We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Monday, October 24, 2011

Stimulus Money Used to Employ Foreign Guest Workers Instead of Americans

Click here to access article by Robert Oak from The Economic Populist.

The practice of using the cheapest labor through either outsourcing or importing such labor illustrates the logic of capitalism. Given that the system is designed to maximize profits for the few ("owners") which is wealth extracted from the labor of rented workers, then it is entirely rational that capitalists will rent workers who are desperate enough to work at the cheapest rate. In contrast to workers who face all kinds of restrictions should they want to move across national boundaries in search of work, the ruling class can easily move workers across the world to reduce their labor costs to a bare minimum.

This report refers to four "employers" screwing the American public in an additional way by using American taxpayer funded subsidies to do this. (You will have to look long and hard to find out the names of these employers.) But then, capitalists see the law as merely impediments to their prosperity. That is why they so vigorously oppose all laws and regulations which stand in their way. When they exist, they nearly always find ways of working around them.