The Jobless Class

America used to consist of the Upper Class, the Ruling Class, and the Working Class (once called the "middle-class" by rich people to make all the smucks feel better about their status in society). Now we have the Jobless Class.

The CEOs created this new class of people in America - the Jobless Class, vastly expanding our national poverty rate. You no longer have to be a minority living in an inner city to be poor, nor do you need to be a high-school drop out living in the rural deep South. Now poverty exists as an equally equitable economic condition all across America. People of all races, color, creed, and national origins have been thrown under the bus for corporate profits.

Corporations act anonymously as limited liability bureaucracies - and whenever possible no single person ever takes blame or responsibility for killing people for lack of recalling defective products, nor does any one person ever take blame for screwing up or outsourcing jobs. As individuals they hide behind corporate titles - CEOs will say they have "shareholders" to appease and the board of directors must do everything they can to maximize profits. It's the American way. It's capitalism. It's what made our country great.

Maybe 40 years ago that was true, just before oil production peaked in America, but it's no longer true today. Capitalism as is exists now in 2011 has been a disaster for this country.

Click chart to enlarge

Currently in February 2011 the true (U-3) unemployment rate is about 15% - not the 9% the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports, and that the media then passes on to the public to digest. The reality is, it will be impossible to ever put the present 15 million jobless Americans back to work...those jobs have been permanently lost. The very best we can hope for now is that new jobs will be created for all those who are first entering the job market, but it will take years to reverse the course of out-sourcing. Going forward, the best America can do now is to elect government leaders that will address the problem of out-sourcing. The longer we wait for such action by our government leaders, the longer this will take, and the longer it will be to turn the economy around and to re-build America's working class.

The stock market has only recovered because American corporations have empowered foreigners as consumers, by giving them jobs and thereby enabling them to buy their products. When the cost of oil becomes too prohibitive to ship their goods that are being manufactured overseas to America for sale to us, they will already by that time have a solid customer base in the countries where their factories exist. Any imports America receives from abroad will have huge markups to cover the cost of shipping them around the world to us. An America corporation making iPods in China can sell them there (in an "emerging market"), they won't need to sell them to us, a shrinking market because of unemployment and low wages. China, on the other hand, has 1.2 billion people (with a 4% unemployment rate) to sell their widgets to, as opposed to America's measly 308 million people (with a whopping 15% unemployment rate).

The best is behind us as for the middle-class...it is a permanent economic condition that (because of 40 years of outsourcing) will take another 40 years to correct - IF WE START CORRECTING THIS NOW. If not, the longer we wait for such action by our government leaders, the longer this will take, and the longer it will be to turn the REAL economy around and to re-build America's working class.

Outsourcing was discovered through America's wars when our GIs (even on their meager GI salary) had enormous buying power with American dollars overseas. My father used to buy the very best in electronics (stereos and TVs) that were being manufactured in Japan when he was stationed in Asia, and he was allowed to ship a limited amount of weight as his personal belongings back to America for free when his tour of duty had expired. He brought back things that would have cost 3 or 4 times as much here because of shipping and import taxes (This was just after World War II, when GM collected "war reparations" and "tax credits" from U.S. taxpayers because our bombers had destroyed their factories in Germany. That was GM's FIRST government bail-out).

Many of the people in corporate America realized that with such an enormous population base in places like China, that by giving them jobs (and paying them less than their American counter-parts, and with much less government regulation), they could also eliminate shipping and added taxes before trying to make profits selling their goods to American workers. It cost a lot more money to build factories in America too - there is no Carpenter's Union in China demanding fair wages. And energy was much cheaper too because the government of China was much less concerned with the environment than we are in America.

From the Huffington Post today on outsourcing: "The once-supreme American semiconductor industry had 90% of the world market in 1980, but have less than 10% today."

The reality is, it will be impossible to ever put the present 15 million jobless Americans back to work...those jobs have been permanently lost. The very best we can hope for now is that new jobs will be created for all those who are first entering the job market, but it will take years to reverse the course of out-sourcing.

The new "normal" unemployment rate for America will no longer be 5%, but closer to 10 or 15%...that is the reality. Corporate America destroyed the working class for higher profits (raking in HUGE salaries, stock options, and bonuses), but they don't want to pay any more in taxes to help all the new poor people they created in America.

Reuters reports: The Government Accountability Office said 72 percent of all foreign corporations and about 57 percent of U.S. companies doing business in the United States paid no federal income taxes for at least one year between 1998 and 2005. During that same time corporate sales in the United States totaled $2.5 trillion. Senator Carl Levin of Michigan said, "Too many corporations are using tax trickery to send their profits overseas and avoid paying their fair share in the United States."

Corporations were contributing just 6.6% and 7.2% in 2009 and 2010 of the total federal tax receipts - - - a 50% drop relative to the rate before the financial crisis > Source

Thanks to the CEOs (who I think have no "class" at all), the Working Class has been vastly reduced and the Jobless Class is here to stay. Chances are, if you're over 44 years old and were laid off these past two years, you'll never work again...ever, for the rest of your life.

* Google George Green, who talks about population reduction after the economic collapse - "How I Went From New World Order Player To Adept New World Order Exposer!"