The “consumer” as “helpless sap” is a trope older than I am. Of course, all of the people selling this idea are (due to their inherent coolness or something) capable of spotting all these tricks easily.

An entire planet is catching up to where the U.S. has been for years. It’s going to be a bit tougher than it was in the years after WWII when Europe was a smoking wreck and the rest of the world still pushing oxen around. Say, there’s that “winner” they were talking about in that other thread. How’d that work out for everyone?

Inflation actually became a problem in Bangalore. And so it goes. It’s the inexorable logic of competition in the “free” market: When you can’t increase profit by increasing price, you have to cut costs. And the most variable cost, from a global perspective, is labor. Corporations get more bang for the buck shopping around for labor than any other factor under their control. They can play off entire continents against each other, and reap the harvest of maximal profits.

Of course, there’s an optimum if it’s to be symbiosis rather than parasitism. That’s why Tom’s gonna stomp Eri and ER for depicting, below, “The winner makes everyone else buy their goods and the rest of the world will be the unemployed and live in excruciating poverty.” You can’t suck the consumer completely dry, or there’s nobody left to buy your trinkets. So the modern form is a lot subtler than “imperialism”, because it’s necessary to seduce the victims rather than conquer them. Fat dumb and happy consumers are far more profitable than pissed-off freedom fighters.

It’s not really true that democracies never make war on each other. But it is true that consumer societies have a hard time rolling off the couch to fight. I guess this is one path to World Peace, eh?

“The winner makes everyone else buy their goods and the rest of the world will be the unemployed and live in excruciating poverty.”

is called “imperialism”. Europe did it to the rest of the world pretty systematically for about half a millennium.

I guess maybe history does repeat itself…

Deregulate…lower taxes…less government…free market… : )

The interest of business is to hire as few people as possible. The interest of government is to find employment for as many people as possible. I think what we have here is your basic conflict of interest.