THE INCONVENIENT TRUTH
Submitted by christian on Tue, 11/15/2016 - 22:14
President Barack said during a news conference on his final overseas trip that the President-elect had tapped into a "troubling" strain of rhetoric playing on Americans' fears of globalization to win the presidency. But here are the hard facts about the so-called rhetoric the President-Elect is being wrongly incriminated:
Outsourcing and Offshoring of American jobs
- Some of the nation’s largest corporations have outsourced American jobs overseas and from the years 2001 to 2009 have cut their workforce by 2.9 million people and instead hired 2.4 million people overseas.
- As a result of the offshoring and outsourcing of American jobs these past two decades millions of domestic jobs have been lost, largely in industrial manufacturing. U.S. industrial manufacturing base has been decimated with a loss of over 5.5 million jobs or over 32 percent of all manufacturing jobs since October 2000. Since 2001 the United States has lost over 70,000 factories. Well over 6 million American jobs were lost since then and this continues.
- The loss of millions of jobs effects the state of the U.S. economy and government revenue. US national debt is nearly 20 $ trillion and the U.S. has no longer revenue from trade via tariffs (which have been slashed to nothing) or from industrial high-wage paying jobs (via income taxes) to even help pay it off combined together with the death of the middle class. When jobs go overseas GDP declines and the foreign countries GDP increases instead by the amount of the production cost lost.
- Incomes decline especially when high-skilled industrial jobs that pay higher wages at $35-45 per hour disappear and Americans (laid off or otherwise) are forced to work underemployed in a service industry that pays $7-8 per hour to survive with no benefit.
- The U.S. has no industrial strategy towards the manufacturing sector or obtaining/retaining innovative and advanced industries, nor protective policies to keep them or shield them from foreign companies that are heavily subsidized by their governments.
- The United States lost millions of jobs overseas as companies offshored and outsourced their business and were allowed to do so by the politicians controlling the government with both tax breaks (loopholes) and little incentive at all to keep companies in the United States. There are tax breaks that even cover the cost of moving jobs overseas still in effect and there is also the offshore tax deferral. The offshore tax deferral allows corporations to defer payments on taxes indefinitely by storing them offshore. Under such policies corporations are currently holding (hiding) over $2.1 trillion in untaxed profits offshore.
- When President Obama signed the US-Korea FTA which went into effect on March 2012 he stated at that time the agreement would create 70,000 domestic jobs in the United States via increase exports of American goods by $10 billion to $11 billion. Here is the outcome: In the first two years of the US-Korea FTA, American domestic exports to South Korea decreased by $3.1 billion, a decline of 7.5%, while imports from South Korea increased $5.6 billion, an increase of 9.8%. Even worse, the rapid increase of imports has eliminated even more domestic jobs. The US trade deficit with South Korea increased by $8.7 billon overall, costing nearly 60,000 American jobs (most of which were in domestic manufacturing).The Economic Policy Institute estimates this agreement will cost the United States over 159,000 American jobs over the next 5 years.
- What globalization has done is redistribute America’s wealth and industry over to Asia all to the detriment of the American people while a select few have gotten wealthy off this.
High Trade Deficits
- In the year 2015 U.S. trade deficit with China was a record breaking $365 billion This is without any formal “free trade” agreement – only blind faith in free trade policy. U.S. protective tariffs average 1.5% (down from an historic 25-35% average range) which means for the first time the U.S is practicing near 100% free trade policy. The U.S. opened free trade with a heavily protectionist and mercantilist country (China) that actively regulates its economy and blocks American goods both by its own protective tariffs and a wide variety of non-tariff techniques to “game” the system (VAT taxes, currency manipulation, local content laws, import licensing requirements etc.). Nothing has been done by the US Congress to counter these measures as they and corporate interests profit. China also blocks American purchases of Chinese companies while the United States, in the spirit of the “free market”, allow Chinese companies (often state sponsored) to purchase vital and strategic American companies.
- According to the Economic Policy Institute, the rise in the U.S. trade deficit with China between 2001 - 2013 alone eliminated 3.2 million U.S. jobs by which over 2.4 million (75 percent) were in American domestic manufacturing. U.S. trade deficit stood at $531 billion in 2015. It has been estimated that for every 1 billion dollars in trade deficit costs Americans about 9,000 jobs.
