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"Welcome to the lean years. Yes, sir, we've just had our 70 fat years in America, thanks to the Greatest Generation and the bounty of freedom and prosperity they built for us. And in these past 70 years, leadership -- whether of the country, a university, a company, a state, a charity, or a township -- has largely been about giving things away, building things from scratch, lowering taxes or making grants. . . . Indeed, to lead now is to trim, to fire or to downsize services, programs or personnel. We've gone from the age of government handouts to the age of citizen givebacks."
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In a similar vein, The New York Times further opined:
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"American workers are overpaid, relative to equally productive employees elsewhere doing the same work. If the global economy is to get into balance, that gap must close. . . . The global wage gap has been narrowing, but recent labor market statistics in the United States suggest the adjustment has not gone far enough."
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Without using blunt words such as "the need to cut wages," President Obama also frequently preaches to the American people to be prepared for the looming lean years: "We must lay a new foundation for growth and prosperity a foundation that will move us from an era of borrow and spend to one where we save and invest; where we consume less at home and send more exports abroad." Obviously, by "we" Mr. Obama means the working class and the general public, not the ruling Kleptocracy; and by "consume less" he means earn less, get used to a lower standard of living--because wages, benefits, pensions and all kinds of social safety net programs are going to be cut or eliminated.
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In their efforts to push wages in the more developed countries down toward slave wages, the powerful financial interests (and the ruling kleptocracy in general) are pursuing multiple objectives. An obvious objective is, of course, to pay for the gambling losses of the Wall Street swindlers. Another objective is to make US producers more competitive in global markets, a strategy of export promotion at the expense of the working class that President Obama calls National Export Initiative: "Boosting America's exports strengthens our economic growth and supports millions of good, high-paying American jobs. That's why I set a goal during my State of the Union address to double our exports over the next five years." Stripped from its Orwellian veneer, the President's "national export initiative" simply means bringing US wages and benefits down on a par with those of China, Vietnam, India, and other less-developed countries so that American manufacturers can compete more effectively in international markets.
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These are ghastly Neoliberal policies of super exploitation that are sometimes called "the race to the bottom," or competing backward to the Dickensian days of working class misery. Naomi Klein has aptly called this sinister strategy "the shock doctrine," a strategy that takes advantage of the overwhelming crisis times to implement Neoliberal austerity programs and redistribute national resources from the bottom up.
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Of course, the Neoliberal strategy of dismantling the welfare state and driving the labor pay down to slave wages is not limited to the United States. Downward competition is pursued in other advanced capitalist countries as well. Indeed, the competitive capitalist pressure of profitability and survival has driven almost all countries of the world to participate in this retrogressive (but capitalistically rational!) race to the bottom.
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CHECKING THE LOGIC OF DOWNWARD COMPETITION: INTERNATIONAL TRADE UNIONISM
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