{"id":177140,"date":"2019-12-13T20:10:00","date_gmt":"2019-12-14T01:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/12\/13\/if-this-isnt-a-sign-of-empire-collapse\/"},"modified":"2019-12-13T20:10:00","modified_gmt":"2019-12-14T01:10:00","slug":"if-this-isnt-a-sign-of-empire-collapse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/12\/13\/if-this-isnt-a-sign-of-empire-collapse\/","title":{"rendered":"If This Isn&#8217;t a Sign of Empire Collapse\u2026\u2026\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>It turns out that <a href=\"https:\/\/boingboing.net\/2019\/12\/09\/leeched.html\">one of America&#8217;s largest exports is our own blood<\/a>.<\/div>\n<p>We are quite literally selling ourselves, and it is horrifying:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">America is one of the only developed countries in the world that pays people to donate blood, much of it sold abroad (70% of the world&#8217;s plasma is of US origin), and as commercial blood donations have soared, blood now accounts for 2% of the country&#8217;s exports &#8212; more than corn or soya. <\/p>\n<p> There&#8217;s more growth ahead for blood products, expected to &#8220;grow radiantly&#8221; according to an analyst who was cheering 13% growth between 2016-17. <\/p>\n<p> One study found that the typical blood-seller derives a third of their income from selling blood. Princeton&#8217;s Kathryn Edin called the commercial blood industry &#8220;the lifeblood of the $2 a day poor.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p> Mintpress&#8217;s interviews with blood-sellers reveal &#8220;a mix of disabled, working poor, homeless, single parents, and college students,&#8221; who describe a system of arbitrary and predatory payments, which fluxuate wildly from day to day. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The horror.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It turns out that one of America&#8217;s largest exports is our own blood. We are quite literally selling ourselves, and it is horrifying: America is one of the only developed countries in the world that pays people to donate blood, much of it sold abroad (70% of the world&#8217;s plasma is of US origin), and &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[392,364,444,460],"class_list":["post-177140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-economy","tag-evil","tag-international-finance","tag-public-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177140"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177140\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}