- The Economic Strategy Institute has estimated that the trade deficit was shaving at least 1% off U.S. economic growth per year. Since GDP growth is cumulative – these numbers add up.
- By opening free trade with low wages countries, American workers are now forced to compete with foreign laborers for jobs which puts them in a losing situation. No American worker can compete with foreign labor that is paid less than $1 per hour without reducing their standard of living.
- In addition, there is the selling off of American businesses and assets resulting from enormous trade deficits and lack of protection of American industries by the government. Most of the hundreds of billions of dollars of direct foreign investment in the U.S.goes towards buying up existing American businesses and assets. In 2008, 93.2% of foreign investment ($242.8 billion) went to buying up existing American companies while only 6.7% ($17.6 billion) went to establishing new American businesses.
Mass Over-Immigration: Job Loss and Depressed Wages
- Over 41 million immigrants entered the United States within a span of 25 years. Continuing today, the U.S. legally allows over 1.1 million immigrants into the country per year, about 800,000 foreign "guest workers" each year for cheap labor, and on top of that; an additional 13 million illegal immigrants who entered since the 1990’s thanks to neglected border security.
- Aside from cultural issues, it is no good that millions of immigrants are coming into the country while millions of jobs are going out of the country. Flooding the labor market with excess workers who are willing to work for less reduces the quality of life for all American workers. American jobs are also lost due to businesses going for the cheap labor sources (legal and illegal) causing overall wages to decline.
- According to a 2015 report by the Congressional Research Service, wages for middle class Americans have dropped below 1970s levels as immigration has surged 325 percent over those decades. Wages and share of income for the bottom 90% wage-earners have declined over the past 40 years.
- The U.S. H2-B visa program allows companies to hire “seasonal” cheap immigrant labor at a rate of 66,000 per year for “low-skilled” jobs. In 2015, Congress raised the H2-B visa cap from 66,000 per year to over 264,000 per year. The H2-B visa program effects domestic jobs considered “non-agricultural” but “low-skilled”. These jobs include: hospitality workers, hotels, chefs, bartenders, construction workers, maintenance, janitorial, forestry workers, warehouse jobs, retail jobs, amusement parks, leisure facilities, etc.
- There is also illegal immigration by which 13 million illegal immigrants entered the United States since the 1990’s taking American jobs in construction, food services, maintenance workers, carpentry, etc., and working for much less money (depressing wages). Illegal immigration hurts American workers in “low-skilled” jobs the most and imposes a $113 billion combined cost to Federal, State, and Local governments per year.
Decline in Quality of Life and Standard of Living
- Real median household income has declined to $49,445, compared with $53,164 in 2000. Annual median wages have fallen to $26,364, their lowest level since the 1990’s. U.S. standard of living has been dropping to its lowest levels not seen since before the 1960s. Even workers with college degrees have suffered. No longer are college degrees correlating to higher earnings. Workers between the ages of 25-34 with their BA’s saw their real earnings decrease 11% between the years 2000-2008.
- Big Corporations complain about the cost of hiring American workers meanwhile the pay of CEO’s increased 300 times more than workers’ pay over the past 30 years. From 1978 to 2014 CEO compensation increased 997% while only 10.9% for typical workers compensation. Between the years 1979 – 2009, American worker productivity increased by 80.4% while hour wages of median workers lagged behind only growing 10.1%.
- The U.S. is still losing more jobs than are being created each year. Even the jobs that are being created are low quality jobs. For the millions of jobs created, most have been low-wage jobs in food service, retail, etc., paying only minimum wage with fierce competition for those jobs from unemployed Americans to over 1 million legal immigrants per year coming here for work (in addition to illegal immigration). Meanwhile, 78% of jobs lost during the Great Recession have been mid to high wage jobs.
- In 2015, for the first time in 40 years, the U.S. Middle Class has shrunk to the point where it is no longer the economic majority There are about 50 million Americans struggling below the poverty line with 16 million US children struggling with hunger.
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