One thing that might help the 99ers and our countries workers get back to work is to not cut wages to keep work here. The corporations and the right say cutting wages stimulates job creation. This is a lie. Soon the 99ers will have no money to buy anything. What we can do to make our corporations more competitive in the world is have single payer-national healthcare or at least right now expand Medicare coverage (lower the eligibility age). This would take the burden off the corporations that provide healthcare which would drop the employee cost.
Germany has high labor costs, but it is doing very well in the global economy. It is the most successful social democracy in the world right now. It has a large trade surplus and one reason for this is it has a whole different type of corporations with workers making up one half of the board of directions, and the workers have privileged positions in the company and real power and responsibilities.
The Germans also have government sponsored banks that lend to businesses. Our federal banks print money -- lots of money. Then it just sits on it and doesn’t lend it out. Our American CEOs are not in touch with their workers, and even with all cash bailouts they just sit on it and don’t hire. One thing we should do is get new usury laws. Usury laws is limits on interest rates in a general cuts down the appeal of being a creditor and not an investor.
We could use another stimulus, but it should be spent on infrastructure. If it’s spent on other things it will end up just helping the workers in China and other underdeveloped countries. We do not manufacture things in great amounts so we must get our very rich 1 percenters to stop investing in paper and derivates and start investing in making things to send overseas and lessen our trade deficit.
There are ways to change our economy for the 99ers, and we will have to make the politicians and the 1 percent do it. If the 1 percent don’t start investing in our country we will not get rid of our $680.9 billion trade deficit. A simple explanation of trade deficit: “An economic measure of a negative balance of trade in which a country’s imports exceeds its exports. A trade deficit represents an outflow of domestic currency to foreign markets,” according to Investopedia. We only have to look at China ad Germany to see what a trade surplus will do for a country. China has a surplus of $172.5 billion and Germany has a surplus of $188.4 billion. Their 1 percenters and government invest in their countries and our 1 percenters do not.
