Jobs began leaving in the 60s with the outsourcing of the garment factrories to South America, then the shoe factoriies left, then in the late 60s RCA began to manufacture TVs in Japan, but when US Steel went under in the 70s, people became concerned.

By the late 1980s and 90s, Corporate CEOs and their marketing teams, had perfected a business model that was being presented in seminars to business leaders across the USA with PowerPoints, graphs and charts showing how offshoring to by-pass the USA wage could boost the bottom line..

Then, when NAFTA was signed in 1994, it was the beginning of the end for the planets most magnificent “industrial belt” (that has become the “rust belt” in just 20 years). But in 2001, when China joined the WTO, even our jobs in Mexico left for China ($1.36/hr. avg. wage now, let alone what it was in 2001) and we are a nation in decline with a staggering trade deficit and an even more staggering national debt.

And now that money is tight because our once dynamic middle class economic consumerism powerhouse has been decimated, public workers are on the chopping block, while the real perpetrators, the real culprits of our demise are sitting in CEO executive suites charting the course for USA corporations that have evolved into “multinationals.”

These “multinationals” are some of the most profitable corporations this world has ever seen! Exxon/Mobile makes $140 BILLION/yr. GE makes $30 BILLION/yr, etc, Caterpillar, Dell, HP, GM, Ford, Scott Paper, Mattel, Apple, Inc., you name it. They have all taken the corporate model and put it to use, kicking the USA worker to the curb and into the unemployment lines.

Yet Free Trade Agreements bind the mighty USA economy and allow TARIFF FREE access to our still potent, but dwindling middle class market to fleece it for all its worth as our nation declines into irreparable debt and trade deficits even as our “multinationals” are the benefactors of RECORD profits that have exceeded a $$$TRILLION recently. And these and vast profits are legally parked in off-shore accounts with impunity to avoid contributing ANYTHING to the USA treasury, their biggest market.

Now to get to my point: The USA tax code is repleat with loopholes (exemptions, credits, write-offs, even subsidies) that not only help off-set the liabilities of setting up a factory in China, for instance (factory purchase/lease or building project, equipment, machinery, payroll, but also energy efficiency installments, modernization investments, and retooling/maintainence investments, etc.), but also amount to $ HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS of tax-payer dollars being granted to these already extremely profitable corporations.
The double whamy occurs when these TARIFF FREE cheap imports, made at pennies on the dollar, hit our shores invariably under-selling Made In USA, putting holdouts to the offshoring trend out of business, leaving surviving small businesses cutting costs to the bone, creating downward pressure on wages that remain, and helping Red China catch up to the mighty USA in just 10 years. What we didn’t GIVE them in patents, industrial models, trade secrets, and yankee know how, they’ve reverse engineered or stolen. While our entreperneurs seek investors to fund their great ideas and get them manufactured, China will steal, manufacture, and market them before we can set up an assembly line.

Finally, my rant has been critical of multinationals and corporate CEOs who I’ve blamed for perpetrating this mess, but it is not really their fault. Like Mitt Robme, who has parked his vast wealth in offshore accounts, they’ve done all this within the confines of the existing laws and tax structures BIG $$$ has lobbied for, bought, and paid for with their $$$ for access to Congress. (Citizens United (2010) may have been the last nail in the coffin of the middle class as we move toward a Plutocratic State.)
To save the USA, we need to impose steep tariffs on cheap goods flooding our shores, scrap our ad infinitum adherance to FTAs like the WTO (Germany levels a 19% tariff on imports to protect their industrial base without so much as a slap on the wrist form the WTO), and require that if businesses want access to the USA consumeristic market, they manufacture here or forfeit tax breaks to subsidize offshoring jobs. We need to start playing for keeps and start building our middle class back again!

It is a disgrace, that in the greatest nation of the world, our most vulnerable young students are forced to learn in a situation with so many. I SERIOUSLY doubt Mr. Romney would have tolerated this type of learning environment for HIS OWN children.

I’d like to see Mr. Romney teach my classes for a month without any assistance–with just the equipment and supplies I have and see how his test scores come out.