The Return of the Penny Pensioner: Chapter 5: What’s Wrong with The United States?: Entitled Unionized Workforce and Their Greedy Bosses Create a New “Disaffected Class” Ripe for the Political Picking

Excuse my amateurish attempt at economic theory bearing in mind you are reading this because you are preferring adventure like you were a theatre goer in “The Last Picture Show” as opposed reading dry political economics.

At one point in time the U.S.A. had it all with almost all consumer and industrial goods produced internally. The days of leather shoes, American automobiles and all manner of goods produced in the United States. A unionized labour force well paid with envious employee benefits catapulting many workers into the middle class. Can you imagine…defined benefit pension plans! A bloated labour force and greedy capitalists had a profitable if not cozy relationship that was not at an infinite plane. As mutual greed heightened the vanquished in World War II, the German defeated ironically fueled by The Marshall Plan, steamrolled into the American economy with Japan offering lower priced consumer goods and the Federal Republic of Germany high quality goods. Then China with its “leap ahead economic planning” and cheap semi starved workforce blew the bloated American workforce out of the water. Was the decimation of the American workforce a victim of the thrill of being a multinational corporation?

Forget consumer patriotism which meant paying more for domestically produced goods which would be passed on to the American consumer who opted for lower quality goods displacing domestic production as the unions augmented salary and benefit packages ultimately leading to higher cost American goods the American automotive industry a prime example.

On the corporate side when American customers required servicing it was cheaper to establish call centres in India then the Philippines instead of the United States irrespective if customers suffered unintelligible English and poor phone lines all keeping costs down and maintaining a healthy profit margin.

As American goods became more expensive than cheap Chinese ones American workers were displaced and with less disposable income looked to Walmart the lead purveyor of Cheap Chinese. “Equivalent” American goods had disappeared a prime example being Chinese footwear now accounting for 90% off all footwear purchased in the United States.

To make a long story short The American middle class began to disappear into the working class that itself was disappearing. A new class The Disaffected was emerging transforming the American political scene looking for a leader promising them a mythical return to a mythical past. Myths can certainly power the propaganda of a Golden Age or a Third Reich if you backstep into history.