Exporting America

Historically, the United States has ingrained in its consciousness the notion of hard work. In keeping with this is the notion of a basic caste system, or strata of social classes. It seems the American work ethic is a major factor in contributing to this mentality. When FDR essentially created the Middle Class in an extremely short period of time with his New Deal, the benefit to Americans at the time was the emergence of a class not quite as poor, but not as privileged as those who basically owned the people who would work for them. Fair work practices were born of unions and worker revolt, and the idea that America was a producer of things was the structure of our economy and in turn, our way of life.

In the present time, this paradigm does not really apply anymore, does it? America really no longer produces as much as it did in those times. In fact, the exporting of these manufacturing jobs, as well as jobs that we don’t want to do anymore is born of a certain arrogance that perhaps is never going to shift, but rather is an attitude born of our economic rise on the global stage. But at the same time, we suffer from the kind of paralysis of old thinking, and politicians and corporations are actually good at propagating this for their own benefit. It seems that power tends to need to subvert, and that is exactly what it is doing.

The idea in defense of America, the idea, the ideal, the concept, is that our greatest export now is our innovation. But is that really true? Of course it is a comforting idea, that our advancement is a new age in economic advancement, that our creativity is unsurpassed and is the key to our continued success. But where is all this innovation happening? It is a very depressing notion to know that people will always work at jobs that pay below a living wage, and it is so clear that the wealthy need it to be this way.

I can’t help but to hold tremendous disdain for the people who are wealthy, but less those that actually make their money by hook or crook, but the kinds of parasites that cling to them—their trophy wives, their obnoxious children and all those who worship at their feet.

To say nobody wants to work at low paying jobs is actually a weird kind of fallacy. But at some point, the idle rich will discover that the economies of scale have them caught. Nobody will be minding the store anymore. And that is actually where the answer lies.