"Goodbye to the city upon a hill and to its fabled economy"

by Paul Craig Roberts
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Submitted by John Stoltenberg on Tue, 2007-06-26 11:44. Fascism  (also see  below which clarify MORE than the story itself!!)

Hi;
 Below is the Monday, June 25, 2007 article titled "Goodbye to the city upon a hill and to its fabled economy" by Paul Craig Roberts. Below that is the link to the article.

I would like to start by presenting Paul Craig Roberts credits which appeared at the end of a previous article of his. I am presenting them in the beginning so people actually read his credits and understand that he is not just some sort of crank. That he has been at the very center of American capitalist economic and political power, and must still be considered very close to those centers of power.  (WAS.  Now he's excluded like everyone else. Can't get an audience anywhere except the Net.)

His credits read as follows:
Paul Craig Roberts wrote the Kemp-Roth bill and was assistant secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was associate editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and contributing editor of National Review. He is author or co-author of eight books, including The Supply-Side Revolution (Harvard University Press). He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon chair in political economy, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and senior research fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He has contributed to numerous scholarly journals and testified before Congress on 30 occasions. He has been awarded the U.S. Treasury's Meritorious Service Award and the French Legion of Honor. He was a reviewer for the Journal of Political Economy under editor Robert Mundell.

This article by Paul Craig Roberts is in the must read category for all Americans no matter what their social standing or economic circumstance. What Paul Craig Roberts points out with this article is the degree that American capitalism, under the incredibly bad management of the fascist Bush regime, is failing America in general and the American working class in particular. Paul Craig Roberts' article should raise many questions, but it should raise one in particular. That question is: Has the incredibly bad management of American capitalism by the fascist Bush regime so badly damaged American capitalism that it cannot recover?

That last question may seem a bit extreme, but consider this, if the czars in Czarist Russia had been asking the right questions then feudalism, which had been evolving into a private ownership form of capitalism in Czarist Russia, most likely would have evolved into a private ownership form of capitalism in Czarist Russia. Also, if the communist leadership in the Soviet Union had been asking the right questions the Soviet Union's form of state capitalism probably would still exist today.

John P. Stoltenberg, P.E.
N8362 State Highway 67
P.O.Box 596
Elkhart Lake, WI
53020-0596
920-876-2184
jpstolten@verizon.net

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Goodbye to the city upon a hill and to its fabled economy

By Paul Craig Roberts

“We shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.”
— John Winthrop

America is being destroyed. Many Americans are unaware, others are indifferent, and some intend it. The destruction is across the board: the political and constitutional system, the economy, social institutions including the family itself, citizenship, and the character and morality of the American people.

06/25/07 -- -- Those who rely on the Internet for information are aware that the Bush regime has successfully assaulted the separation of powers and civil liberty. Both Bush and Cheney claim that they are not bound by laws that impinge on their freedom of action or that interfere with their ideas of the power of their offices. Bush has issued presidential directives that permit him to make himself a dictator by declaring a national emergency. Cheney asserts that his handling of secret documents is not subject to oversight or investigation or bound by a presidential order governing the protection of classified information.

The foundation of social organization — marriage, family, and parental control over children — is disintegrating.

Mass unassimilated and illegal immigration has destroyed the meaning of American citizenship and forced large numbers of Americans into unemployment. For example, Steve Camarota at the Center for Immigration Studies reported on June 20 that state employment data show that in the first six years of the 21st century 218,000 high school graduates in the state of Georgia have been employment- displaced by immigrants. [Employment Down Among Natives In Georgia] Moreover, wages have stagnated, putting the lie to the claim that there is a shortage of workers. If there were a labor shortage, wages would be bid up and rising.

MULTI-NATIONAL CORPORATIONS ARE THE WORST ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS. --gg

Many Americans are unconcerned that the US government in behalf of an undeclared agenda has invaded two countries, killed hundreds of thousands of foreign civilians, produced 4 million Iraqi refugees, rejected the Geneva Conventions and reverted to medieval torture dungeons. It does not trouble them that their government blocked ceasefires and UN resolutions so that Israel could bomb and murder Lebanese civilians and destroy the country’s infrastructure.

