Corporate America’s Secession Continues, Unabated

[marmar]

from In These Times:



Corporate America’s Secession Continues, Unabated

Tuesday
Jan 18, 2011
3:43 pm

By Roger Bybee


South Carolina recently celebrated the 150th anniversary of its secession from the United States to protect its system of slave labor.

Meanwhile, a more quiet and gradual secession has been taking place, but for similar reasons. Corporate America has been staging its own withdrawal from U.S. workers, and its traditional sense of responsibility American society. The corporate secession reflects how America is increasingly fracturing apart along economic lines, according to one of capitalism's most ardent advocates, former Federal Reserve cairman Alan Greenspan.

Instead of spewing out his customary "trickle down" theory of spreading wealth, Greenspan admitted to Congress that we are witnessing a "significant recovery" for the investor class, for CEOs, big corporations and banks.

TWO AMERICAS

Much like John Edwards' still-resonant description of "two Americas", Greenspan depicted a situation of "'fundamentally two separate types of economy" headed in distinctly in divergent directions. Greenspan's remarks echo a now-infamous internal report by Citibank officials about the emerging "plutonomy" in America and the world—a new new economy of, by, and for the few. The Citibank crew almost gleefully portrayed the brutal, globalized polarization:

There are rich consumers, few in number, but disproportionate in the gigantic slice of income and consumption they take. There are the rest, the 'non-rich', the multitudinous many, but only accounting for surprisingly small bites of the national pie.

The data bears out this description. America now has a pyramid of inequality that is more unequal than many traditional "banana republics." Slate's Timothy Noah, in "The United States of Inequality," wrote, “Income distribution in the United States (has become) more unequal than in Guyana, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, and roughly on par with Uruguay, Argentina, and Ecuador.” .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/6867/corporate_secession_from_us_forces_labor_to_re-think_its_leverage/

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

1. k

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2. Recommend

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3. r

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4. in collusion with our corporatist run government - president and congress nt