1% more than any other President ever.
Oh and Detroit failing had nothing to do with the outrageous promises of pensions that the city just couldnt afford?
Low wages are stalling America’s economy.
@DG “Fact is the capital has defated labour.”
And there’s the larger truth. It would be easy to blame the Old South, but they’ve been played… They’re one of the victims too.
The political gains of capital has been won by a concerted propaganda campaign aimed at the least educated among us. That they live in the South, made the South a target. It is no accident that FOX news and hate radio is aimed at the South… And what are they taught to hate the most (other than the other race)? They hate unions… The main thing that actually propped them up financially and kept their wages livable.
Yep.. They were taught to bite the hand that protected them.
“Detroit failing had nothing to do with the outrageous promises of pensions that the city just couldnt afford?”
Some, but not much. Here’s a link to a David Sirota story about a study by a former investment banker. Read and learn:
http://www.salon.com/2013/11/20/how_wall_street_not_pensioners_wrecked_detroit/
“It would be easy to blame the Old South, but they’ve been played… They’re one of the victims too.”
You don’t get it. The business model of the South is based on the plantation economy: One winner, many losers. Yes, all those losers have been played, but by their own leaders, who have successfully gotten away with it by blaming every societal ill on the (implicitly black) underclass.
Any time you folks up north want to secede from the US, feel free to do so. We will be glad to let you go. I mean, with economic success stories in cities like Detroit and state like Illinois, your new nation ought to roar right to the top of the world economy.
“Any time you folks up north want to secede from the US, feel free to do so”
Umm…actually it’s us who wish you would go. For every $1.00 sent to Washington, Mississippi receives $1.71 in federal spending. If you go away we would have more to spend on ourselves. I even I have a suggestion about a flag you would probably be interested in.
You should buy a 6ft by 8ft rebel flag Dave and save it for when them tea party folks burn your fat ass on the bandstand in the far southern town of Rehoboth beach DE. don’ run north to the food plant in Harrington to hide, as there will be Yankees at the kent/ Sussex county line to check your green card and watch you holler for your daddi to hep you from the yanks!!!
The flag we want is the Stars and Stripes — you folks are certainly welcome to use a red one with a hammer and sickle for your northern people’s republic.
The moon is almost full. I imagine thats why the wing-nuts are suddenly busy posting.
Sorry Just Noticing, but the Stars and Stripes have always flown over the northern states. I can’t say that to the traitorous 3rd world south!
YEA, THEM THAR REBS ARE JUST LIKE THE HEMORRHOIDS, THEY BOTH BE A PAIN IN THE ASS ,AND NEITHER ONE WILL GO BACK TO WHERE THEY COME FROM, DAD BLAST IT!!!
@Catbird, It’s pretty obvious that you did not comprehend my comment. Please read it again – slowly this time. Just FYI, Tea Party folks don’t hang around Rehoboth Beach, unless they are the 1 percenters like Urquhart.