(Source: Economy In Crisis, April 12, 2013)
The American middle class has been decimated by decades of policies that put the interests of a few wealthy individuals above the best interests of America as a whole. NAFTA, CAFTA, the WTO– these agreements have all served to enrich a few individuals who gain wealth by importing cheap goods into the United States. Meanwhile we have seen our good, middle-class jobs shipped overseas to countries with wage rates that are often below $4 per hour.
These trade agreements have ensured that manufacturers can build their products cheaply overseas and ship them back to the United States while paying the lowest possible tariffs and duties, which is often none at all. Now the United States is moving forward with a disastrous, misguided agreement that would expand this sort of arrangement to even more low-wage countries: the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). This agreement would put countries like Brunei and Vietnam on the same playing field as the United States, despite their lower wages and low environmental and labor standards.
The American middle class has suffered enough at the hands of these job-killing conditions foisted upon us by our so-called representatives in Washington. We have seen our factories close up, our jobs disappear, and our tax base shrink, leaving us with inadequate public services and infrastructure. This has made America nearly unrecognizable, and the TPP could be the final nail in our economy’s coffin.
Full story: Economy In Crisis