Panda

There is a limit as to how much a government can exploit the poor and give advantage to the rich in a democracy.

While maintaining a minority wealthy, educated, ruling/business class with a majority of low paid underclass of workers has proven to be a winning formula through out the ages (eg:ancient Romans, Egyptians right thru to USA and China today), the principles of majority rule in a democracy tend to counteract the excesses of the elite ruling class eventually at the ballot box.

USA has trimmed the majority worker class rights and benefits to the bone compared to other democracies in the developed world and that has (in the past now) made them more competitive and given them the edge re world trade.

But those days of USA as the worlds main producer and exporter of manufactured goods is gone now. No developed country can compete with countries like China and India where workers earn only a few $s a week and live in comparative poverty.

USA is maintaining their standard of living by living on debt now, and it cant last forever. Sooner or later the countries like China who are actually producing items of value to trade will stop accepting the $US paper money the US government keeps churning out to buy themselves deeper into debt. That time is not far away now. When the $US hegemony as the worlds premier trading currency collapses there will be a redistribution of wealth throughout the world. The $US will probably line up at about two thirds of its current value and that will be good for the US working class as it means they can again become competitive in some of the export markets. More jobs. More money going round in the internal economy and the government able to raise money through taxes rather than borrowing from places like China.

There is nothing Obama or anyone else can do to stop this adjustment in the world wide redistribution of wealth. It all comes down to productivity in the end. And America is spending far more than they can produce and sell as exports.