First, we lost the jobs. Corporations, encouraged (and given tax credits) by the US Government, started moving high-paying jobs to other countries. For the first few corporations to do this, it was a sweet deal. Labor costs dropped, profits went up, the stockholders were happy and agreed to executive bonuses, and everybody was happy, except the recently laid-off workers, but who cares about them, right?
There is a funny thing about employees. They are also customers. Your employees are your neighbors' customers and his employees are your customers, and as more and more corporations followed the plan of offshoring their manufacturing, suddenly there were a lot less customers with the means to buy products in the stores, no matter what sale price they were at.
Those initial high profits vanished as workers lost their high-paying jobs and were forced to take low-paying jobs. Then the profits vanished entirely. What had looked really good in the short-term proved to be a disaster for the economy in the long run.
So here we are, no jobs, no profits, and a bunch of corporate executives and government types who thought they were the smartest guys around, scratching their heads and wondering what the hell happened!
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