Image from a quicklink (Image by Unknown Owner) Details DMCA | Associated Press Survey data points to an increasingly globalized U.S. economy, the widening gap between rich and poor, and the loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs as reasons more Americans, for at least parts of their lives, are jobless, near poverty or on welfare.
The bipartisan governing elite championed free trade as a silver bullet to continuously increase our standard of living. Not unlike hucksters, the bipartisan elite were mum about the rotten apples (unfavorable elements) of free trade. These rotten apples equate to "economic insecurity": defined as a year or more of periodic joblessness, reliance on government aid such as food stamps or income below 150 percent of the poverty line. The risk of economic insecurity has risen to 79 percent for all Americans and is on track to reach 85% by 2030. For most Americans, sweet spot of free trade is in the distant past. |