NEW YORK, NY – JANUARY 05: Donald Trump attends the “Celebrity Apprentice” Red Carpet Event at Trump Tower on January 5, 2015 in New York City. (Photo by Mike Pont/FilmMagic)
Donald Trump has made the issue of illegal aliens his hallmark campaign issue. It may be a crowd pleaser for Republicans and other anti-immigrant groups but it is a distraction. The real issue, that Trump has touched upon, is middle class jobs. After all those illegal aliens aren’t taking jobs from the middle class. They are taking jobs from the poorest Americans who have limited skills.
None of the candidates for president have offered any consequential ideas about reinforcing and expanding middle class opportunities. Mr. Trump says he will make America great again. He says he will obtain the support of people like Carl Icahn who know how to bring jobs back to the USA. Details of how this will be accomplished. Who needs details?
“Hillary Rodham Clinton enters the Barnes & Noble to sign her book “Hard Choices” at The Grove, Thursday, June 19, 2014. (Photo by Michael Owen Baker/Los Angeles Daily News)”
Meanwhile Hillary Clinton in her first major speech on the economy stood in front of a crowd called for companies to share more profits with their employees. Look at the listings of those people on the board of directors of any listed company. Their members are heads of other companies. It’s a closed system. Why should they share their wealth? The capitalist system does not call for sharing. It calls for make as much as you can. It’s everyone for themselves.
The leading candidates for president are both too wealthy to really care about you and me.
Greed: a selfish and excessive desire for more of something (as money) than is needed. That is the Merriam-Webster definition.
When I was a boy reading comic books there was a character in the Donald Duck series named Scrooge McDuck. He loved money and the cartoon showed him rolling in dollar bills and dancing on the money. That was a characterization of some people in this world. Was that greed?
The stock market continues to hit new highs every several months. The S&P 500 reached another new high on Friday, February 13, 2015. Apple Computer shares are at or near their highest level ever. Most people do not own enough stocks to feel a significant impact. The wealthy, whose source of income is the stock market, are the beneficiaries of this situation.
Meanwhile BBC.com and Fareed Zakaria GPS reports the findings of Oxfam, an anti-poverty group, that the combined wealth of the world’s richest 1% will overtake that of the other 99% of the world’s population by 2016. Furthermore the richest 80 people in the world have collected the same amount of wealth as the bottom 3.5 million people-$1.9 Trillion.
There are two facts that are slowly destroying the middle class and causing even greater harm to blue collar laboring classes.
Without government involvement jobs are performed at the lowest pay rate which moves jobs to the poorest countries.
Technology enables employers to replace workers performing repetitive work with a machine.
These are not new facts. Queen Elizabeth I (queen of England 1558–1603) denied a patent for the first knitting machine in 1589. It was denied because of her concern for the security of the kingdom’s many hand knitters.
Robots install rivets on a 2015 Ford F-150
Paul Wiseman of the Associated Press posted an article titled “Robots replacing workers at a faster pace”. The report was replicated by many news media outlets including ABC, Fox Business, etc. The article said “A new report says that cheaper, better robots will replace human workers in the world’s factories at a faster pace over the next decade, pushing labor costs down 16 percent.” The mechanization has impacted only 10% of the possible uses for robots. 90% of the changeover is still in the future.
Recently two public parking lots I had occasion to use had no pay clerk at the exit. The system was automated. Soon there will be no one to take your order at McDonald’s.
I could go on with more examples of lost jobs thanks to technology or replacing middle income workers with low paid workers but you already understand the point I am making.
The question to candidates for the next president of the United States is what will you do to change the obvious decline in the income of the majority of Americans? You ought to ask your congressional representative and senators that same question.
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