- Our representatives in Washington DC, voting in favor
of the Fortune 500, have for many years assured American workers that free
trade is going to be beneficial for them. If indeed free trade has been
so good for America, as the politicians have promised, how come we've lost
millions of jobs paying a living wage and are in danger of losing millions
more?
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- With trade treaties in place for some time now, no-one
can say that free trade has not had enough time to kick in and deliver
what Wall Street and Washington promised the American worker many years
before.
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- The truth of the matter is that free trade is a complete
failure for the American worker, but successful beyond all expectations
for the wealthy corporate elite. They have, in implementing these treaties,
gutted and uprooted every industry in America which created and sustained
a strong and prosperous middle-class, critical to the economic and political
future of our country.
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- Not only have labor-intensive jobs paying a living wage
disappeared, but now hi-tech jobs - previously thought to be secure - are
at risk.
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- The abuse of the economy, which somehow is acceptable
if you call it capitalism, as many proponents of free trade would like
the working man to believe, is in reality grand theft on a world wide scale.
These corporate crooks, along with co-conspirators in the White House and
in Congress who do their bidding, are rapidly bringing the American worker
to his knees, creating an even bigger distance between what used to be
the middle class and the wealthy, and throwing millions more into poverty.
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- In order for these evil, greedy men to undermine the
American worker they had to first ruthlessly exploit those impoverished
workers, including children, in third world nations, forcing millions to
work long hours in unsafe conditions for sweatshop wages. The average American
is not aware of this brutal exploitation, as all the major news media in
America are owned and controlled by the same banks and corporations who
are responsible for this misery in the first place - so not surprisingly,
major media makes no mention of it.
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- As a result, every time we buy a product made in a third
world country we not only perpetuate this misery but also put our own economic
welfare here at home in further jeopardy. It has taken labor here in America
a hundred years, fighting the robber barons for a bigger piece of the pie,
to earn safe working conditions and health care benefits, and all this
is being undone in a fraction of that time.
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- These, then, are the rewards of free trade: no job security,
unemployment, a lower standard of living, no health care or any other benefits,
and for those of us who are aware of it, the human rights abuses of workers
in third world countries will continue, all in the name of free trade.
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- If this situation is allowed to continue, however, the
fat cat corporate crowd will eventually kill the goose that laid the golden
egg, the American consumer. If large numbers of Americans become unemployed
or have jobs which pay little more than minimum wage, there is little or
nothing to spend in a consumer oriented economy. The result will be economic
collapse.
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- So, the next time someone tries to convince you of the
benefits of free trade, tell them to shove it where the sun don't shine.
- And don't vote for any of the Washington traitors, because
without them the corporate crooks would never have been able to screw the
American worker in the first place.
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- © 2003, by the author.
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