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The media still gives Trump a pass by granting plausibility that he is a populist president. They helped him with an electoral college win by not sufficiently exposing his deception.
Donald Trump’s visit to Davos, rubbing shoulders with the titans of capital while closing America to most people is a clear example that he represents his party well. And that is the reason the Republican Party has changed its tune and has gone out in full defense mode of whatever this president does.
Robert Reich wrote a critical piece today; a must read, that lays it out.
Trump to global CEOs and financiers in Davos, Switzerland: “America is open for business.” We’re now a great place for you to make money. We’ve slashed taxes and regulations, so you can make a bundle here. Trump to ambitious young immigrants around the world: America is closed. We don’t want you. Forget that poem affixed to the Statue of Liberty about bringing us your poor yearning to breathe free. Don’t even try.
In Trump’s America, global capital is welcome, global people aren’t. Well, I have news for the so-called businessman. America was built by ambitious people from all over the world, not by global capital. Global capital wants just one thing: A high return on its investment. Global capital has no obligation to any country or community. If there’s another place around the world where taxes are lower and regulations laxer, global capital will move there at the speed of an electronic blip.
Global capital doesn’t care how it gets that high return. If it can get it by slashing wages, outsourcing to contract workers, polluting air and water, defrauding investors, or destroying communities, it will.
Reich would later point out how his family immigrated to this country and how “chain immigration” allowed his family to get here. It is vital that we move away from letting the Right define the narrative. It should not be called “chain migration” but family reunification migration or something like that. We must call out that the party of family values wants to destroy families using a narrative to cover the evil within its deeds.
Reich points out something fundamental for those who would believe the misinformation that is coming from the misleading unfettered capitalists.
By the way, global capital doesn’t create jobs. Jobs are created when customers want more goods and services. Nobody invests in a business unless they expect consumers to buy what that business will produce. Those consumers include immigrants. Most consumers are also workers. The more productive they are and the better they’re paid, the more goods and services they’ll buy – creating a virtuous circle of higher wages and more jobs.
He closes with the following.
America wasn’t created by global capital but by people who came from all over world to be here. And global capital won’t make it great again.
This reality is something we must get into the heads of those that are enticed by xenophobia. We are all immigrants here, and we are a better country for it. In fact, it gives us the cred to be the world leader we used to be.
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