How America Is Turning into a 3rd World Nation in 4 Easy Steps
http://www.alternet.org/economy/how-america-turning-3rd-world-nation-4-easy-steps***SNIP
Step 1: Destroy Manufacturing
From 1791, when our nation's first Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton created an 11-point plan for American manufacturers, all the way until just the last few decades, the United States protected its manufacturing base with high tariffs on imports and government support for domestic industries.
***SNIP
Step 2: Harvest the Middle Class
America's working class no longer builds TVs or computers or furniture on assembly lines; they now flip burgers at McDonalds and turn down the sheets at Holiday Inns. And those high-skilled workers who used to design the marvels of manufacturing now manufacture credit default swaps and mortgage-backed securities on Wall Street.
***SNIP
Step 3: Export American Wealth
There's a hefty price tag associated with transitioning from the world's largest exporter of manufactured goods to the world's largest importer of manufactured goods. That price comes in the form of trade deficits.
***SNIP
Step 4: Recolonize
With American workers desperate for any kind of opportunity to work, Foxconn and other foreign corporations now have access to a brand new pool of cheap labor.
= new reply since forum marked as read
bibliographic slogging 
No need to revisit history of World War I other than to say that Lenin's argument was that it was an imperialist war, fought by competing capitalist empires.
The US is still the largest manufacturing country in the world. The problem is that manufacturing does not generate the large number of jobs that it used to do because of automation. Manufacturing employment has been declining in every country - even China.
The replacement of tariffs with the income tax as the main source of government revenue in the early 1900's was a great progressive victory.
Everyday Americans hated the tax system of the Gilded Age. The federal government gathered taxes in two ways. First, it placed high tariff rates on imports. These import taxes protected American industries from competition. This allowed companies "to charge high prices on products that the working class needed to survive while also protecting the monopolies that controlled their everyday lives." Second, the government had high excise taxes on tobacco and alcohol, two products used heavily by the American working class.
These forms of indirect taxes meant that almost the entirety of federal tax revenue came from the poor while the rich paid virtually nothing. This spawned enormous outrage.
http://www.alternet.org/labor/hidden-progressive-history-income-tax?akid=9361.277129.2KDGDd&rd=1&src=newsletter706781&t=14
Low tariffs were part of Woodrow Wilson's 12-point plan for the post-WW I era. The republican senate defeated it along with US participation in the League of Nations. When republicans returned to the presidency in 1921 they enacted higher tariffs in 1921, 1924 and 1930. FDR reduced those tariffs later in the 1930's and, of course, pushed low-tariff international trade as one of his visions for the post-WW II world.
American manufacturing companies supported republican higher tariff laws in the 1920's and 1930. Why? Because higher tariffs allowed these companies "to charge high prices on products that the working class needed to survive while also protecting the monopolies that controlled their everyday lives." These companies also opposed FDR's lowering of tariffs in the 1930's and after WWII.
But the trade policies of Wilson, FDR and Truman could not work today. - Actually they do - in the most progressive countries in the world - in Europe and Canada which have higher levels of international trade (and, yes, 'free trade') than the US could dream (or 'nightmare') of.
as I've noted elsewhere: we can't have a first world nation based/built on a third world infrastruture.
what happens when our infrastructure FAILS was just rather profoundly proven in Manhattan and NJ with hurricane Sandy (the second hurricane to strike the area in 14 months). there are numerous buildings in Manhattan which may not have power for months.
the American Society of Civil Engineers regularly evaluates and grades our nation's infrastructure; we're now at "D" with "F" being FAIL. the ASCE estimates an expenditure of over $2 TRILLION dollars needed to get our infrastructure back to A level.
The good news is for every $1 Billion spent on infrastructure, 50,000 jobs are created. we're talking good paying jobs for architects, engineers, construction workers, truck drivers, etc.
Need more jobs right now? do the infrastructure math.
....cheap labor, cheap labor, cheap labor, cheap labor, cheap labor, cheap labor. And of course everything in the Alternet article.
I used to watch C-Span all the time (back in the 90's before they screwed up the format when the Bush Cabal came in) and I would scream at the TV every year when the House would pass that damned "Most Favored Nation Trading Status" deal with China. Every year (or two, I can't remember...give me a break-I'm getting older), it passed on through slick as butter. One representative from those days who was my hero was Henry Gonzalez from Texas. He would get up there on one of his informative hour long tirades about bank deregulation. Those were the days, I tell you. I don't know if one could go back in C-Span archives and find Henry, but it would be worth a search if you ever have some time to sit still and listen to him. Anyway, back to China.... I read an article here somewhere a day or two ago that China was near surpassing our economy in a couple years???!!! 
Has every one read Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism published around 2007?? I have an extra paperback edition in near fine condition if anyone would like to read it, with the promise to pass it on to another DU member that's interested when you're through with it. Drop me a DU note if interested. Naomi explains all of this.. . why we are turning into a 3rd world nation. She includes reference notes and index. It's packed with knowledge of what has been happening while we were otherwise occupied with our lives and/or just wholesale hoodwinked.
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