In this paper, it is my intention to show the reader the serious effects of an uncontrolled global economy, which allows the unlimited exchange of foreign goods for American dollars. This shows that trade must ultimately be controlled at the international level, or else you cannot control the state of the national economy. It is also my intention to demonstrate first, the national changes in the economy, then show progressively how the changes affect the individual family household and ultimately, American life itself.
When we opened up international trading, a variety of things can happened. Suddenly the highly unionized workforces of our factories and other industrial enterprises (that, before, were sheltered by tariffs, embargoes, and the lack of organized mass shipping availability for quite some time after the industrial age) became uncompetitive in comparison with the more efficient working forces of the east. Corporation executives were more than happy to build factories in countries where the people would work for 30 cents an hour rather than deal with the spoiled American workers who came to expect exuberant wages because of years of organized protests and union battles. Factories were uprooted from many key areas where they once provided for the economic well-being of thousands of American families, causing workers who were skilled in factory labor to suddenly have to seek a new occupation.
As if this were not bad enough, the corporations who outsourced the factories began importing the products they manufactured through foreign labor. The corporations began marketing the products at extremely low prices (which were far cheaper than prices of the products being manufactured by the unionized American factories). The corporations sold the products to the very people who lost their jobs when the American factories closed. It was by appealing to the financially vulnerable position of the thousands of ex-factory-workers, that the corporations were able to successfully corner, both the consumption and production ends of the market at simultaneously. All of this created an extremely competitive economic force that put considerable strain on the remaining American straggler factories that still offered union wages. The retail businesses that did not buy from the corporations suffered because people would rather buy from the stores who sold the cheap foreign products at cheap prices. A system of dynamics encouraging the survival of the most globally-economically-fit emerged; all other economic entities suffered.
The retailers, and other close-to-home commercial-end businesses had to adapt to the newly introduced “global dimension” of the economy in order to survive; the only way for them to do this was to begin buying from the foreign factories. The foreign corporations could afford to produce the items at a fraction of the price American factories were required to charge in order to pay for the materials and labor and still make a profit. The American public, who were affected by the closing of the factories, could resist purchasing the extremely cheap items from the retail stores, seeing the inexpensive items as an answer to their plight…little do they know that they were becoming the sole instruments in orchestrating the fall of the American economy.
Here is the point where we scope down where we can view the effects of these things upon the personal lives of American citizens: morally, economically, socially, and emotionally. Money, as we are coming to understand increasingly as the economy falls, is what governs the lives of everyone in this era. The presence of money or the lack thereof is the main factor that pre-selects one man for success and another for failure. From all that we have described about the opening of mass trade in the global economy, we see that the American poverty level is rising rapidly (as more money goes out and more cheaply manufactured items come in). When the poverty level rises, once-honest people could be coerced into finding dishonest means for survival, since the city area that once depended upon the factory for its income can no longer support all of its residents, who do not cease requiring resources themselves. The area becomes a ghetto after the factory vanishes; a ghetto where the only type of trade that flourishes is the illegal kind. The surrounding cities whose residents were employed by the factories now suffer, as they have thousands of newfound dead weight to support. Other businesses suffer since people can no longer afford to patronize them as often. Since people can no longer afford as high taxes, the cities must cut down on some of their features in order to accommodate the bare cost of running; this would include such municipalities as quality in education, police and fire department staffing, and recreational apparatuses (sort of like how the organs within a starving animal begin to shut down in order to conserve initial life of the body).
