MEDIA - LOOKING GLASS NEWS
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More...You May Be Brainwashed By the Corporate Media If..
by Bob Powell    Independent Media TV
Entered into the database on Tuesday, June 21st, 2005 @ 09:22:56 MST


 

Untitled Document

... are unaware outsourcing American jobs undermines U.S. purchasing power and therefore undermines U.S. economic and military security.

... are unaware that trade is the exchange of products and that offshoring is not 'trade,' but a 'transfer of the factors of production' (labor & capital) that is not mutually beneficial for 'trading' countries.

... are unaware that nations don't trade, corporations do ... and that it's not the job of corporations to look out for the interests of the nation and its citizens; that's government's job ... and it's not doing it.

... are unaware that workers in undemocratic low-wage countries don't benefit from 'free trade' without labor and environmental standards because individuals don't value and 'purchase' clean environment and workplace safety, governments do ... and, if a government isn't a democracy, it doesn't represent the interests of its citizens.

... are unaware that the U.S. actually engages in 'reverse protectionism' by subsidizing the offshoring of jobs by allowing companies to indefinitely defer paying taxes on income from foreign subsidiaries, by allowing lower taxes from corporations that move their headquarters to a tax haven countries, by allowing R&D and other investment tax credits for companies that move manufacturing offshore meaning the U.S. doesn't fully benefit, by allowing corporations to engage in flawed transfer pricing schemes to avoid U.S. taxes.

... believe that media coverage of Ward Churchill's writings on 9/11 is more important that coverage of the Downing Street Memo and George Bush's misrepresentations about attacking Iraq that has led to the death and serious injury of hundreds of thousands.

... are unaware that George Bush's purpose for his Social Security reform is to actually promote a death spiral of the current program by encouraging higher income individuals to move to private accounts and remove their relatively higher contributions from the system ... thus causing a crisis, not addressing a crisis because there is no crisis.

... are unaware that for Bush's assertion that individuals will do better with private accounts in the stock market requires that he must postulate a rate of economic growth that means there will never be a SS deficit.

... believe that dividends and capital gains are double-taxed even though the law defines a corporation as an "individual" that is legally separate from individual stockholders to shield them from liability and doesn't understand that because the taxes apply to distinctly different 'individuals,' there's no double-taxation.

... are unaware that there is triple-taxation when people pay income taxes, Social Security taxes, and sales taxes on the same income because SS and sales taxes are NOT TAX DEDUCTIBLE.

... are unaware that Republican proposals to not tax dividends and capital gains means that people who invest their time to make money will pay taxes, but not those who invest their money to make money, and that a wage tax will remain to pay for the infrastructure, courts, police & fire protection, and national defense that make it possible for investors to have that income; and are unaware that this is 'class warfare'"

... are unaware that an 'official unemployment' of 5.8% means that 'effective unemployment' (including those who have given up looking and those working part-time, but wanting more work) is really 10%.

... are unaware that including other categories in under- and un- employment (other part-timers, temporaries and contract workers who lack full benefits and job security and the under-employed) raises the rate of those seeking more and better work to over 20%.

... are unaware that when one in 10 workers is unemployed it means that the added value of any one worker is zero, which drives wages at the bottom to zero and undercuts the bargaining power of all workers.

... are unaware that it is official policy of the United States through actions of the Federal Reserve to assure there are always more people than jobs to undermine demand for workers and maintain downward pressure on wages.

... are unaware that employees' share of the value added in the U.S. economy has fallen to its lowest point since records were first kept in 1947 -- and the rate of decline is accelerating.