“Hey Ethel, pack your bags we’re movin’ to Costa Rica, pronto!”
“What!”
“You better get your passport and your green card in order. More companies are handing out pink slips in Dayton, Cleveland, Detriot, St Louis, Chicago, Tampa and who knows where else. Literally 100’s of people will be out of work when Whirlpool and La-Z-Boy close their Ohio plants and move their operations to the cheap labor market of Mexico. GM and Chrysler are brankrupt with large layoffs in the works. We gotta’ go where there are some jobs left and many companies have moved south of the border, as they say.!”
“What?”
“You heard me pack. It’s cheaper to live there and the there are tax breaks for us boomers. Hustle, girl we are outa’ here.”
Corporate America once again, is looking at the bottom line and how much more money they can make in the cheap labor countries of the world instead of keep ing jobs here in America. Never is a decision based on what is good for America, the American People or the workers presently employed. Remember, this is the era of globalization; companies go where they can make the most money. Greed rules the corporate board room and has for the last decade.
Oh, it could be worse the Feds say; we could be in a depression instead of a recession. Things will equalize and regain balance later they assure the public. We can print money and spend our way back to financial stability. Really?
We are going Trillions in debt, our world trade balance is far from balanced and we keep bailing out (or is it handing out billions) to banks which have robbed Americans with under handed deals, while living like ‘kings’. This is insanity, America. Why keep giving money to groups of people who were poor managers and stewards of money that was Not Their Own?
I wonder if people understand the difference between economic recession and economic depression? Get your dictionary out, folks. You might learn something very important to your well-being and survival during the hard times that are quickly engulfing our lives in these present days.
Recession: – “A decline in the national Gross National Product for 2 consecutive annual quarters”.
– Negative economic growth for 2 conseqetive annual quarters.
– Rising inflation as seen in the rising cost of durable goods and energy prices.
Depression:
– Is a “recession combined with rising unemployment that lasts for an extended period of time, usually over 1 or 2 years”.
The situation is beginning to look very dangerous on the western front. In 2003, David Zielengziger did an article called “U S Companies Moving More Jobs Overseas” that stated many high tech jobs were leaving America and going to India and China. Corporations were not talking about it, because they feared consumer reaction. He went on to state that Morgan Stanley estimated that the outsourced jobs to India alone would be over 150,000 and “that as many as 2 million white collar jobs in technology would move to countries with cheap wages by 2014.
I believe this is happening faster than Mr. Zielengziger predicted it would.
Here is a staggering statistic taken from the AFL/CIO publications: “since 2001 two and a half million manufacturing jobs more than 850,000 professional services and IT jobs have been lost” in America. It gets worse, I am afraid. Studies from major U S Universities predict that American companies will move 3.4 million white-collar jobs overseas by 2015!
So, where are all the displaced and unemployed people going to work? How can a displaced worker who made $15 -$25 an hour now live on 2 part-time jobs making $8 an hour? Now they have no health benefits and the cost of living is rising weekly, even daily. Now in 2009, states are running out of money and most likely taxes will go up and how are people to pay for them?
California may set the mark for a national referendum concerning the present Fed policy of “print it,spend it and burn baby”. Where does the money come from in a recession to facilitate such a plan? I wonder?
The national debt clock is already trillions in the hole as the Feds are pumping money into banks and Wall Street to keep them afloat. My question is how long can they do this before our American money becomes totally worthless and hyper-inflation sets in?
Giving a bailout to bad management again and again does what? I believe it only prolongs the inevitable bankruptcy that needs to take place to reorganize greedy, ineffectual corporate leaders and their companies. Isn’t that what the Feds forced upon the auto industry? But what about the bankers and wall street?
How long can we keep flushing money down a sewer of captialist mismanagement and help CEO’s keep sending their bonus checks money to off shore accounts, which are not taxable? Read the news stories about the USB bank accounts of over 37,000 Americans who are secretly stashing vast amounts of non-taxable money in these European Banks.
Are you watching the CPI or Consumer Price Index. Check out your grocery list this week and look at the price increases from 2 weeks ago. Take a close look at eggs, bread, milk and produce. Do not weep or despair, but start being prepared; stockpile commodities (sugar, coffee, freeze dried foods). If you think this is silly, then you do not have any parents who lived through the previous depression in America!
Finally, the Consumer Confidence Index, is at the worst level in 30 years. All major polls and independent surveys of the American public and small business report dismal projections for the present consumer market. Unemployment has hit 10% nationally and is probably much higher, the powers to be just do not wish to scare us too much.end.
Where is our common sense America? Are we really just a land of “sheeple”?
It is in the air, nor just wild talk-radio jargon, “something evil this way comes”! This is different that a recession or economic slow-down. It feels different, looks different, sounds different and it is different from days past. A Global down-sizing is taking place and your life will be totally altered during this economic readjustment.