Forum Post: The Super Rich Have Closed 55,000 Factories
Posted 12 years ago on Nov. 5, 2011, 12:29 p.m. EST by HitGirl
(2263)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
The super rich have closed 55,000 factories in the last ten years and that wasn’t the beginning of their terrorism, having started more than 30 years ago thanks to their Patron Saint Ronald Reagan. They have made millions homeless, ruined the livelihoods of millions of farmers in the US and in Mexico and they are polluting the water table everywhere they can make a buck and that‘s just a few of their crimes. The real damage the one percent has done runs into many trillions every year.
Converting a billion dollar income into the numbers of the Super Poor, each of the palatial estates of the Super Rich could be a city of 100,000. Indeed census figures show that the poor tend to be clustered in their own communities, dare we use the word “ghetto”? This clustering doubles their misery as the local government has no money for services of any kind let alone relief for the poor. No schools worthy of the name, no libraries, no city services the rest of us take for granted, and no jobs at an acceptable wage as most of these people have skills that have been outsourced to China.
States (especially the red ones) don’t provide anything for poor communities anymore, even to support police protection and crime is mushrooming. The Republicans in Congress are determined that no Federal relief will be forthcoming.
The fastest growth in poverty, nearly double anywhere else, is in the suburbs. Formally the symbol of the American dream, they are now a nightmare of isolation and despair, crime ridden, and deteriorating fast, with no jobs to be had, with no government support we are creating a permanent under class. And just so you right wingers know, in these suburbs the people are mostly white like you, worship the same god as you and believe the same rightwing lies as you. You are next. Be like them or fight back.
Excerpt from Prairie2 www.prairie2.com
Sounds like business as usual to me.
I think we need more workers to start cooperatives like in the documentary "The Take" by Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein.
http://www.thetake.org/
More people should realize that in fact we don't really need all these "executives" at all. People can work for and with one another just fine.
And they certainly wouldn't be off-shoring their own companies. The Right loves to talk about how lazy the unemployed are, but it seems to me that it's the investor class that is looking to make as much money as they can with as little effort as possible. Lazy Executives don't want to share the wealth with their workers or even maintain their community by paying taxes.
Our purchase of foreign goods produced a trade deficit that averaged 714 billion per year between 2005 and 2008, or $2.1 trillion in total cash outflow over a three year period ( http://tinyurl.com/CensusTradeData ). Worse, if you dig just a little deeper, you'll see we BORROWED the money to buy all those foreign goods. We thus made the "banksters" rich AND sent our jobs overseas !
If you want American jobs, then buy American products.
Manufacturing in this country has been largely outsourced so the rich could suck off the profits. This outsourcing fiasco has helped them get richer. It's a punch to the gut for the middle class.
I am design engineer working in manufacturing so I know too well. I have seen it. I already see the beginnings of outsourcing engineers as well. Software design is already being outsourced. I know, I collaborate on designs with them.
We're racing to the bottom as fast as we can go as rich plan to make their great escape with all their loot.
Hi Puzzlin, Good post based on experience from within industry. Best Regards, Nevada
My pleasure.
Yeah, they are outsourcing engineers. It's becoming a matter of national security.
Their in-sourcing as well since we can't produce enough engineers here in the good ole USA. We still do produce the best in world however.
The technology is going to drive paradigm shift we're in, so this is where we can invest for our future, bring up more engineers, bring back manufacturing as we use intelligent machines to automate factories here. We can again show the world how to raise their living standards by raising ours. Not by lowering ours to theirs. This can be done. It is our future
We need Reason back in our world. Money spawns greed,
Reason spawns rational choices, plans, principles, and seeks the truth.
The red States have 3 million guns. And they love the American way.
Not really the Richs fault, try looking at the money supply. When you have every dollar as a debt instrument, the poor are going to get poorer and the rich are going to get richer, even if they all sat still. Interest is a bitch. Don't demonise the rich. We are great.
Then pay your f*ckin taxes!