Americans, whose ethical behavior toward others was once reinforced by having to look oneself in the mirror, now have a different ethos. Many cannot look themselves in the mirror unless they have pulled a fast one and advanced themselves at someone else’s expense. It is not only crooked prosecutors, such as Michael Nifong, who get their jollies from destroying their fellow citizens.

A Google search will call up enough information to make the case for these points many times over. However, the destruction of the US economy, though far advanced, is still largely unknown. It is to this subject that we turn.

For a number of years Charles McMillion of MBG Information Services and I have documented from BLS nonfarm payroll jobs data that the US economy in the 21st century no longer creates net new jobs in tradable goods and services. In the 21st century, job growth in “the world’s only superpower” has a definite third world flavor. US job growth has been limited to domestic services that cannot be moved offshore, such as waitresses and bartenders and health and social services.

These are not jobs that comprise ladders of upward mobility. Income inequality is worsening, and education is no longer the answer.

The problem is that middle class jobs, both in manufacturing and in professional occupations such as engineering, are being offshored as corporations replace their American workforces with foreigners. I have called jobs offshoring “virtual immigration.”

The latest bombshell is that even those professional jobs that remain located in America are not safe. There is a vast industry of immigration law firms that enable American corporations to replace their American workers with foreigners brought in on work visas.

For years Americans have been told that work visas are only issued in cases where there are no Americans with the necessary skills to fill the jobs. Americans have been reassured that safeguards are in place to prevent US companies from using the work visas to replace their American employees with foreigners paid below the prevailing US wage. Now, thanks to a video placed on “YouTube” by a US law firm, Cohen & Grigsby (news on it), marketing its services, we now know that it is easy for US companies to legally evade the “safeguards” and to replace their American employees with lower paid foreigners.

Immigration attorneys from Cohen & Grigsby explains how they assist employers in running classified ads with the goal of NOT finding any qualified applicants, and the steps they go through to disqualify even the most qualified Americans in order to secure green cards for H-1b workers. See what Bush and Congress really mean by a "shortage of skilled U.S. workers." Microsoft, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, and thousands of other companies are running fake ads in Sunday newspapers across the country each week.
Sanders Introduces Bill Cracking Down on H-1B Visa Abuse  (I'm not buying the corrective measures in this bill, because this has been going on for over a decade.  It's old-fashioned class war, and they no longer even care to hide it.)

The video shows Lawrence Lebowitz, [send him mail] vice president for Marketing for the law firm of Cohen & Grigsby, together with a panel of the law firm’s attorneys, explaining to an audience of employers how to use loopholes in the laws governing the work visas to hire foreign workers in place of Americans. Lebowitz says, “our goal is clearly, not to find a qualified and interested US worker.”

Cohen & Grigsby’s legal experts describe the strategy for ensuring that no American firm has to hire an American. The advertising requirements can be met by advertising the job in obscure or ethnic newspapers in locations where there are no likely job candidates. If a qualified American candidate turns up, “have the manager of that specific position step in and . . . go through the whole process to find a legal basis to disqualify them for this position — in most cases there doesn’t seem to be a problem.”

The “prevailing wage” requirement is evaded, for example, by making the offered salary and raises contingent on receipt of the green card, usually three or four years away, or by disguising the job by understating the job requirements. For example, a job requiring an advanced degree can be listed as requiring a bachelor’s degree, but filled with a foreigner with a higher degree. As the higher degree is not listed as a job requirement, the employer is able to secure the foreign employee below the prevailing wage.

University of California computer science professor Norman Matloff has an excellent presentation available at his online site about the lack of impediments to the ability of US firms to replace their American employees with foreigners. Matloff says to keep in mind that Cohen & Grigsby “is NOT a rogue law firm.” The advice provided by Cohen & Grigsby is the standard advice given by the hoards of immigration attorneys who are personally cleaning up by putting Americans out of work.

Except for Lou Dobbs on CNN, the US TV and print media have so far ignored the astounding story. Where are the headlines: “US Jobs: No American Need Apply”?

Chances are high that economists will ignore the story also. Economists have made fools of themselves with their hyped claims that jobs offshoring is a great benefit to America and that any attempt to stop it would bring hardship, failed companies, and lost American jobs. When a profession gets egg all over its face, it closes ranks and goes into denial.

