Poverty plagues world

So, the poverty rate in America dropped to its lowest level in 21 years and the median household income rose to a record high, according to new Census Bureau data.

Meanwhile, the Third World continues its downward spiral into poverty and ruin. Could there be a connection between Third World strife and America's economic boom?

Check the tag on your Calvin Klien shirt or your Nike shoes. There's part of the connection.

While these and dozens of other multinational corporations rake in super-profits from exploiting workers in the Third World, the American working class also gets its payoff.

A seamstress in an Indonesian Nike-run sweatshop makes a bare-subsistence wage, which creates about $100 in wealth for Nike, which in turn pays some American employee maybe $10 an hour, or more, for sitting at some office desk, staring at a computer.

It's a simple formula.

Even if the American Nike employee earns minimum wage working for the company, he still comes out way ahead of his Third World colleague.

There are many times when we, as Americans sit around and curse our jobs. From fast food service and food delivery, to clerical work and construction labor, we cry about low wages and bad backs. But we have laws that protect us from being exploited by our employers. When our backs hurt, our employers sometimes pay the doctor to fix it.

We have clean roads, policing, reasonably safe water, a decent apartment, credit, safe foods at the easily reached grocery store, and the American employee is living like a king.

But, it's all on the backs of the real working class: workers in so-called developing nations.