Rude. I pay more than 47% of the population. Maybe the key to your argument is stop government waste, not getting more money out of hard working people.
I here that all the time, yet I know plenty of hard-working people who aren't rich, so get off that tired shit. We both know that numerous circumstances contribute to a person becoming wealthy: his access to a good education, the laws of his country, the available infrastructure even the health of the middle class, who are major consumers. When you're that fortunate it only makes sense that you pay higher taxes. Nobody likes government waste, but most of us are equally disgusted by tax loopholes created by the coercive influence of wealthy people and corporations.
Hard work doesn't make you rich. It is an element of it. Like flour to make a cake, it's not the be all and end all. You have to provide a product or service that people want at price they want to pay and do it cheaper and more effectively than any one else. If you can do that, you will be rich. Taxing anyone will only create more problems.
Amen, George!
Progressive taxes have played an important role in the history of this country. Get away from the right-wing slogans and look at the economic history. I think you'll find that progressive is about more than just ethics or social justice.
Country founded on tax reform, generally a tax free nation for most of its growth. People who want more taxes are people who think they have a god given right to other peoples money. You will fit in very well with the rest of the 1%, that's pretty much their motto too.
Another great post!
Business really does need to concern itself more with people than just the bottom line. Greed is a natural instinct in humans and it can only be stopped by regulation. People get high on money, and it buys many many big highs, but it comes at high high price. Problem is the greedy don't pay the price, we do, the 99%ers.
They won't stop it, WE HAVE TO. And now, we are here, and they can expect more and more of us in more places. This movement is in our DNA, and has been. For those like me, we did not just wake up to this problem yesterday, we've seeing and living it all our lives.
I grow up during the Vietnam delirium. I was young enough thankfully to miss the draft completely. I was a teenager in the 1970s, we were the wild ones (LoL). I remember doing a term paper in HS on MAD. Mutual Assured Destruction. We lived in very dark days indeed.
At the same time the planet realized itself as a big round ball we also realized we had the ability the wipe humans off it (or at least most) in an all out nuclear exchange. I did not even realize back then how close we really came in '62 with the cuban missile crisis, so the idea was quite fathomable. A topic of great discussions and terror in the day.
Great thread. We all can learn from this. To get change, and the right kind of change we have to be aware we need to learn as much as we can. These ideas are empowering us. We all lead this movement.
Thanks!!!
I agree with most of what you've said, but I wanted to footnote it to say that greed is in fact NOT a "natural" instinct of humans. Greed is a product of the culture and the society in which we live. There are some societies and some cultures around the world where you can see that individuals live for the good of the community and not themselves. We should do the same, but we would have to understand first that this is not our nature, anymore than obesity is "our nature".
No I will defer here.
Although if you research this you'll find these two schools of thought, one is innate (natural), and the other cultural. I don't believe it's 100% conclusive, and, of course our culture determines our degree of greediness as well. But I do believe it much deeper than just cultural. It is much more innate, culture is by far the smaller portion. As children we are taught not to steal because naturally we want to. Our culture tries to teach us it's wrong, but we still want to, but yes, we learn, and control ourselves.
Greed is a natural, inborn, human characteristic that resides in the most powerful part of the mind. Our 'prime directive' is to stay alive and that means having everything we need. The Deep Mind makes no differentiation between 'enough' and 'everything'.
And, also, some are more genetically prone to obesity than others.
Thank Prairie2. And thank you for letting me see that the OWS forum isn't just the stomping ground of libertarian trolls.
LoL, they are running amok aren't they.
Worse than the Oakland anarchists!
Definitely worse, LoL : ))
The poster is right, the government should provide for all citizens. Only the government knows what is good for us. A very wise man said " for each by his ability, to each by his need" Words to live by.
"Only the government knows what is good for us...the government should provide for all citizens." ??? Can you actually read? You might try reading some of Prairie2's stuff instead of jumping to conclusions and mocking him.
Hi HitGirl, Agree. Best Regards, Nevada
Thanks.
Cheap labor overseas. Pretty simple. Great for profits as a shareholder!
