The Perfect Storm of Plutocracy May Drown the Working Class in 2011

MARK KARLIN, BUZZFLASH EDITOR FOR TRUTHOUT

A winter storm just hit the Northeast hard, but a perfect storm is brewing to stifle the American economy in 2011.

Yes, no doubt economic data will improve somewhat, but the bottom has dropped out of our manufacturing sector - and there is little reason to believe that is going to dramatically improve.

Over 2010, I have posted numerous articles - including prescient analyses by Paul Krugman among others - that indicate that several factors are converging that will further erode our shrinking working class. These ominous trends include:

• Increased offshoring of production jobs to low-cost-labor nations, facilitated by "free trade agreements"
• Growing financial investment abroad by beneficiaries of "bonus" tax giveaways to the super-wealthy
• Accelerating dependence on natural resources from other nations to meet current energy and high-technology needs
• Accumulation of hundreds of billions of dollars in cash surpluses by corporations to increase dividend payments, stock value and executive salaries and bonuses
• Growing consumer spending is no longer an indicator of a likely increase in domestic manufacturing, because so many of the goods purchased by Americans are made overseas
• Rampaging "meme" of reducing the federal deficit and implementing austerity programs will further erode the production sector of the economy

In this partial year-end BuzzFlash-at-Truthout mini-economic review, it's worth noting that you don't know you've been hit by a perfect storm until it fully envelops you.

A timid "stimulus" program won't save a working man or woman from the likes of this tempest in 2011. Only fundamental economic change that moves our financial engine from Wall Street to Main Street will do the trick.

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