US President: "The masters of the gov't...are the combined capitalists and manufacturers of the US"

[Karmadillo]

Of course, Woodrow Wilson was talking about back then, not now. Things are different now.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/New_World_Order/WWilson_NewFreedom.html

The masters of the government of the United States are the combined capitalists and manufacturers of the United States. It is written over every intimate page of the records of Congress, it is written all through the history of conferences at the White House, that the suggestions of economic policy in this country have come from one source, not from many sources. The benevolent guardians, the kind-hearted trustees who have taken the troubles of government off our hands, have become so conspicuous that almost anybody can write out a list of them. They have become so conspicuous that their names are mentioned upon almost every political platform. The men who have undertaken the interesting job of taking care of us do not force us to requite them with anonymously directed gratitude. We know them by name.

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The government of the United States at present is a foster-child of the special interests. It is not allowed to have a will of its own. It is told at every move: "Don't do that; you will interfere with our prosperity." And when we ask, "Where is our prosperity lodged?" a certain group of gentlemen say, "With us." The government of the United States in recent years has not been administered by the common people of the United States. You know just as well as I do,--it is not an indictment against anybody, it is a mere statement of the facts,--that the people have stood outside and looked on at their own government and that all they have had to determine in past years has been which crowd they would look on at; whether they would look on at this little group or that little group who had managed to get the control of affairs in its hands. Have you ever heard, for example, of any hearing before any great committee of the Congress in which the people of the country as a whole were represented, except it may be by the Congressmen themselves? The men who appear at those meetings in order to argue for or against a schedule in the tariff, for this measure or against that measure, are men who represent special interests.

[Democrats_win]

1. We're a "service" economy now. Otherwise it's true.

In fact, the "manufactureres" who are now in China have replaced the special interest manufacturers that once built products in America. They still call the shots in our government, but they bring absolutely no benefit to America other than cheep dangerous, poisonous products.

It should be pointed out that Reagan was the one who told us we had to become a service economy. Everyone agreed--until now. We now know that we need manufacturing or we will never fix our economy.

[Karmadillo]

2. An interesting DU post that points out how those interests work very hard to undermine our welfare

can be found here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=7285950&mesg_id=7285950

It's worth clicking through to read the entire article.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

4. And, we're the ones getting "serviced" in the animal breeding sense.

[Greyhound]

5. The facilities are in China (and elsewhere) but the owners are still here

and still in control thanks to the perpetual wealth system they created in the 19th century.

[Karmadillo]

3. Kick because it's true.

nt

[treestar]

6. We don't have to be

We'd just have to give up buying all the crap. We do it. Anyone posting here is on a computer. Probably has a cell phone.

It is voluntary. Most Americans just like the lifestyle.

[Karmadillo]

7. You make a good point, but I don't know how voluntary it is. Subdivision posted

an excellent article the other day that addresses how much pressure is brought to bear on people to accept crap buying as the only way. Well worth reading all the way through if you have the time.

http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/2962

The Gospel of Consumption
And the better future we left behind
by Jeffrey Kaplan

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In a 1927 interview with the magazine Nation’s Business, Secretary of Labor James J. Davis provided some numbers to illustrate a problem that the New York Times called “need saturation.” Davis noted that “the textile mills of this country can produce all the cloth needed in six months’ operation each year” and that 14 percent of the American shoe factories could produce a year’s supply of footwear. The magazine went on to suggest, “It may be that the world’s needs ultimately will be produced by three days’ work a week.”

Business leaders were less than enthusiastic about the prospect of a society no longer centered on the production of goods. For them, the new “labor-saving” machinery presented not a vision of liberation but a threat to their position at the center of power. John E. Edgerton, president of the National Association of Manufacturers, typified their response when he declared: “I am for everything that will make work happier but against everything that will further subordinate its importance. The emphasis should be put on work—more work and better work.” “Nothing,” he claimed, “breeds radicalism more than unhappiness unless it is leisure.”

By the late 1920s, America’s business and political elite had found a way to defuse the dual threat of stagnating economic growth and a radicalized working class in what one industrial consultant called “the gospel of consumption”—the notion that people could be convinced that however much they have, it isn’t enough. President Herbert Hoover’s 1929 Committee on Recent Economic Changes observed in glowing terms the results: “By advertising and other promotional devices . . . a measurable pull on production has been created which releases capital otherwise tied up.” They celebrated the conceptual breakthrough: “Economically we have a boundless field before us; that there are new wants which will make way endlessly for newer wants, as fast as they are satisfied.”

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