Yeah, the shareholders are happy. The 99% are not. And are we a better country for it?
Right, because the 99% don't own stock.
I could own stock if I chose. Just because you don't have ethics and a moral code don't assume everybody else is the same.
Right, because simply owning stock in a company means you lack ethics and a moral code.
No. I deduced that from your cynical post.
Haha ok. I am proudly part of the 99% but I also proudly buy and sell stocks and options.
Well, if you're good at it and you like doing it and you're not dealing in shadow market derivatives, I wouldn't hold it against you. Investment does serve a purpose. The real problem is investment bankers don't want to be bankers anymore. They want to be scammers and con artists. And that is a Law-and-Order matter, but the government is so corrupt that it isn't taking these people on which causes it to balloon and get worse. And that causes... Occupy Wall Street.
Derivatives are simply a different method of buying/selling the underlying contract. Derivatives are ethics-neutral, just like buying and selling stocks. If OTC swap markets are the problem, go after the regulators that allow OTC swaps to exist.
Derivatives should only be traded at casinos.
never forget 401ks
The 401ks have no say over what the companies do when they own stock. Their stock voting rights are taken away and given to others who can use it for their own benefit, not the owner of the 401k.
I am. Shareholders are the future of this country.
All you're saying is you're a greedy bastard that doesn't care if the country is better off. It's I-got-mine syndrome. It is very short-sighted and childish. And people like you are why the system will be reformed.
I am a proud shareholder of companies that provide jobs in the USA as well as jobs for those that would live in poverty overseas. Profits are up and dividends are great. Join us!
I think if you ignore the arrogance, what he's attempting to say, is that if Americans don't own our companies, then foreigners will. Those of us among the 99% that are employed, realize that health is not a forever thing. Someday we will all prefer retirement. A life determined solely by one's social security income is not much of a life, especially in light of continued attempts to "reform." Reliance on pensions also appears rather precarious in light of the overall decrease of available long term employment. The banks offer no interest at all; our only hope for a future, lies in the combination of, inclusive of the 401K or a similar plan. They are also a rather volatile vehicle. But there is a continued need for the Index, for our stocks and bonds, and for those that broker and manage them.
A life of government handouts is not much of a life for anybody. So we either join the 1% and shoot for the moon or we adopt a similar three tiered strategy.
Wrong! Our only hope for a future is to take-back / reform our government. In fact, we have no future unless we wrest control from the one percent. If you buy into the present system, you are not only admitting defeat but dooming yourself and your children to a life of servitude.
You can't take back the government; it's not your to take. It belongs to me. Really, I'm a shareholder.
Worst post ever
You are driving me crazy. Please change your name dirty hippie.
And how many of those factories were closed by corporations using investment dollars of UNION pension funds?
Unions have been passive investors of American worker pension dollars allowing corporations to take workers dollars through Wall Street and use them to wage economic warfare on American workers and middle-class by sending jobs overseas.
Unions are no better than Goldman-Sachs because the unions re heavily invested in Goldman-Sachs.
Unions and pension fund administrators like Fidelity and Vanguard have caused the economic problems in America today by putting short term capital gains before the long term returns on investing in America's workforce and industrial base.
Maybe OWS should open their own factories.
Don't think it won't happen. Soon, soon, soon factories in America will be cooperatives and we'll be rejecting your CEO's and executives because they have rejected us. And you'll be paying tariffs to sell your shit here.
the "super rich" are getting rich off chinese slave labor instead of unionized american jobs. Southern Ontario (Canada) is a prime example of that. it used to be a golden age of manufacturing, where if you get fired or quit, you could have another job the very same day and people were always hiring. of course, that was 30 years ago and that's what my parents and grandparents told me. Today, because the elite closed up all of the manufacturing and sent it all to third world countries, you have to beat out 100 people just to become a burger bitch.
even 10 years ago I can recall there being at least some jobs there. Just in lindsay Ontario alone,there used to be 12 factories, and that dwindled down to two, and I guess there's nothing there except old people, fast food joints, or white collared jobs you have to have degrees coming out your ass to get, and a high unemployment rate.
