You nailed it. They've got the citizens here mostly hoodwinked, too. "We need immigrants to do jobs you don't want to do." No, they need immigrants so they don't have to pay me to do jobs that my grandparents and great-grandparents did, and so there's a larger base of consumers on which to grow share prices via increased sales and debt contracts.

> except there is no left wing to speak of in the US.

I'd say this is true if you're talking about people with real authority, but among the populace there's a sizeable group of people who would support a communist re-establishment of the government.