Republican win = workers’ loss

The presidential campaign has a shadow issue that underlies virtually every discussion of domestic policies, from the direction of the economy and tax cuts to the Supreme Court vacancy and climate change. This issue is whether the investor class in this country will continue to get what it wants — namely, more wealth and power — at the expense of the working classes.  

Virtually everything the investor class has accomplished since the Reagan administration has been a betrayal of the working classes. I don’t believe the investor class actually wants to hurt working class people. All they want is even more money and even more control over what happens to the country. They simply don’t seem to care much about what happens to us. If the working classes happen to get hurt, that’s not much of a concern to them. 

For a current example, witness the Carrier Corporation’s just-announced decision to move 1,400 air conditioning, refrigeration and ventilation unit manufacturing jobs from its factory in Indianapolis to Mexico. United Technologies Electronic Controls, another Indiana company, also recently announced plans to ship 700 jobs to Mexico by 2018. Both Carrier and UT Electronic Controls are divisions of United Technologies, a Connecticut-based corporation.

When the workers were told by a corporate representative about the move, he said the decision was necessary to “stay competitive and protect the business for the long term.”

“Protecting the business” really means protecting the people who own the business, so they can get the most value out of their ownership of the company. Investors such as Carl Icahn, who are already fantastically rich, live their lives trying to wring the most shareholder value out of any given company. That is their sole criterion for success. 

Who gets that shareholder value? Mostly large investors do, with a few crumbs left for the millions who have mutual funds from IRAs, 401(k)s or retirement funds.