> Was this locksmith plying his trade free from the feds interference? Hardly. <
That is a very important point! I’m sure part of the company owner’s problem is the government - federal, state, and local. Everybody wants to tax the guy. Everybody wants to regulate the guy.
But this guy could not compete even if taxes and regulations were minimal. How could he? He has to pay his workers a living wage. Not because the government tells him to. It’s because he won’t find any skilled help for, say, $5 an hour.
But the Chinese can find plenty of skilled workers for $1 an hour. How is that free trade? It’s not, because the playing field is not level.
You fall short of the impact of how much government hinders American enterprises’ competitive edge.
First, the wrongly-labeled “Corporate Tax” which skyrockets the cost to do business in America and thus hurts our competitive edge. (”Corporate tax” is effectively an individual tax because consumers pay the tax through higher prices driven by higher costs.)
Next, the sheer size of the $4 trillion feds, at least 80% of which is unconstitutional, causes a relentless inflation making the dollar gradually worth less as time goes by.
If you got rid of all the government excesses and unconstitutional acts, prices would go down and the average America could live on much less than they live on now and this locksmith WOULD have the competitive edge against China. But even more than that, the average America would realize greater wealth because their money is not being siphoned off to useless government nonsense and waste.
BTW, a country that forces workers to live on less than livable wages will not last on the open market. May do it for awhile, but will at some point implode.
America needs to get her house cleaned up by getting rid of the HUGE unconstitutional portion of the $4 trillion federal government and its excesses. If you did that, your locksmith and American enterprise in general would experience a new birth of freedom and wealth that China would have difficulty competing with.
Let me tell you something else. America is not meant to win in every market. Some counties have greater natural resources and abilities to make some of the best stuff in the world in certain markets. We don’t want to everybody out of business. That doesn’t help anyone. We just need to get government out of the way so we can do the best we can in the industries and businesses we thrive in.
Open competition in the FREE market doesn’t hurt America, it helps America because the American consumer ALWAYS wins in the open competition of the marketplace free from government interference and American standard of living increases as a result.