I
am not blaming the non-elite working people for anything,
nor am I defending the so-called elite; I am only looking
logically.
What
will happen in the consumer culture of the USA in the future
is not what citizen Mr. Smith (or his representative in
congress) decides is best for the USA, it is what consumer
Mr. Smith believes will provide the highest quality of
living for Mr. Smith. Each generation must be “better off”
than the last and to support this goal the economy, like a
tumor, must grow no matter what. These are the fundamentals
of our capitalism.
It
does not matter whether that which is good for Mr. Smith is
good for others or the country as a whole; Mr. Smith will
not vote for a candidate who does not promise to improve his
standard of living and support the idea that any problem Mr.
Smith has in obtaining a better lifestyle is no fault of Mr.
Smith himself. If Smith is a coal miner, he will vote for
the politician who denies global warning and changes the
energy policy of the entire country accordingly - to give
Mr. Smith the lifestyle he deserves.
American
factory workers who lose their job to the effects of
globalism want to blame the elite for making greedy business
decisions, but all the business decisions made by the elite
are based on the actions of the factory worker him/herself -
as a consumer, not a worker, not on the actions of the
elite. Other than trying to determine what
blue-collar/typical consumers will buy when given free
choice, the elite have no interest whatsoever in the economy
cars, or cheap food, or cheap anything else that will be
assembled or grown in Mexico or China versus in the USA. The
only people who care about products built/grown in Mexico
and China, etc., is the blue-collar consumer. Thus, the
people who determine the result of this despised globalism
are the workers/common people themselves, not the elite.
Before they can be labeled workers or any other
classification of human being, workers are now, first and
foremost, consumers - this is the victory won by our
capitalism.
H
L Mencken said the central belief of every moron is that
they are the victim of a vast conspiracy against their
common rights and just deserts. This is the belief that
supports Trumpism and it is pure bullshit with regards to
the loss of American jobs.
The
real issue of import in this tremendously wealthy country of
ours, is how the vast wealth is distributed; obviously - and
since money is for spending, the issue is how do people
spend their money. When factory workers spend their
hard-earned money, they universally support globalism and
the forces that will ultimately eliminate their job. When
the elite spend their money, they are not motivated to
support the forces of globalism because, for the most part,
they do not care what the products they buy cost. If the
theory is that the elite are causing the move toward
globalism, then the complaint must be that the elite are too
cheap - not willing enough to spend more than they need to
spend. I do not think this is the problem. It is the
working-class consumer that will never pay a
premium to save an American job in the future. People may
say that they will pay more for American-made products when
a phone bank caller asks, but they will never follow through
in real life - zero percent will and this defines the
relevant characteristic of our culture; does it not?
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