General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Trade agreements lower America's living standards to raise others. Angers me. [View all]Elwood P Dowd
(11,443 posts)but you say we're not being brought down? The gap between the richest 1% and the bottom 80% is the largest of any advanced free country in the world, but we're not being brought down? The richest 1,000 Americans have more wealth than the bottom 40%, over 125 million people. People I knew who were working in manufacturing making $15-20 an hour twenty years ago are now working at places like Wal Mart, Dollar General, or cleaning services making $8-10 an hour with no benefits. Two electrical engineers I know lost their jobs to China. I realize you're working from a list of talking points furnished by some corporate funded front group, but I don't think they can even come up with talking points refuting that we are in decline except for those at the top of the income scale.
Since we started this fake free trade madness in the 1980s, over 50,000 factories have closed and move offshore. We have run up close to 10 trillion dollars in trade deficits. Millions of Americans have lost their jobs. The ones that found new jobs often worked in low wage service jobs with no benefits. The hits just keep coming, and some of you people want more hits. You will never be happy until we are beaten to a pulp.