{"id":20528,"date":"2015-04-24T01:15:51","date_gmt":"2015-04-24T05:15:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=20528"},"modified":"2015-04-24T01:24:15","modified_gmt":"2015-04-24T05:24:15","slug":"its-time-for-america-and-americans-to-face-the-facts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2015\/04\/24\/its-time-for-america-and-americans-to-face-the-facts\/","title":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s Time For America and Americans to Face the Facts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I may have hinted at these facts before in this blog, but it is time to bring them out, and boldly state them.<\/p>\n<p>There are millions if not billions of people in this world in other countries\u00a0 who are as smart as we are, as educated as we are, and who are willing to do our jobs as well as we can for less money and under more difficult conditions.<\/p>\n<p>Those are the facts right now, and they won&#8217;t change instantly.\u00a0 As with global climate change, we\u00a0 can deny the facts, but we\u00a0 cannot avoid them.\u00a0 So sit yourself down, take a deep breath, and now start to think about what we are going to do about it that is non-violent and recognizes the brotherhood and sisterhood of people all around the world.<\/p>\n<p>The corollary to the above is that we enjoy a superior standard of living to the people who are competing most strongly for our jobs that has no justification when you look at the facts without blinders.<\/p>\n<p>There are going to have to be some adjustments to our expectations that we must make.\u00a0 We have a range of options in the adjustments we choose to make.\u00a0 There is a set of choices that will spread the pain reasonably fairly across all segments of the American population.\u00a0 There is also a set of adjustments that will exempt the rich from having to share any of the pain, but will concentrate it even harder on the rest of the population.<\/p>\n<p>The rich know which set of options they are willing to fight tooth and nail for.\u00a0 Do most of the rest of us have a clue as to what the fight is all about?<\/p>\n<p>Oh, one thing the rich may not know, or maybe they do, is that there are potential CEOs in other countries that are just as smart as our CEOs, but they are willing to work for lower salaries and under more difficult circumstances.\u00a0 There is no reason why the CEO jobs won&#8217;t leave this country and move to China, India, Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and all\u00a0 those other countries where the rich people also want the TPP.\u00a0 You can bet our corporate executives who are writing the TPP rules are working overtime to protect their asses from the competition of the executives in these other countries.\u00a0 That may be the only reason there is any resistance at all from the other countries.<\/p>\n<p>Once the rich people in our country can make it clear to the rich people in other countries that all the rich people will do exceptionally well with the new scheme (and there are plenty of billionaires in the emerging countries, too), then their will be nobody left to resist the rest of us from being driven into poverty.<\/p>\n<p>So what are some of the things that we can do?\u00a0 Here is a list in no particular order.\u00a0 In fact we can do many of them at the same time if we\u00a0 can muster the political will.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Get the government to spend more money to get us all back to work at reasonable wages for this country.\u00a0 That means investing in the infrastructure we all know we will eventually have to pay for anyway.\u00a0 Investing in making our own education affordable as they do in all the countries that compete with us.\u00a0 Invest in the research that corporations will not pay for on their own, and don&#8217;t then give it away to the corporations without extracting something for the rest of us in return.<\/li>\n<li>Let the value of the dollar sink so that there will be more parity on income levels internationally.\u00a0 It won&#8217;t be as painful or maybe even as noticeable to our own standard of living if we all adjust in about the same way relative to people in the rest of the world.\u00a0 Moreover, it will bring the balance of living standards across the world to a more sustainable level.\u00a0 It will also tend to fix trade imbalances.<\/li>\n<li>Work cooperatively around the world to get all people labor rights and human rights. That may raise other people&#8217;s standards of living so ours won&#8217;t have to drop so much to reach parity.<\/li>\n<li>Try to fix the laws around the world that encourage the mal-distribution of wealth and income.\u00a0 We must warn developing countries about the dangers of allowing wealth to be concentrated in the hands of the billionaires in their own countries.<\/li>\n<li>We must stop allowing our oligarchs to use this country&#8217;s military might to help them hold\u00a0 onto their own untenable advantages in life.<\/li>\n<li>Make sure the technological advantages of workplace automation are shared equitable among all classes of people in all countries.\u00a0 We can make technology the friends of all of us, instead of just some of us.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That ought to be a good list to start with.\u00a0 Let&#8217;s have a discussion around our issues rather than around the issues our oligarchs want us to focus on.\u00a0 They can&#8217;t use us as cannon fodder to protect their privileges while they are taking our privileges away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I may have hinted at these facts before in this blog, but it is time to bring them out, and boldly state them. There are millions if not billions of people in this world in other countries\u00a0 who are as smart as we are, as educated as we are, and who are willing to do [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-20528","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20528"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20528\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20531,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20528\/revisions\/20531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}