The Republican
Reformation - Globalism
Killing the Goose
At the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union only one
superpower remained…US capitalism.
The engine of the Soviet’s destruction had been the economy of the West, not the
military might of the West. At best
the military served to pin or hold Soviet attentions, while the economy kicked
the stuffing out of them. Nothing
being said here against the military since maintaining the status quo in a
nuclear armed stand-off was a tall order and it was met.
Yet the real winner in the Cold War was clearly capitalism, and the capitalist
knew it. While the majority of the
US political establishment dithered about how to realign after the fall of the
Soviet Union the money KNEW what to do.
Move out and find value in the “global” marketplace that had been denied
to them throughout the duration of the Cold War.
With communism destroyed the ideology of money was king.
American dollars began to leave the shores of the US and flood into
emerging markets.
Investments came into the emerging markets and began to improve infrastructure –
roads and electrical grids – in locations around existing or upgradeable
transportation centers. Its
aim was to take advantage of the one commodity that the Western nations no
longer had in supply – cheap labor.
The greatest wealth redistribution in recorded history was underway.
Globalism, a policy of treating the planet as the proper sphere of US economic
influence – economic imperialism – was born with the death of the competing
Soviet ideology. The unwitting and
uncared for victim of this march of the globalist was the American worker and
the American middle-class. Good
jobs, hard working, esteem building jobs were being sent packing to new exotic
locales with low wage earners.
Capital investments were being written off and salary and benefit savings were
being pushed to the bottom line, and manufacturing began its long decline in the
US. To be followed shortly by those service industry jobs that
telecommunications and networks made easy to build overseas with a little
capital investment and a large pool of skilled cheap laborers to utilize.
Both political parties have acquiesced in what is essentially the looting of
America’s middle-class heritage of jobs.
While these may not be the “jobs that Americans do not want to do”, they
are the jobs that American businesses “do not want to pay Americans to do.”
American business, in seeking to be rewarded by Wall Street, has made
labor a tradable commodity which places the American worker in an unwinnable
position and disrupts a long standing partnership between that worker and the
economy that generations of American workers helped to build.
A nation is more than a mere collection of people. A nation is a collection of
peoples’ economic efforts, their philosophy of government, the use of their
nation’s natural resources, their nation’s intellectual property, and the shared
vision of their nation’s future. In the case of America it is, and always
has been, the collective efforts of the whole that has created our nation’s
success. And it is that success upon which America’s corporations were
built.
And it is that collective effort of the whole nation upon which America’s
corporations have turned their back. And worst of all, the American worker is
the one sacrificed. From the rural sections of our country, to the high
rises and the inner cities, America’s workers are being replaced, laid-off, or
overlooked. The American workers, whose innovations are the bedrock of
America’s growth, find themselves watching the closing of their factories and
plants, and a leadership immune and unconcerned by what that means to Main
Street USA.
The CEO’s tell the nation these events are essential in order for America to
compete “globally”, and the political elite buy this as unfettered truth and
then parrot it back to the voters as a cover to their failure of leadership.
This sacrifice of the American worker cannot continue.
As we watch the debate about rescue packages notice that the debate centers on
saving the globalist and not on the American worker.
Our financial problems stem from a globalized interconnected financial
system that is making money from using the American worker, but which has no
interest in preserving that which gave the American workers high standing in the
financial system in the first place.
It is time to throw off the blinders and for the conservatives of the Republican
Party to take the side of the middle-class fight against the global looting of
the nation. If corporations wish to
take advantage of cheap labor in other locales then a tax system to level the
field is needed. The entrustment of
generations of American workers cannot be ignored, the nation cannot support
both the housing industry that the world seems so to need and the lowering of
America’s living standard to Chinese levels in order to compete.
If you wish to sell within this nation to Americans then pay for the
privilege. Build it here and pay Americans, or pay the Value Added Tax to
acquire access to a large consumer market.
Instead of helping to kill the goose that laid the golden egg, conservatives
should restructure the system to support the American middle-class.
Glenn R. Jackson is the founder of the American Reformation Project, Board Member of Hire American Citizens, and Member National Board of Advisors for FAIR (Federation for American Immigration Reform). Glenn was a founding Board member and first President of the National Association for the Employment of Americans (NAEA), and organizer of American Jobs Coalition (organizations fighting against the American Worker Replacement Program). Glenn is also a former State Chairman for Buchanan 2000 Presidential campaign, and former state Chairman of the Georgia Freedom Party (a Reform Party affiliate). Glenn holds an MA in Philosophy from Georgia State University in Atlanta.
© Glenn R. Jackson