Unlike the post-depression generation of US economists, recent generations of economists have been indoctrinated with confidence in business. They believe that business knows best and that the free market will prevent or correct any mistakes. Many economists today are well-paid shills for special interests. Others, simply careless, have assumed that statistical measures of high rates of US productivity and GDP growth were indications of the benefits that offshoring was bringing to Americans.

Only a few economists, such as myself and Charles McMillion, noticed the inconsistency between alleged high rates of productivity and GDP growth on one hand and stagnant real median incomes and rising income inequality on the other. Somehow the US economy was having GDP and productivity growth that was not showing up in growth in the incomes of Americans.

Thanks to economist Susan N. Houseman and the March 22 issue of Business Week, we now know, as I reported in the print edition of CounterPunch (June 1-15, 2007) and online at VDARE.com and Online Journal, that much of the growth in US productivity and GDP was an illusion created by statistics that mistakenly attributed productivity gains achieved abroad to the US economy.

With the ladders of upward mobility for Americans dismantled by offshoring and work visas, with the very real problems in mortgage and housing markets, with the very real stress put on the US dollar’s reserve currency role by Bush’s trillion dollar war that is financed by foreigners, with the downward revisions in US GDP and productivity growth that are now mandatory, and with a variety of other problems that I haven’t the space to deal with, the fabled US economy is a thing of the past.

Just like America’s prestige. Just like the world’s goodwill toward America. Just like American liberty.

The eyes of all peoples are still upon us, only for different reasons. Whom will we attack next? When will we be bankrupt? What good is the American consumer market when the mass of the people are employed in third world jobs? How much longer will those trillions of dollars held by foreign governments be worth anything? How long before Americans will be knocking on European doors claiming political asylum?

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 http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17919.htm    (blog where I originally found it)

Comments (selected) on Information Clearinghouse

Roberts said,
"Americans, whose ethical behavior toward others was once reinforced by having to look oneself in the mirror, now have a different ethos. Many cannot look themselves in the mirror unless they have pulled a fast one and advanced themselves at someone else’s expense. It is not only crooked prosecutors, such as Michael Nifong, who get their jollies from destroying their fellow citizens."

This statement I think, is designed to cover Mr. Robert's own ass as a one-time participant in the economic fleecing of America.

Actually, the ethical behavior of Americans began to break down when suburban sprawl introduced anonymity and consumerism introduced unbridled greed. These developments were based on a philosophy of immediate gratification without thought to the social consequences or how it would change the character of the nation. Wall Street and Madison Avenue have acted with a single goal: make loads of money by chipping away at the controls placed on individual behavior by fear of adverse social consequences resulting from selfishness. In the small farm-towns and old factory-town neighborhoods which have slowly been driven into extinction by the Global Economy, people had known their neighbors, and were related to most of their fellow citizens by some means or another. You were civil to people whether you knew them or not- hell, they might have been relatives. But that's all changed in the last forty years as cities have grown and towns have died. And as people became uglier, so did politics.

Today no one cares about anyone but himself. Most of you can't even know what I'm talking about because you're too young to remember back before malls and cul-de-sacs took over America, when small towns had thriving economies and good jobs, and urban neighborhoods lived on front porches and shopped in local shops. Between commuting to work, going out to eat, and shopping till they drop, most Americans today don't even know their neighbors, and spend up to two hours a day in their cars, coughing out carbon.

But how two-faced and self-serving of Mr. Roberts to fail to admit the huge role played by his very own Reagan administration in bringing about the age of arbitragers, mega-mergers, leveraged buyouts, robber CEOs, downsizing, and outsourcing known as turbo-capitalism, which hastened the arrival of the Global Economy and in the process has stripped the US of its vitality like a swarm of locusts strips a field of grain.

America can rebuild. We can start over new and green. But first we have to realize that it is not the illegal Mexicans who are the problem, Paul Craig Roberts, but the crooked bosses like the Reaganites who hire them and manipulate the economy so the rich get richer and the poor, well- you know.
Gravatar What terrifies me most, is this thought, it just simply keeps running through my head. There is nothing more dangerous than a dying beast, especially one who has nothing left to lose.
This is a quote from a book titled “Correspondence with Vincent Salandria,” by Michael Morrissey, a Kennedy assassination researcher. This is in relationship to the Kennedy murder, but it applies to us today.

