Sadly, it looks like the answer to that question is yes, at least as far as a globalized economy is concerned.

U.S. multinational corporations, the big brand-name companies that employ a fifth of all American workers, have been hiring abroad while cutting back at home, sharpening the debate over globalization’s effect on the U.S. economy.  The companies cut their work forces in the U.S. by 2.9 million during the 2000s while increasing employment overseas by 2.4 million, new data from the U.S. Commerce Department show. That’s a big switch from the 1990s, when they added jobs everywhere: 4.4 million in the U.S. and 2.7 million abroad.  Strategies to offshore manufacturing and not repatriate the profits help companies like GE avoid US taxes, but the cumulative effect on US manufacturing competitiveness and a growing population of disenfranchised workers is troubling.

To understand the effectiveness of special interest influence, GE provides us with some recent data:

GE’s ability to exploit tax loopholes to its advantage is the stuff of legend. As stated, the company earned $14.2 billion in profits last year. Nine billion of that amount was made outside the US, exempting the company from any federal tax liability. GE actually got a $3.2 billion tax benefit, ABC News says.  Perhaps more importantly, GE, the world’s largest industrial corporation, leads all corporations in spending on lobbying Washington for favorable legislation and policies. The company has spent more than $238 million over the last 12 years on lobbying.

As special interests use their influence to discourage competition and socially responsible behavior, otherwise free markets can be manipulated by those who control them and further wealth concentration results.  GE cannot be blamed for pursuing low cost labor and tax advantages, but we should avoid demonizing all of the factory workers whos job got shipped to China.  I have yet to meet a single poor person who felt entitled to eat but I know a lot of successful people who would much sooner see people go hungry than support the concept of government food stamps.

Baron M.A. Rothschild wrote, “Give me control over a nation’s currency and I care not who makes its laws.”

In a survival of the fittest contest, the value placed on peaceful coexistence and basic human rights seems to be giving way to a what amounts to a moral yard sale.  Our government and economy are increasingly catering to special interests and it comes at the expense of liberty and justice for all.  When we start parsing  people’s rights and freedoms, when we act in a fiscally irresponsible manner and yet demand that the neediest among us pay-as-they-go, when we fail to respect the dignity and rights of all people, we are no longer one nation under God.  Economically, the only market power the “have-nots” have is  a strength in numbers–and with out market power, the neediest among us receive lip service (at best), as what once was the American Middle Class is rapidly becoming the Under Class .  Divided we fall.

The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.   Martin Luther King, Jr.

Knowledge is power.