The Costs of Empire

On August 30th, 2009 Bob McChesney from Media Matters interviewed Christoph Hedges, author of Empire of Illusion. The topic was empire, the US empire in particular. I wanted to sum up the interview a bit.
Hedges argues that a central facit of the US Empire is the increasingly powerful oligarchy within the country. The effects of oligarchical rule are not part of the public discourse. The costs of maintaining an oligarchy are tremendous. One key aspect of this is the situation on the labor market.
The ruling elite continually strive to keep labor costs down. US jobs lost to Mexico as a result of NAFTA are now moving to China. Mexican workers earning 90 cents an hour are being replaced my Chinese prison labor earning 10 cents an hour
“Jobless Recovery” is a term being thrown around these days. It’s a recovery for Wall Street, nor for workers.
Unemployment in the US is running around 20%. The official figure is about 10% but the true numbers of unemployed are hidden. Reagan removed 1.5 million from unemployment statistics by defining military personel as employed. Clinton took off 5 million by creating service jobs which are under the poverty line and by removing people who have given up looking for work.
A rapacious oligarchy controls society. The top 1% of the population controls more wealth than the bottom 90% combined. That’s a short sentence that says a hell of a lot. Reading it one might say “wow, that’s bad” or just skim over it as just another doomsday statement. Assuming it’s true, however, serves us basically with the definition of oligarchic rule. If it’s true it also means that democracy is impossible in the US. How in the world could we have political democracy if we live in a system where a tiny majority economically controls 90% of the country?
We have allowed these people to hijack our country in the name of corporations who have no national loyalty.
Being competitive in labor today means that American workers have to be competitive with prison labor in China, those are the folks being paid 20 cents an hour.
The squandering of American labor to sustain the financial oligarchy and investment houses has a tremendous cost to the country. One part of this is that there will not be the resources to assist the growing class of disenfranchised. The percentage of the disenfranchised population is increasing. These people are not able to fulfill their roles in a healthy society. They are not able to pay taxes, partake in the labor force, general maintain a functioning society. By transferring jobs outside of the country the backbone of society, ie. the workers, is degenerating. What happens when the spine begins to degenerate? You get a slipped disc and that hurts and is debilitating. What happens if you either the health care system is so screwed up that you can’t get an operation? You remain unemployed and are a burdon on society. A society can only take so of a load before it collapses.
We are destroying the American labor force through high levels of unemployment, poverty working conditions, and the exporting of jobs. This is all done to maintain and strengthen the oligarchy.