Hostile Takeovers, Mergers, Down Sizing, and Corporations Moving out of the USAThe 1980's. I remember it was during the Presidency of Ronald Reagan when a 'Consciousness of 'Greed and Contempt' - for ordinary working people began infusing political and business decisions that favored profits for the corporate few, over the wealth and health of the nation - began to first make its presence known. Austerity, deregulation, firing of air traffic controllers, and the first attacks on the social security nets which kept our nation intact and thriving, were sold to us by President Ronald Reagan. (With similar measures being sold to the peoples of Great Britain by PM Margaret Thatcher).
I remember a time in this country when people where I grew up and lived, including my Dad and Grand-Father, worked mostly in manufacturing jobs. My father and many fathers and mothers who worked in manufacturing could raise a family and even send their children to college, (this was a time when tuition's were affordable), on what they earned. These families had pensions, and healthcare. American workers worked hard and proudly, enriching the corporations and CEO's they worked for through their efforts and sweat, and in return was a business ethics in place where most people (more then any other time previously in history), were able to live good lives, raising their families, and educating themselves and future generations.
It seemed to me that those who chose not to go to college, as far as I could sense around me, through people I knew, seemed to enjoy their manufacturing jobs, the wages they earned, and when they were not working, they seemed to enjoy their lives and families. I remember this reality until the 1980's, when we entered the gilded age of "greed is good". Suddenly the language and actions associated with words such as 'hostile takeovers', 'mergers', 'downsizing' began filling the news papers and television newscasts. At first it was the workers with the greatest seniority being fired, or layer off, with a trend towards hiring newer cost friendly younger people at much lower wages. A period then followed encouraged by new tax laws which allowed new business friendly regulations such as NAFTA which opened the gates for the exodus of manufacturers to cheaper labor markets, and the once proud "Made in the USA", stickers and labels disappeared. At the same time, draconian measures were being put into place to thwart those who lost their jobs, savings, and often homes, to make sure they did not become 'dependent' and 'takers' on the welfare system. In 2008, whatever savings these very same folks had, were transferred to Wall Street and the banks, as part of the biggest transfer of wealth from We the People to Wall Street, private corporations and CEO's, and the banking system.
Now those very same individuals who were made redundant by factory closings, loss of jobs, and influxes of cheaper illegal labor had now lost their homes, and their savings, many from the sale of derivatives, bad loans, and corrupt Wall Street and banking casino like practices, are being called 'takers' by the very legislators and billionaires who have participated in the dismantling of American jobs market and manufacturing production, moving even the call centers taken to 'cheaper' off shore countries, as the corporations pleaded they needed to make even more profits to stay competitive. "Beyond Greed: When Billions in Profits are Not Enough".We have as a nation, have lost touch with our soul and we need to reconnect. We are also losing our hearts in the Orwellian policies of oppression, compassion-less free market policies, which for many years have been often led by a misguided religious theology based 'conservatism". We as a nation have allowed the purveyors of greed to dictate and now even write and enforce, the laws governing We the People. Those who serve We the People have written laws full of loopholes which allow corporations, millionaires, and billionaires to hide trillions of dollars off shore, changed import tariffs laws so that cheaply made products from the very same corporations that left America workers high and dry, are not taxed when they come back to American shores, and given corporations billions of dollars in corporate welfare. These practices continue to this day as more and more companies continue to leave American shores for cheaper labour markets where they will not be burdened with paying fair living wages, taxes, oversight, tariffs when they bring their products back to America for sale, or regulation of unfair business practices or detrimental environmental polices.
I am from a generation which is dying off early, they like myself are in their fifties, many grew up for the most part, in families who believed in and made American Dream dream profitable for the corporations, banks, wall street, and legislators. In return, society was programmed through the media with the message you were "making America great", we were to take pride in goods the "Made in USA". In the world I grew up in families passed on the message to each generation that "If you worked hard and helped build the company you worked for, the company would in return, take care of you for the wealth you generated for them." It wasn't a perfect business model, and without the unions, millions in this country and their generations would not have enjoyed a life where they had a chance at living the American dream, even so, the system was working and there were government regulations in place, and ethical standards practiced by most businesses which kept the balance of power in check. That was until deregulation, the crushing of unions, hostile buyouts of companies, merging, downsizing, trade treaties such as NAFTA and the moving of manufacturing jobs out of the USA, "for strictly business reasons".
A new business model is needed. One in which the hard work and dollars of those who support the growth of a company or corporation is not rewarded with contempt and free market greed. The souls which are coming forward, the new generations, are the ones who are going to bring this new reality forth. For those who have suffered, and are suffering the loss of their jobs, their homes, the health, and their lives, whilst those garnering the millions and billions of resources meant for all continue to write the laws and manipulate public awareness in their favour, I am truly sorry for your suffering. I did not cause your suffering, but I am aware of it, and so very sorry for your pain and losses.
with love,
Johanna1:
File comment: Watch Carrier Workers Find Out Their Jobs Are Moving to Mexico
https://theintercept.com/2016/02/12/watch-finding-out-your-job-is-moving-to-mexico/
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Carrier President Chris Nelson told the group, “This was an extremely difficult decision.”
