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The local economy, once the bread and butter of the United States, has been traded away in favor of the national economy -- namely, an economy driven by unpatriotic multinational corporations. The idea of a thriving Main Street has largely became a quaint relic of the past -- drive along any major roadway in the United States today and you'll see the big, bright signs of Walmart, Target, and Best Buy, one right after another. These stores and online retailers such as Amazon are the thriving businesses of today. But how does their success help most of the country?
Because so many big multinational companies ship jobs and industries abroad, the lack of well-paying jobs has become a serious issue for American workers. Millions of blue-collar jobs moved to countries that won't cut into a company's profit margin with requirements such as basic worker's rights and a minimum wage. (Consider the recent factory fire in Bangladesh, where 112 workers died due to lax safety standards. The factory produced clothes for Walmart, Sears and Disney, among other American companies.) Many white-collar jobs have also gone overseas -- how often do you call a customer support hotline only to reach someone in India or the Philippines? The evidence of this great job migration is all around, depressed small towns with empty factories, fewer and fewer family-owned small retail businesses, big banks over community banks, supermarkets over grocery stores. While American workers enjoy more rights and privileges than their overseas equivalents, there is still much work to be done. For instance, the federal minimum wage is three dollars less then what it was, adjusted for inflation, back in 1968. Hundreds of American Walmart workers walked off the job on Black Friday to protest low wages and poor working conditions. Poverty is increasing.
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