Requiem for the American Dream Page #5

was reconstructed

with a very explicit

design of putting

working people

in competition with one

another all over the world.

And what it's lead to

is a reduction in the share of income

on the part of working people.

It's been particularly striking

in the United States,

but it's happening worldwide.

It means that an American

worker's in competition

with the super-exploited

worker in China.

Meanwhile, highly paid

professionals are protected.

They're not placed

in competition with the rest

of the world. Far from it.

And, of course,

the capital is free to move.

Workers aren't free to move,

labor can't move, but capital can.

Well, again, going back

to the classics like Adam Smith,

as he pointed out,

free circulation of labor

is the foundation of

any free trade system,

but workers are pretty much stuck.

The wealthy and the privileged

are protected,

so you get obvious consequences.

And they're recognized

and, in fact, praised.

Policy is designed

to increase insecurity.

Alan Greenspan. When he testified to congress,

(Alan Greenspan Chairman of the Federal Reserve

from 1987 to 2006)

he explained his success

in running the economy

as based on what he called,

"greater worker insecurity."

A typical restraint on

compensation increases has been

evident for a few years now,

but as I outlined in some detail

in testimony last month,

I believe that job insecurity

has played the dominant role.

Keep workers insecure,

they're going to be under control.

They are not going to ask for,

say, decent wages...

Or decent working conditions...

Or the opportunity of free

association, meaning unionize.

Now, for the masters

of mankind, that's fine.

They make their profits.

But for the population,

it's devastating.

These two processes,

financialization and off-shoring

are part of what lead

to the vicious cycle

of concentration of wealth

and concentration of power.

I'm Noam Chomsky

and I'm on the faculty at MIT,

(Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

and I've been getting more

and more heavily involved in

anti-war activities

for the last few years.

Noam Chomsky has made

two international reputations.

The widest is as one of the

national leaders of American

resistance to the Vietnam war.

The deepest is as a professor

of linguistics,

who, before he was 40 years old,

had transformed the nature

of his subject.

You are identified with the new left,

whatever that is.

You certainly have been an activist

as well as a writer.

Professor Noam Chomsky...

Is listed in anybody's catalog

as among the half-dozen top

heroes of the new left.

The standing he achieved

by adopting over the past

two or three years

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