[THS] As Offshoring Continues, US Public Peeved at "Free Market"

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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27948.htm

As Offshoring Continues, US Public Peeved at "Free Market"

By Roger Bybee

April 22, 2011 "In These Times" -- Many Americans increasingly feel like a trap door
has suddenly dropped them into economic quicksand, with major corporations and
their government allies pulling them further away from the middle-class security they
once had.

These feelings have been heightened by a wave of public-sector union-busting laws
in Wisconsin and Ohio that will encourage more private sector wage-cutting (already
at a record level ), revelations about the extent of corporations “off-shoring” jobs
while creating virtually no new jobs in the U.S. for the entire 1999-2009 decade and
news that two-thirds of major corporations are paying no federal income taxes.

Two surveys released this week suggest an intensifying sense of impatience with the
agonizingly slow recovery and a profound and growing disillusionment with Corporate
America. First, a New York Times/CBS News poll shows declining faith that America is
on a path to economic recovery:

    Americans are more pessimistic about the nation's economic outlook and overall
direction than they have been at any time since President Obama's first two months
in office...

    At a time of rising gas prices, stubborn unemployment and a cacophonous debate
in Washington over the federal government's ability to meet its future obligations, the
poll presents stark evidence that the slow, if unsteady, gains in public confidence
earlier this year that a recovery was under way are now all but gone.

The poll reflects a high degree of political disorientation and confusion among voters.
While 72% of the public—including a stunning 55% of Republcians—favor President
Obama’s proposal to raise taxes on incomes over $250,000, a slight majority backs
Republican Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) plan for wrecking Medicare, which also contains
relatively little-known provisions for further lowering taxes on corporations and the
rich.

But Americans remain solidly clear and unified in believing that the economic
recovery is not bringing meaningful benefits to folks like them, with 70 percent
convinced that the country is “seriously on the wrong track.” President Obama's
economic policies have a 57 percent disapproval rate, while congressional
Republicans are seen even more dubiously.

BIG DROP IN SUPPORT FOR 'FREE MARKET'

Obama’s economic policies offer at least some appeal to economic fairness, but the
president’s continued reliance on “private-sector job creation” seems downright
absurd when corporations feel no sense of obligation to add create in the United
States. “Winning the Future” for Obama’s team has meant business-friendly efforts
that are utterly faling to lift decaying communities out of job loss and misery.

Prolonged unemployment—particularly high in old manufacturing towns—not only
has generated understandable pessimism about the future state of the economy, but
it is also propelling an increasing number of Americans to question whether the “free
market” is the best economic system. Americans are growing increasingly suspicious
of the giant corporations which largely shape the economy.

Thus, the polling firm Globescan found a sharp drop in the level of support for “free
enterprise”:

    When GlobeScan began tracking views in 2002, four in five Americans (80%) saw
the free market as the best economic system for the future—the highest level of
support among tracking countries. Support started to fall away in the following years
and recovered slightly after the financial crisis in 2007/8, but has plummeted since
2009, falling 15 points in a year [emphasis added] so that fewer than three in five
(59%) now see free market capitalism as the best system for the future.

    Americans with incomes below $20,000 were particularly likely to have lost faith in
the free market over the past year, with their support dropping from 76 percent to 44
percent between 2009 and 2010.

GlobeScan Chairman Doug Miller commented: "America is the last place we would
have expected to see such a sharp drop in trust in the free enterprise system. This is
not good news for business." He added:

    The poll suggest that American business is close to losing its social contract with
average American families that has enabled it to prosper in the world. Inspired
leadership will be needed to reverse this trend."

The breakdown of the “social contract” is evident when you look at the radical shift in
General Electric’s guiding philosophy. As Steven Greenhouse noted in The Big
Squeeze, in 1962 GE’s employee benefits manager wrote,

    Maximizing employer security is a prime company goal. The employee who can
plan his economic future with reasonable certainty is an employer’s most productive
asset.

Compare that quaint attitude with the ruthless creed of Jack Welch’s, GE’s CEO from
1981 to 2001, who showed his disregard for employee loyalty when he declared,
"Ideally you'd have every plant you own on a barge"  By that, he meant a readiness
to seek out at a moment's notice the lowest possible wages and most pliable
governments (weak regulations, low taxes, hostile to unions, etc.) anywhere on the
globe.

U.S. FIRMS GROWING ABROAD, SHRINKING AT HOME

More and more corporations are enthusiastically carrying out Welch’s strategy, as
David Wessel's stunning Wall Street Journal article and chart revealed this week,
generating extensive comment in progressive media (see here and here):

    U.S. multinational corporations
cut their work forces in the U.S. by 2.9 million
during the 2000s while increasing employment overseas by 2.4 million, new data
from the U.S. Commerce Department show.

Given this callous disregard for the U.S. workers and communities that corporations
have abandoned (as well as for the low-wage workers they degrade daily in Mexico,
China and other sites of the relocated operations), the sharp, sudden drop in support
for the “free market” is not mystifying at all.

Today, as America's prolonged and severe employment crisis continues, multinational
corporations continue to unilaterally repudiate their side of the “social contract.”

The country's business leaders should hardly be surprised to hear Americans
questioning the “free market” shield they use to justify their outrageous
abandonment of American workers, their renewed attacks on decent wages by
imposing two-tier wage structures, and their refusal to contribute their fair share of
taxes to cope with the social damage that they are causing.

As suggested by the labor uprising in Wisconsin—now spreading to other
states—working people have not only lost faith in corporations' ability to show any
concern for fairness. Workers are increasingly moving from outrage to action.
© 2011 In These Times