Why millions of jobs aren't coming back

Two dark articles in as many days.  Is the worm turning?

It is true that the low cost producer wins in today's world because we let them win.  We allow products into this country that are made in conditions we would not tolerate.  No different than Britain buying rice and indigo from South Carolina in the 1700's.  Since it's happening outside our country I guess we have decided it's OK.  Everybody wants that cheap Walmart stuff! 

Even so,  technology WILL displace most humans in the workplace.  It has already displaced most of them.  We will someday have the capability to provide for all of society's needs and only have a few people actually working.   The few industries that did require people we foolishly allowed to go overseas.  That helped the third world and screwed us. Now we have a huge and ever growing class of workers for whom there will never be jobs.   Unless we move them out of the cities and back to the farms we are going to have some serious income redistribution problems in the future.    

I now live in a small Appalachian town and we are farther down this road than most places.   Big industry is all but gone.  The people that are left mostly work for themselves.   Houses are smaller,  cars are older, clothes are plainer, and expectations are lower.  Get used to it.

Better get a skill for catering to the last batch of retired boomers because that's the last generation that's going to have any money.            

OPEN POST:

My fellow Americans, I was born here, received my National Defense Medal, and I pay taxes. I VOTE, and I like to share information from time to time on subjects as important as this; the economic troubles and employment issues dividing fellow Americans across the country NOW.

Immigration is not our woe, the "President elect now or several past" are of some blame, BUT it's been the evolution of competition with the whole planet (cheap slave labor, etc.) and combined with unchecked greed by my fellow Americans in corporate Ivory Towers, from Wall Street to Main Street.

1. NAFTA was ill structured. In part to agricultural interests and poor choices of subsidized crops, Monsanto political influence since the Regan admin. and among other issues, advanced technology of international transportation systems globally in foreign markets. Since WWII, until the later half of the last century, we owned the planet on developing technology and manufacturing. This led to corporate influence in politics, due to huge profits=huge power influence in "free elections".  **(Prior to this: in the Nixon era: Kaiser learned how to do HMO's and really make huge money off sick and dying Americans/influencin​g corporate ownership of politicians today. Transferring tax dollars to private corporate pockets via cost savings.) Pretty neat! You get to buy a politician and still come out ahead, and the citizens think they're getting a good deal. Used car salesman trick.

2. GATT Treaty: Clinton Admin. This eliminated Bi-lateral trading tariff's from the "cheap labor pools" making the same products now we made. Foreign nations after WWII re-built the infra-structure of manufacturing and began competing, inching their way up the ladder to "BE LIKE USA", or in other words, finally provide stability to feed their starving mouths.

3. Technology: Computers and finance are great?! Just ask all the recently super wealthy on wall street who have gambled with others money. NO ETHICS+UNCHECKED GREED=Credit Default Swaps and retirement funds being stolen from innocent American citizens unable to ever recover. Trillions of dollars in taxes to the corporations again! They own the media, so you know it's impossible to get real news now. You're mushrooms and cannon fodder for war machines.

4. Put everyone in an endless war over resources due to BIG OIL influence and keep the media pumping the hype on immigrants and RED vs. BLUE state rhetoric and keep getting profits while the tax payer looses and the environment gets worse and the air and water become rancid and hard to clean up, year after year. And year after year, the taxpayer gets less and the corporations get more, like being humans now with voting rights. Wow.

The American Dream? or? You decide. Endless war, media fear factories and a polluted planet.

I do have answers.....

I agree with the analysis of the "globalization" reason for a sluggish job market, but I disagree with any notion that what's happening now was inevitable.

Instead, I think it was a result of bad trade and labor policy and the movement toward "free trade" with no regard for labor conditions or environmental standards.

For example, a reason why Japanese auto manufacturers opened car plants in America (thus creating jobs) was to get around trade quotas.

Tars Tarkas is absolutely correct.  The post WWII period was a very special time, when the economy and manufacturing capacity of W. Europe was crippled and the USA filled this gap with a manufacturing base already revved up from the war effort.  GI's came home with a determination to build families, companies, buildings and fortunes.  Those born after the war have come to believe that the post-war boom was normal, but actually it was an anomaly. 

The unwinding of our boom and the rise of globalization is returning our situation to something closer to the pre-WWII situation.  Recent years have been much like the Roaring 20's and Great Depression 30's.  Unfortunately what was created by the "Greatest Generation" has been frittered away by my generation, the Boomers.  We should have been careful with our bounty in the good years... instead we overextended, then when the bad years came, we were hanging out to dry.  Bad management, pure and simple.  Lots of people saw it coming and used their positions to extract capital from companies and from the public... capital that they have not reinvested here, but have either stashed offshore, built huge mansions or invested in companies overseas.   Our government officials aided and abetted this rape of Americans, because they are in the same Robber Baron class as those who did the pillaging.

Now they truly have us by the balls, to the extent that I believe our government is no longer truly in charge, instead it is our creditors and the big banks and big corporations that fund their reelection campaigns and give them sweetheart deals and jobs before and after office... and sometimes while in office.