“I’m afraid we were misled. All the critics, myself included, were misled very early. I see that now. We spent too much time and effort micro-analyzing the details of the assassination, when all the time it was obvious, it was blatantly obvious there was a conspiracy. Don’t you think the men who killed Kennedy had the means to do it in the most sophisticated and subtle way? They chose not to. Instead they chose the shooting gallery that was Dealy Plaza, and did it in the most barbarous and openly arrogant manner. The cover story was transparent, and designed not to hold, to fall apart at the slightest scrutiny. The forces that killed Kennedy wanted the message clear: 'We are in control, and no one, not the President, not Congress, nor any elected official, no one can do anything about it.' It was a message to the people that their government is powerless. And the people eventually got the message. Consider what’s happened since the Kennedy assassination. People see government as unresponsive to their needs, yet the budgets and power of the military/intelligence establishment have increased tremendously. The [turning] of power is here. Current events tell us that those men that killed Kennedy can only perpetuate their power by promoting social upheaval both at home and abroad, and that will not lead to revolution but repression. I suggest to you, my friend, the interests of those who killed Kennedy now transcend national boundaries and national priorities. No doubt that now we are dealing with an international conspiracy. We must face the fact. Not waste any more time micro-analyzing the evidence. That’s exactly what they want us to do. They’ve kept us busy for so long.”


So when people say "We've got to take charge of our country again," look who really has control, is in charge of it. Tell me, just where do you find even a sleeve to grip? Which individual(s)? Who is going to do it? You or me? Ha! We'll be squashed like bugs. This is the biggest Mafia in the world, and their muscle is the United States Military machine, both overt and covert. In November of 1963, we had a coup d'etat. They've been in control of the levers of power ever since. I'd like someone to tell me how you fight this.
American jobs are gone because American industries are gone. Google world steel production. Then Google Delphi to see it happening again. Mr. Roberts, the "economist," helped to destroy American industry. Is he running for office on his record now?
Zippy:

Close. 1963 is when they showed their hand and killed JFK.

But only because JFK found out that the whole US national security state was riddled with traitors. He fired Dulles and was going to bust the CIA into "a million pieces." Before he could, they nailed him.

The current US Security State dates from 1947 and it is corporate, globalist and essentially Stalinist, except the leaders of this one learned from the Great Soviet Experiment and it's a lot more sophisticated.

And if it matters, the same wonderful folks who financed Hitler and the October Revolution are doing it to us too.

The same people who ran the Gulags are on the job here also: Ex-KGB boys rigged the "American" Homeland Security Department. They didn't even change the name Stalin hung on it!

Roberts notes most of the details, but skips over the important fact that "the USA" is just the installation device for a Global Regime based on exploitation. The Regime is all over the map. Even the CIA is a non-American entity.

As with the old Soviet Union, when it all collapses they'll just find another country to work their magic on. They will keep trying to make their New World Order work, no matter how many millions they kill.

Maybe Australia is next on the list. Either way, the "USA" is only their latest tool. When they finish draining us dry, they'll start on the next country. Just another day at the office for them.
Gravatar I believe when the Hammer falls and the full game plan comes into being for the USA, people will not be able to handle it. Everything they have been taught and everything they have been told will have been a lie. As you stated about the H1-b visa video, that didn't make airtime except for Lou Dobbs. I don't even think they are bothering to pretend anymore. When people question they just ignore them and do what they want.
Gravatar I think it's fine if people from other parts of the world come to north america. I think it's fine, if they work, and fine if they don't.

I think it's fine that more americans are quitting working, retiring earlier, settling for lower income -- if that's their choice.

Paul Craig Roberts has fallen into that fallacy of identifying with, and advocating for, one group over the interests of another. This fallacy, sometimes nationalist, sometimes racist, is always unjust. The very notion of our "enterprise" in Washington DC is immoral: WashDC sells its services to Americans of screwing the rest of the world, and bringing the loot home.

