Guess who won the 2016 presidential election:
Trump supporters, Clinton supporters, or the Wall Street multinationals employing divide and rule tactics?
If you said “Wall Street” you win a cookie.
Guess who would have won regardless of which mainstream candidate was elected?
Wall Street again.
Guess who isn’t even American any more?
Once again, the correct answer is Wall Street.
Now, guess who wins when American workers turn on eachother as we have the past year?
That’s right, Wall Street.
The multinational corporations pushing globalization down our throats can’t win unless they divide us against one another. Why?
Because the sordid truth is that their v
ersion of a global economy has no protections for workers whatsoever and no benefits for us. It levels workers in China, which has a per capita income of just $15,750, with those of us making $57,500 here in the U.S.
The multinationals get all the benefits of this global economy, while the people actually doing the work get all the burdens.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to make $15,000 a year. Especially in a nation with no national medical care, where medial costs are the leading cause of personal bankruptcy. A nation where sneakers that sell for $25 in China go for $150.
Much like our jobless recovery, globalization only favors the rich. The powers-that-be distract us from that inescapable truth by playing the race card, the gender card, the lifestyle bias card, and the religion card.
This divide and conquer tactic is based on our species’ instinctive tribalism. And it works
That’s what the 1 Percent did with the Brexit – when Britain voted to exit the European Union – and that’s what they did during the 2016 presidential election. Even with both major party candidates in their pocket.
Trump didn’t win because your fellow Americans turned into racists, sexists, homophobes or bigoted “deplorables.” He won because he recognized that our so-called jobless recovery has only benefited the ultra rich, the multinational corporations they control, and the privilege bubbles they call home.
Most of the rest of us are shit out of luck.
If you live in New York City, San Francisco, or Washington, D.C., you probably don’t see it. Any more than Hillary did.
You’re probably one of the educated idiots now vilifying any woman who voted for Trump as a gender traitor and deriding any man as a racist, sexist, or homophobe.
That’s easier than looking in the mirror and acknowledging that you don’t really know what’s going on in your own country any more; that you’re no longer Joe Everyman or Jane Everywoman; and habitually turn a blind eye to the suffering of your fellow Americans.
The so-called “losers” and “deplorables” live in places you don’t really care about except at election time and there’s more of them now. Places like “The Rustbelt” and “Flyover Country” and “Dumbfuckistan” (right). Places where Main Street is littered with abandoned buildings and boarded up windows, and people are missing teeth and wearing second-hand clothing.
If you really think the progressive whites who supported the Civil Rights movement and The Sexual Revolution in the 1960s and 70s have turned into Neanderthals you’re probably unaware of just how many homeless veterans now live in our nation’s forests. Could be you just don’t see all the displaced workers sleeping in their cars in Wal-Mart parking lots, because they can’t get into public housing.
You probably don’t know that people now wait eight and 10 years just to participate in the lottery to get on a waiting list for public housing. Or that 22 veterans are taking their lives every day, compared with a rate of 0.8 deaths a day at the height of combat operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Or that the number of working age whites dying from suicide or drug abuse has surged 22 percent since 1999.
Things are so bad in Dumbfuckistan people are killing themselves.
By contrast, life is pretty good in New York City thanks to all the Wall Street money.
San Francisco rakes in the cash every time Simi Valley creates a new way to destroy jobs through automation.
Washington, D.C., is also doing well thanks to the taxpayer dollars raining down on the defense contractors, lobbyists and political hookers who live there. A parasitc largesse which percolates outward through the regional economy.
That economic divide is the only divide that matters right now.
Many of the forgotten Americans voted for Trump on Tuesday. Not to support the message of the Klu Klux Klan, but because this silver spoon mofo acknowledged their suffering and Hillary did not.
Pretending the economy is booming is part of the kabuki theater of our quadrennial presidential elections.
We pretend the president has total control over the economy and they and their party pretend everything is just grand. Geedub tired to pull the same bullshit in 2008.
How do I know?
I covered economic indicators for a global audience for Bloomberg News and continued to write about them afterward for The Associated Press and Gannett. I know my shit and I’m not for sale.
Do I think Trump knows just how desperate things really are for most Americans? Hell no.
I think this sheletered buffoon lucked into the biggest jackpot in U.S. political history because his role as challenger was to criticize the incumbent’s handling of the economy. Trump, who has spent his life in luxury, did it as an afterthought and was as surprised as anyone when “up from the ground came a bubbling gold.”
I’m even more certain because I know that the true depth of poverty in America is habitually obscured by our flawed economic indicators. Instead of exposed.
Many indicators are politicized by the party controlling the White House through various sins of omission. Some conscious, some unconscious.
