Today at work, Donna was asked to take a lay-off. The company we both work for provides dining services in both corporate and industrial settings. Another location our company had a contract with shut down it's local plant to ship the manufacturing to Mexico. So along with all the factory workers losing their jobs, the employees from our company would be out on the street, except because we belong to a union, the ones with seniority had bumping priviliges, meaning they could force Donna out of her job as she had little seniority.
Now this new person has to drive forty miles to work each day, which is just as well, as there are probably not too many jobs in their area since the plant laid off 1500 people, and the town it's in is very small. Still, with gas prices what they are, a good portion of their hourly wage will go to the cost of driving eighty miles round trip each day. Which means that they'll probably not have any extra money for extras, just the basics, food, gas, lodging.
With all the unemployed people in this town, coupled with working people on limited budgets, local retailers will feel the pinch and be forced to lay off employees as well. Some will be forced to close as they are unable to compete with the box stores.
With all the unemployment in this town, fewer tax revenues will be generated, so more services will be cut. More people will leave to find work in the big city and if they own property, will have to take a loss for their once desirable house. Property values will drop as no one wants to live where there is no work close by, and with that, property taxes will fall, leaving even less for the public schools which have always been at the bottom of the tax food chain.
At one time, America used to export quality items that people wanted to buy. Now all we export is jobs and war. The Republicans and the Democrats have sold the American worker out, and in turn, every community in the country that relies on the worker to sustain it's existence. As the trade deficit grows, the dollar starts falling, as we have nothing to back it up. Many countries, such as China, are now pegging their currency against the Euro, as opposed to the dollar. Our money become worth less, as oil prices keep going up, this will surely trigger another round of inflation.
Many people in this country have blamed the unions for driving up wages that have made the American worker overpriced in the global marketplace, while no one looks at the CEOs who have made plundering their companies for multi-million dollar salaries the norm. The American worker just wants to earn a decent living, and have enough to set aside to retire on. They want to earn enough so they don't have to work another job in their off time to enjoy the standard of living they have become accustomed to. Guess what people, that's not going to happen. The American worker is being sacrificed on the altar of Globalization, which will only benefit a small percentage of the population at the expense of the masses (ohmigod, I'm sounding like a communist), all courtesy of those people we pay taxes to support, the US Congress.
NAFTA and CAFTA have allowed these corporations to export more American jobs away from the US in blind drive for increased profits.
But if no one has any money to purchase your products because they don't have a job, how are you going to make a profit? Shortsighted idiots.
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2 comments:
Thank you for leaving a post on my blog. I am trying to reach a wide community about a revolution in political thinking. There are about 50% of the people that do not participate in voting, and those are the people that need to be reached and get them registered to vote (but some of them do not need to vote). If people would quit looking at ideologies as you point out, we could get some libertarian minded candidates in office. Again, thanks for the post.
First off, you're welcome. Second off, we do need to break people of the my team's better than your team mentality of the Republican/Democrat mindset where the government volley's between two groups of elites that have no idea how to survive on miniscule wages when everything is overtaxed. They should be as concerned with saving the working people as they are with saving the extremely wealthy. Unfortunately, the only time they look at the lower classes is when they fixate on the very poor during the catastrophe that was Katrina. The working people are getting screwed and unless they wake up and realize that both parties don't give a good God damn for them, they will only get more vaseline.
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