[andrewlittle]

I'm certainly not a Marxist, but I do agree with Marx on some issues. One of those is that economics is at the root of (almost) all action. We are witnessing, I believe, the results of a long-planned, badly executed, purely self-serving process for economic hegemony that has been cloaked in ideological and religious rhetoric.

The majority of the U.S. population has allowed this process to occur out of fear for loss of advantage and security - out of self-interest it has turned a deaf ear and blind eye to the rampant abuse of the majority of the world's poor. Why? Because consumerism - the flawed idea that constantly increasing consumption of goods is economically beneficial - requires inequitable transactions, or those in which more resources are gained for less than they are worth. Our addiction to "more for less" is based on the world's poor getting less for more. It is based on economic exploitation.

And, as long as it was "them" getting the disadvantage so we can reap advantage, it was okay. We could give to Third World charities and pretend we were doing something that helped. Meanwhile, we didn't have to look at our own complicity as we went to buy the cheap products of economic slavery from our favorite retailers.

But now the effects of globalization are coming home to roost - actually they have been for years, but "spin" has painted a brighter picture. Globalization has been designed and fed by the same groups that have spouted Neocon and Theocon rhetoric - it is the result of dominion theology being applied to economics.

But, globalization is not about a "God-blessed elite country (U.S.)" deserving power and privilege, propelling all U.S. citizens into a higher standard of living. It is about a much smaller "God-blessed elite citizenry" achieving hegemony at the expense of all others. The general population of the U.S. is also expendable as "collateral damage".

Originally Posted by BruceChris

1. While most of the working and middle class has been getting along pretty much O.K., their standard of living hasn't improved noticably in the last 30 years, while the wealth of this country has been increasing by amazing amounts.

In December 2005 I wrote:

With the availability of a global supply of cheap labor to fill the decreasing number of job openings required to generate profits, the populations of the dominant nations run the risk of seeing an erosion of income and welfare. Between the years 1999 and 2004 the average U.S. family income decreased 8.8% and all segments of the U.S. population, except the top 15%, experienced increased poverty and/or decreased earnings. Along with the income trend is the reduction of benefits of many U.S. workers, a pattern that is, as yet, difficult to quantify. The reliance of U.S. companies on U.S. labor is significantly decreasing. While various sources, such as Bureau of Labor Statistics and Business Week, are citing growth in both high and low paying jobs, they also report that the high paying jobs require considerable re-education as they are in areas like healthcare and computer industries. The segment seeing the most significant decline is medium and high-medium paying positions, with many workers formerly in this category accepting lower paying jobs or experiencing long-term unemployment. The benefits of economic power for the populations of the dominant nations may be in decline along with their understandings of identity and security - in short, long-term they may be facing dehumanization from globalization.

From the National Poverty Center of the University of Michigan (http://www.npc.umich.edu/poverty/):

In 2004, 12.7 percent of all persons lived in poverty. In 1993 the poverty rate was 15.1 percent. Between 1993 and 2000, the poverty rate fell each year, reaching 11.3 percent in 2000. Poverty has risen in each of the last four years.

Poverty is, in fact increasing, and the purchasing power (and hence, standard of living) of average U.S. citizens is decreasing.

Originally Posted by BruceChris

2. The ratio of the pay of the lowest paid worker to the compensation of the CEO's and owners has gone up by several orders of magnitude in that same time. The poor may or may not be getting much poorer, but the rich are getting one HELL of a lot richer.

The ELITE few are controlling more and more of the wealth of this country and the world. When I studied economics (too many years ago to remember), one definition of "Third World" was "any country in which more than 90% of the resources were owned or controlled by less than 5% of the population." That stopped being a working definition in the very late 1990's because, by definition, the U.S. would have been a Third World country. The latest estimate is that 90% of the U.S. wealth is controlled or owned by slightly more than 2% of the population.

Originally Posted by BruceChris

4. I believe that this country is not so much being run into the ground by the Republicans, as by the People Who OWN the Republican party, all too much of the Democratic party, and far too much of the rest of the country. - Please go back and read that a second time.

This is old news now, but it hasn't changed for the better.

It is a given that the world’s dominant cultures are largely defined by economic supremacy. Of the world’s top hundred economies in 1999, the last year readily available online for analysis [as of 2003], 51% are non-governmental transnational corporations (TNCs). Imagine 51 companies - each with economic systems bigger than those of three-quarters of the world’s nations. Combined, the top 200 TNCs made up 27.5% of the world’s economic activity (GNP) while employing only 0.78% of the world’s workforce. Despite Charles Wilson’s declaration as CEO of General Motors that “what is good for General Motors is good for the country” , GM and a host of other TNCs fail even the most rudimentary test of good citizenship, payment of taxes. In the 1998 tax year, 44 of the US based top 200 TNCs paid well less than the normal 35% rate of tax on profits, and seven - GM, Texaco, Chevron, PepsiCo, Enron, Worldcom and McKesson - paid less than zero after receiving tax rebates. This is significant because, next to employment, taxes are the most basic way in which companies participate in the social infrastructure. TNCs, as dominant cultures, thus have a history of minimizing both employment and financial support of society in relation to earnings.

Neo-conservative economics at their finest. A good source for brushing up on who really owns the U.S. and world economies is http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/tncs/index.htm

Originally Posted by BruceChris

5. So to simplify, let's call these people the Neocons, and Suzer's bunch the Theocons. We can then pretty much see, or at least begin to learn that the Neocons believe that they are using the Theocons, and the Theocons believe that they are using the Neocons. However, it is ourselves, the rest of the non-rich, the rest of the world, the environment, and anyone unlucky enough to be labeled a terrorist that are really going to suffer from all of this.

We already are - the question is will we be smart enough to realize it before its too late?