While I have ranted and raved incessantly about outsourcing and its impact on the middle class in the developed nations, I have spent less time focusing on the impact that massively degrading poverty has had on the Third World nations. The truly immoral aspect of this entire fiasco, isn't just that well paying jobs were stripped from middle class workers, it's that those exact same jobs were relocated to other countries but at a fraction of the wage. Therefore anyone and everyone who buys anything made in China or elsewhere is making the inherent presumption that those people "deserve" to perform the exact same type of work we used to do, but at a mere fraction of the wage. On a relative basis, these Third World workers are implicitly and explicitly slaves to the Western consumption-oriented model - a model which basic third grade math reveals to be neither scalable nor sustainable. There is a two factor exploitation at work - one is the wage differential which comprises a subsidy to Western consumers and an even bigger subsidy to corporate profits. The second exploitation is via recurring trade deficits whereby high income nations borrow from low income nations to subsidize their already bloated standard of living. Here in the U.S. those trade deficits are now being financed with newly printed money. You can't make this shit up.
An Exceptional Superiority Complex
Therefore there is only one reason that millions if not billions of people living in the developed nations take for granted this model of explicit exploitation that is on full frontal display in every store and shopping mall - that reason is the implicit assumption of superiority. How else could so many people possibly accept the de facto exploitative nature of this current global economy wherein people work twice or three times as hard as Western workers - performing the exact same work in many cases - at a fraction of the pay? Unfortunately, of course, contrary to implicit assumption, we are in no way superior to people in other nations and have no moral authority whatsoever to exploit those people to the benefit of our own mass consumption. Therefore, all this ever was is a system of exploitation that happens to be to our (first mover) advantage and that has been rationalized away on a mind-bogglingly pervasive scale. Even at this late juncture there is literally no mainstream outrage over Third World wage exploitation. As long as someone else's children are doing the suffering, then low wage labour exploitation is just fine thanks. After all, "they" are just lucky to have jobs.
The Eye of the Hurricane
Fortunately, this entire globalized catastrophe - already teetering under the weight of its own bloated excess - will be fully exposed in due time, thereby revealing the deep immorality and unfounded superiority complex that is at the heart of the corrupt system. It's the essential lie that our entire world rests upon. At this moment, we are merely in the eye of the economic hurricane. 2008 was the front wall of the hurricane which as always, merely weakens the structure. The eye itself is eerily calm, the sky is blue and volatility is artificially low. Everyone has been lulled into believing that 2008 was a "hundred year" storm that can't happen again in our lifetimes. Quite the contrary. 2008 was merely the front wall of the hurricane and now comes the back wall of the hurricane to take down the structure. The actions taken since 2008 or should I say the inactions taken since 2008 merely kept the status quo in place, hence guaranteeing its ultimate destruction during the second round. This coming collapse however, will make 2008 seem like a fond memory because it will strip away the phony moral superiority now clung to by developed nations, forcing them to confront the chasmic gap in living standards that has been sustained merely by a massive self-serving exploitative lie. At that point, wages will be "equalized", and not in the direction they could have been if this profoundly immoral lie had never existed. Those who are totally bought in to the status quo have only themselves to blame when it all comes crashing down out of the seemingly clear blue sky. It's one thing to lie to someone else, but something altogether more asinine to lie to oneself.
Three
This third and deadliest bubble is sponsored by Central Bank money printing, high frequency trading on millisecond boundaries, Prozac, American Idol/Kardashians, frat-boy sociopaths, and of course historically unprecedented mass delusion. Even at this five year anniversary of the Lehman collapse it's openly acknowledged that risks have only grown in the interim, while the middle class fades ever further into oblivion:
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