We need tariffs. Our gov is just FAIL right now. We need to elect somebody the corporations aren't shoving down our throats.
Agreed, I say we tariff the hell out of china and let them start their trade war.
Right On! F*ck the cowardly Republicans! Let's have a trade war!
THIS
Wow. All I can say is WOW. You are on the 'money'. I love that . That is OWS!!!
Thank Prairie2. www.prairie2.com
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The stupid...it hurts...
Unless you own the factory, then the owners can do whatever they want to it. They gave you a job, they have as much right to take it away
That isn't entirely true. It all depends on the laws of the state you're in. Don't make-up laws that you think sound fair. Ever heard of unlawful termination?
Your making me look stupid. I would never say that. Dumb ass!
Very amusing. Get a life.
your mother has close to 55,000 factories
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just insert "boogeyman" when you see "super rich". Same thing. It's made up...children often do that.. like you children
If you're going to be a troll at least try and be good at it.
Stevo IS A TRoll
Oh please don't call me a troll...PLEASE. I beg you. NOT THAT!
Well, your a Clever Troll
Stevo is a Clever Troll
stevo = Fail, even as a troll.
The good news. You now have the opportunity to start 55,000 NEW factories. Dont whine, start something.
I thought part of this movement was for the betterment of mankind as a whole. So what if a company moves a factory overseas, it is only providing employment to someone less fortunate that the citizens of the US. You should be proud that others are able to go to work and provide for their families. Keep in mind that the poor in the US live better than the middle class in other countries. One world, right?
If you're just their to help those people out, pay them good American wages. But we both know that's not what it's all about. Don't we. Rob?
You cannot pay them American wages because their standard of living is lower than ours. When you shop, do you look for the best price, or the best quality?
That depends on what I'm shopping for.
This is not a right or left equation. Both parties have been very active in their support of Free Trade. Where the right and left differ is that the right does not believe that the municipalities have the tax revenue to extent a helping hand. And either does the Federal government, in light of mounting debt, and an ever increasing alien population. If corporations are to outsource and leave rural communities destitute, then perhaps they should provide these services. Those that live in the cities, incidentally, have far more opportunity than those of a rural community. That's the very reason people flock to the city; the very reason they exist.
On the other hand, the Super Poor have kept their factories open.
FUCK YOU. What do you do for a living?
Okay,I've seen you ask this question numerous times. I'm an Operating Engineer,what do you do for a living?
Force Change, Boycott Capitalism
We know what the problem is, let us fix it and move forward together.
When you look at a republican or democrat, congress or FDA official, Judges and Justice Department, you see criminals.
Our corruption dates back many years to when those, who in trying to preserve slavery, had to find new ways to preserve it and so created a scientific and advanced form of slavery.
Only two components were required -- the illusion of freedom & choice and the taking away of the freedom to live off the land.
How else would you get a person to submit themselves to mind numbing or degrading work unless you oppress them into it.
Our current system is rooted in corruption and every attempt in preserving it involves manipulating human thought and turning people against one another.
In America the population has been transformed into two major voting groups but they only have one choice.
They had been distracted up until now with television and American culture which prospered through the oppression of other nations.
Americans allowed themselves to be fooled into using their military and economic dominance to seize resources of other nations and create expanding markets for American profiteers.
Now that technology, competition and conscience have evolved Americans are realizing that our current system of government is damaging and unsustainable.
Our government officials have allowed private profits and personal benefits to influence decisions that affect the health and well-being of people all over the planet, not just in America... how much longer will we allow them to rule over us??
Occupy Washington and demand that government officials resign their posts.
We will setup new online elections with a verification system that will allow us to see our votes after we cast them, put our new officials in office and work toward rebuilding our country and our world.
Pass this message along to any and everyone, we already occupy the world, unite.
Occupy Washington, Boycott Capitalism, Force Change -- http://wesower.org