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Saturday 15 September 2012
Falling U.S. Incomes And Falling Workers: Someone Please Tell Mitt Romney The Facts

Two news stories today form an interesting connection if only we take a quick moment to look.

First, the Census Bureau reports that the gap in U. S. household incomes grew in 2011, with the top 20% of households seeing increases, the top 5% doing best, and families in the middle seeing a noticeable decline. Those stuck at the bottom, however, suffered little damage. They had little and simply stagnated. As the New York Times explained this week: “Median household income after inflation fell to $50,054, a level that was 8 percent lower than in 2007, the year before the recession took hold.”

In response, Mitt Romney took time off from talking about how President Obama wanted to take “God” off America’s coins, and called again for huge tax cuts to help save the suffering top 1%.

A second story, from the BBC News, might not seem related; but careful scrutiny tells us it is. In Karachi, Pakistan, a textile factory went up in flames yesterday and before the blaze was under control 289 workers had been killed.

What’s the connection? Cheap labor, the man said. No unions, by the way, he said. You can’t ask an American worker to accept $50 per month to turn out denim and knitted garments and hosiery. In places like Karachi, though, you can. That means if you have a factory making underwear in North Carolina it makes perfect economic sense to close down and ship all those high-cost jobs overseas. In the business world it’s simple math and, to a large degree, simple math helps explain declining incomes in this country today. Ship work to places like China and Pakistan and desperate U.S. workers, faced with high unemployment and less and less likely in recent year to be represented by unions, will accept almost any wage to get a job or keep one. You can even play off cities against each other to get tax breaks or scare workers in high-wage states by talking about moving to low-wage states. North Carolina, for example. (Pakistan comes later, suckers.) And there you have it, Mr. Romney. A perfect business environment. Cheap labor, cheap production costs. Higher profits for those at the top.

32 notes

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  5. miss-medusa reblogged this from azspot and added:
    This is what I’ve been saying all along about lack of employment in this country.
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