Economics is a complex subject. Politicians use simple campaign slogans and falsely justify actions by using misleading government statistics. This is more than a dry academic debate, however. Sondra Miller here describes the very human cost to this misdirection.
PBS had a special on poverty and job loss in the U.S. They started out panning residential streets I was familiar with, only now they looked like Detroit with vacant houses, boarded up windows and broken out window panes, and caved in porch roofs. They showed families adding extra water to thin soups so they could make a meal. The sprawling GM plant was gone along with other factories and at one point unemployment in Dayton was 34%.
During the Presidential election I watched Trump campaign in rust belt states promising to bring the good jobs back and to penalize every manufacturer that sent jobs overseas or to Mexico, and to put high tariffs on everything they tried to sell back into the United States. Laid-off workers loved that and Ohio has a whopping 18 electoral votes that went for Trump.
I watched Hillary campaign to her carefully staged special-interest ethnic groups, telling a group of Somali Muslims in Minnesota (who had a high crime rate for everything from molesting young girls in public swimming pools to sending part of their welfare checks to ISIS) that she wouldn’t allow any Islamophobia in her White House. And I watched her “basket of deplorables” speech at a Hollywood millionaires fundraiser which was broadcast on national TV.
I thought what is going on?? I thought the Clinton’s were smarter politicians than that and I didn’t know what Trump was. Clinton’s special interest groups (now called “identity groups” ) make up a tiny percent of the total population, and Trump was aiming at the massive working class.
When I watched twelve thousand working families here in Evansville fill up the convention center and stand on Main Street outside to watch Trump make a speech, I didn’t see them as obnoxious people. I saw them as having nowhere else to go for support. The Democrats aren’t supporting them and the hot-shot lefties on Facebook certainly aren’t doing anything to support working families.
At the end of the program on Dayton, Ohio they showed the one new industry that has come to Dayton. A Chinese national has bought one of the vacant former GM plants and is manufacturing auto glass. The guy can’t even speak English. When they interviewed him he had to have his interpreter right there beside him. He could only speak Chinese. I thought Good Lord, maybe it is too late to do anything about anything. Chris Hedges may be right. (Peace be upon him)
References:
1-Corporate Overreach
2-The Economy - If you want to advocate about a specific part of the economic problem, I have provided separate references for banks, democrats, employment - including real percentages, the rise of temporary employment without benefits and the demise of retirement; inequality, social security and medicare, taxes including increasing privatization and our declining infrastructure, and disastrous trade agreements including the TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership).
3-Economic Graphs - A graph summarizes a great deal of information in a short easily understandable space. This provides various graphs you can use in the following categories: It is that bad, inequality is rising, The rich pay less, There is enough money and we are not overspending on the poor, education, labor, video, and other insights
4-Our Crumbling Infrastructure In addition to other references about our crumbling infrastructure, we have provided specific references documenting education, the internet, the power grid and clean energy, roads and bridges, and the Post Office.
5-Labor
6-Poverty