I do see a familiar problem when immigrants take jobs from less competitive americans. All societies, including wherever the immigrants came from, have their own segments of people who are not productive enough to compete. What's happening is the most competitive people, globally are coming into the US and displacing our own people of modest or inadequate ability. So we are ending up with no way to support them. This is the bigger pattern of globalization is what PCL should be talking about-- justice for all the people of the world. Labor rights, for example. How could PCL miss this bigger picture?? If you're worried about it, tax the rich. Tax these successful immigrants. Transfer some resources to the unemployed, the marginal, the uneducated, the persons of density. Provide a guaranteed income of $12000.

The immigrants will then, not come in such numbers. By maintaining less regulation and taxation than other advanced countries we are getting an economy where the most cunning, long of fang, fleet of foot keep ALL of their winnings, we are attracting competitive sharks and savants and millionnaires from around the world and building a frankenstein economy.

I'm amazed, most of all that PCL is alarmed by this... why would he fear that such an economy might fail? It's business as usual. If you don't like the character of it, then, tax the rich.

-Todd BOyle CPA retired
Oh, he just had to stick in that nonsense about the immigrants!
Gravatar I applaud ICH for the real news. I used to make $45k my husband over 50K today we are nearly destitute. Forced to sell a house that would have been paid for and unable to find work over $9 hour. Paul Wellstone was the only Senator that would have stood up to the Florida Fiasco of a Stolen election and demanded a re-election. His plane went down a short time before the election though and that plan took care of the only snafu to GWB taking office. Not one Senator, not even Feingold (wi) had the guts to do what Paul Wellstone would have. GWB has sent the world to hell in a handbag and will continue to do so unless something is done and fast. Who has the guts? Cindy
We have been a third world country for some time as we see more and more families having to work two or three jobs just for the basics.
When are this nation's citizens going to wake up to the fact that this country is owned by multinational corporations who's only loyalty is to the dollar. And that is questionable as we see major corps heading overseas to create jobs for others.
These multis have used this countries manpower to fight their wars for resources, our laws and our court system to give them power all over the world but they tell the american worker they are in a global economy and must take another reduction in economic status.
we are heading for a big collapse that echoes the beginnings of the last century.
Have no doubts people, Militarism and Outsourcing are going to run this country to the ground.
Cry me a river why don't ya? It makes me sick how stupid Americans are. Just listen to the bickering here. The idiotic schlep wants the corporate class to care about HIM but he HIMSELF doesn't give two shiites about the underprivelaged workers overseas who are definately NOT getting RICH off of the measly pay generated by the offshore trade. You people are dam hypocrites.

The entire system is made up of lies and you people only complain when it hits your pockets.
Gravatar I'm a Malaysian, living in Malaysia governments in theis part of the world are actively soliciting outsourcing of jobs from developed counrties like the US and countries here are competing with their neighbours to attract outsource jobs and foreign direct investment.

Now while the flow of jobs and production plants will provide employment opportinities and incomes for a while, th the long term, as costs of labour and cost of living become expensive in some countries, the same dynamics of investment and job loss affecting the United States now will affect countries here.

Malaysia stered attracting foreign direct investment in the form of factories to set up here since the early 1970s but now, as costs have risen, the factories are moving away to lower wage areas like Thailand, Vietnam and China, and now Malaysia is left scrambling to "move up the
value chain" by attracting knowledge-based jobs in IT, creative multimedia, call centres but unfortunately, these are not the kinds of jobs your average high-school grad could do, so, with the exception of graphic design, animation and call centres, technology jobs aren't the answer to providing mass employment with decent incomes.

Thus I believe that in the long term, this logic of a globalised economy providing opportunities for all is flawed and an alternative is required, which for me would preferably be socialism where production serves social need, rather than private profit.

The other alternative is a reversion to regulated capitalism and reasonable protective tariff barriers.

Of course, with ordinary Americans faced with a bleak future in this globalised system, it's necessary that they must act to change it, through political means or militant revolution, since neither people in countries like the US or Malaysia benefit from this globalised system in the long run, though some may seemingly enjoy some benefits for a temporary period, while others suffer more and more from it.

Such a system is cruel and benefits only the capitalists, whether they be some giant multi-national corporation or some relatively small capitalist looking to arbitrage his costs by pitting workers in one country against workers in another.

Karl Marx's call, "Workers of the World, Unite!" rings so true in a world when the capitalists, their spin doctors and propaganda organs divide the worker against worker through encouraging labour cost arbitrage in a globalised world.