Arm yourself, because Republicans and conservative Democrats are masters of the classic logical fallacy of "Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc,” (“After this, therefore because of this”) and they're already trying to blame others for the problems they caused.

     Recent news items clearly indicate that we’re headed for a worldwide global recession, possibly even a depression. Just as happened in the 1920s, most of the profit from the world economy has been going to the top 20%—with the bottom 20% losing pace with inflation, and the middle 60% somewhere in between.

     The rich have already bought most of what they need, and they’re now using their money to invest in those parts of the world where workers are most brutalized. This has resulted in “overproduction,” although that’s not really the problem. The problem, as was true in the early 1930s, is that too many people don’t have enough money to buy the products and services they need.

     Countries worldwide are now trying to salvage some semblance of relief for the struggling bottom 80% of citizens who are victims of globalization. Obviously, this means that they must reverse the trend that caused the original problem, by reinstituting reasonable trade restrictions that previously protected the interests of workers.

     Naturally, conservative propagandists are seeing the same danger signs throughout the world, and are already laying the blame on others for their own skullduggery. The ones who caused the fundamental problem—via globalization—are shifting the blame to the restoration of the “protectionism” (of working-class incomes) that they previously destroyed.

     Just look at right-wing-crackpot Gary Shilling’s commentary:

From FORBES, November 24.

Financial Strategy

The Protectionist Threat

By A. Gary Shilling

Free trade is hard to find. There are U.S. steel tariffs, European crop-import curbs and Chinese currency supports. That's scary. Does anyone recall the 1930s?

… As restructuring and automation abound, employment losses appear not just cyclical but permanent. So politicians find it easy to succumb to cries for protectionism from both management and labor. Foreigners don't vote in U.S. elections. A recent poll found that 54% of Americans believe that when multinationals produce abroad they export U.S. jobs.

Protectionist actions here and elsewhere are mushrooming….

The protectionist impulse in the U.S. used to come from blue-collar employees—first textile, then steel- and autoworkers. Now computer programmers and Wall Street researchers are seeing their jobs exported to India. Displaced American professionals can end up bagging groceries….

Let's hope that policymakers recall what protectionism and deflation did to the world economy in the 1930s….

Watch out for creeping—nay, galloping!—protectionism. Regardless of intentions, it's ultimately the enemy of jobs, the economy, profits and stocks.

     And, do you “recall the 1930s”? Republicans and conservative Democrats certainly do, and they remember how they successfully blamed the Smoot-Hawley and similar tariffs as causes of the depression. It’s hard to tell if they are deliberate liars and hypocrites, or whether they are just plain stupid.

     The stock market crash occurred in 1929. The Smoot-Hawley act was passed on June 17, 1930. It was the result of the horrible economic policies of the 1920s, that shifted most of the wealth from workers to investors—just as has been happening from 1976 to the present.

     In both periods of history, the damage to the economy was already done. Protectionism was simply the last stage of cycle, which goes like this:

 

• By eliminating all protections of workers from brutalized foreign workers, create an economic boom that rewards rich investors at the expense of workers.

   

• Invest money overseas which lowers labor costs in the U.S. and increases corporate profits and investor’s incomes.

   

• Suck the workers in the U.S. dry as long as you can, until they run out of money.

   

• Then the inevitable happens. Economies begin to crash, and people can’t afford rent, food, medical care, education, etc.

   

• Countries worldwide then realize, again, that they’ve been conned by the rich and powerful, and try to reverse the disastrous trend, too late, through tariffs.

   

• Result: a recession or depression—and the right-wing-crackpots of the world blame the last stage of the cycle, “protectionism” for the results of their own insatiable greed.

     Of course, what got us out of the depression of the ’30s were the progressive policies of Roosevelt, which included, among many other things, reasonable protections of U.S. workers from unbridled foreign competition.

     And that’s exactly what can get us out of the next recession or depression.

Chuck Kelly is at http://www.KellySite.net. He holds a Ph.D. in industrial communications from Purdue University, is now a retired management consultant, and author of the books, THE DESTRUCTIVE ACHEIVER, THE GREAT LIMBAUGH CON, and CLASS WAR IN AMERICA. This article is originally published at opednews.com. Copyright Chuck Kelly, but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media so long as this credit is attached