Our factories and jobs are being exported. The OECD, an organization of wealthy first-world countries, reports: “During the past three decades, the share of national income represented by wages, salaries and benefits–the labour share–has declined in nearly all OECD countries.” To explain this, it cited cheaper technology and a reduction in workers’ bargaining power.
How does an unemployed population buy the wonderful products robots and cheap foreign labor make? There’s a story that Henry Ford II escorted United Auto Workers President Walter Reuther around his new robotic assembly plant. “Walter,” said Ford, “How you gonna get union dues from these guys?” To which Reuther replied: “Henry, how you gonna get these guys to buy your cars?”
China is a good example of the contrast between a command and control economy in which most of the nation is in abject poverty, and a free market economy that thrives in China’s “free trade” zones like Beijing - an overnight miracle really and, again, a testament to the prosperity the free market economy brings.