Global Marketplace, My Foot!!

I am sick and tired of hearing about the “Global Marketplace.” We do not have a global market. We have a one-way out-flow of cash and jobs.

A global market would indicate free and equal trade between all vendors. Think of a bazaar or craft fair. There are numerous vendors each peddling wares in their own stalls. As often as not, however, those vendors find time to browse the other stalls, and frequently make purchases from other vendors.

That is not the case with the USA. We have exported a great many jobs to the extreme detriment of our economy, and we import merchandise of all types from vendors around the world. We sell our products to virtually no other country. It is a one-way street. We are like a vendor at a fair whose booth everyone bypasses without a second glance.

Let me re-state that with slightly different wording:  we offer wares for sale that were not made here by our workers, while simultaneously taking away their jobs, depriving them of an income with which to buy the products. This causes people to over-burden their credit cards in an attempt to buy what they want, even though they can no longer afford the goods. Eventually, this leads to people defaulting on their debts, and this has a ricochet effect, as more and more people find themselves in such straits.

The credit-holders want their money, but the workers no longer have funds with which to pay the debt, so the lending institution incurs the additional expense of hiring a collection agency, whose efforts are equally futile. If enough people default on their debts, it eventually puts the stability of the lender at risk, and if they fold, there go untold more hundreds of jobs. It is a vicious circle.

People are becoming unemployed at ever-increasing rates, and staying unemployed longer. In fact, they are staying unemployed for so long that they fall off the unemployment rolls as no longer elibible for benefits.  This plays nicely into the hands of the political spin-doctors who can proudly point to the "shrinking unemployment," and "improvement of the economy," as they do not count as unemployed those whose benefits have expired! All too often, if these people do find another job, it is a part-time, low-paying job, and the salary is not enough on which to survive.

We see the results daily in the news, but no one is paying attention. The cost of everything is escalating, the demand for public assistance is growing, more jobs are being lost, food banks are running short of supplies year-round, not just at the holidays, and the number of goods manufactured here continues to shrink.

Pray tell, how does anyone in good conscience define the current economy as a ‘Global Marketplace?’ It is anything but. It is nothing but self-serving, short-sighted greed sponsored by giant corporations whose CEO’s earn obscenely inflated salaries and perks, and who have the attitude of, “I’ve got mine—to hell with everyone else!”

It is well past time for a revolt against these revolting practices that are destroying our country. If this is not stopped, we will find that the “Good old U.S. of A” will have been the fastest rise and fall of a superpower in the history of the world.



WAKE UP!!