They teach them how to crave junk food, thrill to violent and pornographic programming, interact with the virtual reality mayhem. The marketeers are keenly aware of the stages of child psychologies, age by age, and know how to turn many into Pavlovian specimens powered by spasmodically shortened attention spans as they become ever more remote from their own family. Nothing much there for Buchanan to dispute. On the economy, Buchanan and Nader have been almost alone in pointing out how few benefits most Americans have derived from those spectacular economic growth rates and surging Dow Jones index that media hacks endlessly crow about. The minimum wage, he points out, is lower than it was in 1973.
American workers have to work longer hours to maintain their income levels.
The corporations are only concerned with shareholder value, which depends on ever-rising profits. They close down factories here and open them wherever there is cheap labor and no health, safety and environmental regulations to worry about. The corporations promote illegal immigration to drive down wages and increase their profit margins. Unfortunately, while Buchanan demands strong government when it comes to trade and immigration, he seems surprisingly content to leave almost everything else to the vagaries of the free market. As a result, Nader's description of the plight of working Americans often sounds far more trenchant.