Such difficulties for poor, poor United Technologies! It was making a nice profit at its Indianapolis and Huntington factories. But it was not the big fat profit it could pocket by paying Mexican workers a mere $3 an hour, providing $3 an hour in health or pension benefits, and doing it all in the nation with the longest work weeks among the 36 countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
It would be “extremely difficult” for United Technologies to abandon Indiana after the corporation grabbed $530,000 from the pockets of hard-working Hoosiers over the past nine years as the state’s economic development agency forked over taxpayer cash to the corporation.
It would be even more “difficult” to turn its back on America considering that United Technologies grabbed $121 million from a federal tax credit program established specifically to ensure that green manufacturing jobs remained in the United States. Carrier took $5.1 million of those tax credits in 2013.Murdering American Manufacturing: 'Strictly Business'http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leo-w-ger ... 85564.htmlWhy Our Government Isn't Listening: How Greed Is at the Root of US Sufferinghttp://www.truth-out.org/news/item/3479 ... -suffering"You’d think there would be laws against senators signing on to wield their considerable insider influence for special interest groups as soon as they retire. Oh wait, there are. For example, federal law prevents most officials from joining the influence peddling game for one to two years. It’s just that these laws are as full of loopholes as a plate of spaghetti, such as the designation that in order to be a “lobbyist,” they must spend 20% of their time lobbying for a client. Any less, and they’re just, um, well-compensated friends? Something like that.
Other times, they’re just not reporting their contracts, like this $5 million doozy. It’s part of a trend of non-disclosure that experts say is responsible for the appearance of lobbyist spending’s apparent slight decline in certain segments. So how lucrative is the “strategic advice” market? About $3.2 billion a year, with annual salaries often exceeding a million dollars. Quite an upgrade from the $174,000 a member of Congress makes."50% of Ex-Senators to Become Lobbyistshttp://www.thedailybeast.com/videos/201 ... yists.htmlIn Exchange For Cutting Benefits, This Bankrupt Coal Company Agreed To Pay Executives Millionshttp://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/0 ... -payments/How an Army of Pharma Lobbyists in Washington Have Locked in One of the Biggest Corporate Ripoff Schemes in Americahttp://www.alternet.org/personal-health ... ate-ripoff"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
Economists use the term "opportunity cost," and certainly massive spending on weapons and warfare is an opportunity lost for greater spending in needed areas such as education, infrastructure, environmental preservation, and alternative energies."The Pentagon as Business and Churchhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-a ... f=politics"Americans who once earned family-supporting wages working in factories, foundries and mills across this country began destroying themselves at a shocking rate five years after implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
That’s because such deals – schemes exactly like the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement released last week – encouraged corporations to offshore manufacturing, decimating decent American jobs and the lives of decent American workers.
Unemployed, desperate and despairing, these once-middle-class workers are killing themselves at unconscionable rates with guns, heroin and alcohol-induced cirrhosis. To such workers, the TPP would mean more tragedy, more death. The opposite is true for CEOs, shareholders and Wall Street financiers. To them, the TPP would mean even more luxury, more wealth. Trade schemes like the TPP further rig the economy in favor of the already-rich and against the hard-working rest."
"Just since 2001, 56,000 American factories closed. Corporations moved many of these to low-wage, low-worker-safety, low-environmental-protection countries with which the United States has so-called free trade deals enabling the companies to sell the foreign-made products in America with little or no tariffs or duties."The TPP: Another Deadly Trade Dealhttps://ourfuture.org/20151110/the-tpp- ... trade-deal0:
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On one occasion Keller was forced to contend with “a homeless drunken man” in the street, on another he ran into a “distraught and high” person outside a restaurant.
A third encounter involved a man who “took his shirt off and laid down” in a cinema.
Keller said he should not have to be confronted with such sights because he had worked hard and made a lot of money.
“I know people are frustrated about gentrification happening in the city, but the reality is, we live in a free market society,” he said. “The wealthy working people have earned their right to live in the city.”"‘ Tech bro’ complains about San Francisco’s homeless ‘riff raff’ in callous letter to mayorhttp://www.rawstory.com/2016/02/tech-br ... -to-mayor/"THERE ARE LAWS IN THIS COUNTRY THAT ARE MAKIN IT 'ILLEGAL' TO BE HOMELESS" {ERIC} -- THE CRIMINALIZATION OF POVERTY AND HOMELESSNESShttp://www.postkatrina2007.blogspot.se/ ... legal.htmlJailed for Being Poorhttps://www.salon.com/2016/02/28/jailed ... s_partner/I'm haunted every day by what I did as an economic hit man (EHM). I'm haunted by the lies I told back then about the World Bank. I'm haunted by the ways in which that bank, its sister organizations, and I empowered US corporations to spread their cancerous tentacles across the planet. I'm haunted by the payoffs to the leaders of poor countries, the blackmail, and the threats that if they resisted, if they refused to accept loans that would enslave their countries in debt, the CIA's jackals would overthrow or assassinate them.Former Economic Hit Man Returns to Take on the "Death Economy"http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/3516 ... th-economyThe Big ShortThe packaging and resale of debt.The Big Short describes several of the key players in the creation of the credit default swap market that sought to bet against the collateralized debt obligation (CDO) bubble and thus ended up profiting from the financial crisis of 2007–08.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Short
Last edited by Johanna on Sat Mar 12, 2016 9:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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