Steven Capozzola
15 May 2004

A Third World U.S.A.?

In 20 years, the economic profile of the United States could resemble that of a Third-World nation.

Why might this happen?

In the past ten years, the U.S. Congress has passed a series of free trade agreements that have sent U.S. manufacturing jobs abroad.  NAFTA, GATT, Most Favored Nation Status for China, the Chile Agreement, the Singapore Agreement. They all add up to shipping U.S. factories out of the country on the theory that American consumers will benefit from cheaper imported goods.

The problem is that, in just the past four years, we've lost more than 2.3 million high-paying manufacturing jobs. Now, these job losses are spreading.  We're shipping our white-collar tech and service jobs overseas as well.  A recent UC Berkeley study estimates that as many as 14 million American jobs are at risk of being offshored.

If we lose those 14 million jobs, just as we've shed our manufacturing jobs, we'll lose the middle class in the United States.  We will be left with a nation where the majority of its citizens are working at Wal-Mart, Kinko's, and Starbucks.

Compounding this problem, however, is the influx of more than 1 million legal immigrants per year, accompanied by more than 500,000 illegal aliens.  This is a far greater rate than the 250,000 immigrants per year allowed during the bulk of U.S. history.  And, so our economy, which is already charged with producing approximately 1 million new jobs annually to keep upwith population growth, must also find work for these vast waves of newcomers. 

The unfortunate result is that America now has a vast glut of unskilled labor.  The consequence is a buyer's market for employers, who have successively lowered retail and service job wages to the national minimum, a salary too limited to support a family without additional public assistance.

In 20 years, the majority of our country will be earning minimum wage.  This is not the way to sustain an economy of more than 300 million people.  And it is not a solid underpinning for democracy.  And so, the prospect of our becoming a Third World economy starts to seem frighteningly plausible.

We need to realize that the U.S. Congress has sold us out.  They are focused on providing cheap labor for big business at the expense of American workers.

The only possible solutions are to cancel our failing trade agreements and to halt the mass importation of cheap labor.  It is time to reverse the decline of wages, and to slow our population growth.  These are harsh realities, but we have no choice.  The only other option is diminishing living standards and the ensuing chaos of revolutionary conditions.