I’ll give you a couple of quick examples. Let’s start with housing.
Officially, new home sales were down 43 percent in 2011 from the start of record-keeping in 1963. The true decline is actually 67 percent after the data is adjusted to reflect our population’s growth from 173 million to 312 million.
We use population growth to obscure a lot of economic weaknesses.
Case in point, monthly job creation. Every month we pretend zero is zero when we talk about job creation.
It’s not.
Break-even typically ranges between 100,000 to 130,000 thanks to all the new workers joining the civilian labor force each month due to population growth. That means the 161,000 jobs created in October actually represent a net gain of just 31,000 to 61,000 jobs.
Initial jobless claims, a measure of new requests for unemployment benefits, are way down. But that’s because there are fewer workers left to fire. Not because the multinationals are being good to people.
Officially, the U.S. unemployment rate was 4.9 percent in October. However, the unemployment rate has been gamed to the point it no longer means anything. The actual percentage of Americans without a job was 40.3 percent in October.
Trump got that right.
I d
etest the man, but he got it right.
American workers are tearing into one another now in the wake of this meaningless election, in which both opportunistic candidates played the group bias card. Trump by attacking traditional victim groups. Hillary by downplaying the suffering of everybody else.
It’s gotten pretty ridiculous.
For me, the fear and self loathing jumped the shark today with word that the globalists now have us boycotting New Balance shoes. The Boston-based private company is the last major company to employ Americans in the manufacture of running shoes.
Its competitors, like Nike and Adidas, have all moved their production lines to low-wage nations like China and Vietnam.
Wha
t’s that mean?
We’re protesting the only patriotic American shoe company because it criticized President Barack Obama for supporting the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. The TPP is bad for the 99 Percent because it will move more American jobs overseas.
The globalists like TPP because it’s a step toward a global economy with no global government and no labor regulations whatsoever. That’s their dream because it would make them the modern equivalent of the kings and queens of old.
Wall Street’s version of globalization would also transform their workers into obedient debt slaves. You know, like a sharecropper or an indentured servant.
Look, I like President Obama. I’m a fan of the man, but he’s wrong on TPP. Just as Bill Clinton was wrong on The North American Free Trade Act and the less charismatic Ross Perot was right. Perot cautioned American voters during the 1992 presidential election to listen for the giant sucking sound that would be created by all the jobs leaving the U.S. if it passed.
NAFTA‘s been great for Wall Street, just like TPP. But it’s cost the U.S. more than 680,000 jobs since its passage in 1994, according to Economic Policy Institute economist Robert Scott.
The Nikes and Adidas of the world pay about a fifth as much in labor costs in China as they would in the U.S. To make matters worse, they pocket the difference instead of passing the savings along to their U.S. customers.
Case in point, the Yeezy Boost 750 (right) sells for about $150 a pair here in the U.S. They would cost about $30 per pair if the retail price reflected the cheaper wages Adidas pays Chinese workers.
Get it?
The multinational corporations that control the Dems and Republicans are using this tactic to hollow out the U.S. middle class. We won’t see the same retail prices as Chinese workers until we’re leveled with them.
That’s why multinationals favor globalization. That’s also why New Balance, Trump and Clinton should be lauded for opposing it.
Sure, Trump is a racist, silver spoon mofo.
But even a broken clock is right twice a day. He and Clinton were right to oppose TPP, even if it they only did it for show.
So am I.
Opposing globalization is like opposing fire ants if you’re a worker. It’s a no-brainer.
That’s why both Wall Street candidates pretended to be against TPP and will repackage it and pass it in a year or two.
You know who isn’t pretending?
New Balance.
They deserve better.
I don’t give a fuck what type of hyphenated American you are, if you’re American then New Balance is on your side. The globalists and Wall Street multinationals are not.
New Balance wants more companies to make their shoes here so more American families can feed themselves. It would also like to be able to continue to make shoes here. Instead of having to shift production to a low wage nation to remain in business.
Right now, almost everything that’s good for Wall Street is bad for American workers. Wall Street is comprised of global rich people and huge multinational corporations. If you’re a worker they advance themselves at your expense.
Figure it out.
What can you do to change things?
Step No. 1: Stop voting for Wall Street candidates.
How can you tell?
Just look at who is backing them financially at the www.OpenSecrets.org website.
There was a lot of nonsens
e coming out of the Democrats and Republicans about how voting for a third party candidate in 2016 was a wasted vote.
The truth is just the opposite. If you voted for Trump or Clinton you wasted your ballot by voting for Wall Street.
The only votes that weren’t wasted in the 2016 presidential election were the ones cast for third party candidates like Jill Stein and Gary Johnson.
Get it?
