Posted on 01/02/2014 7:05:10 AM PST by SeekAndFind
A friend recently got stuck when he tried to explain to his son, who was struggling to find a job, how our economy got to be the way it is. He asked my help since I am a well-known crank on the matter. I offered him three short anecdotes:
Last summer I was in a Home Depot standing in front of a veritable mountain of new air conditioners. They were all from China, which was no surprise. But to be annoying I asked a passing clerk where they were made. He was a young man, hired more for the spring in his step than his knowledge of international sourcing. We both looked at the boxes, piled in a pyramid, eight levels high. The boxes didn't say anything about China. But they did say "Made in PRC."
"Are these from China?" I asked.
He paused a moment. "No, they're from Puerto Rico."
Or consider this example from last month: A textile factory in Italy caught fire and seven workers were killed. They were all imported Chinese nationals working for Chinese companies operating in Italy so they could put a "Made in Italy" label on their cloth.
A third example: The city of New York decreed a few years ago that each bedroom in the city must have a carbon monoxide detector. There are roughly 11 million bedrooms in New York City, so the law created a huge market.
Further, the devices have a life of five years, after which they must be replaced, so the continuing market was also guaranteed. A manufacturing enterprise could hardly find a surer customer base.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
The issue is not what we should do, the issue is HOW to do it.
Let's read your proposal instead of the same slogan
How should we do it?
Hire more Chinese to take those manufacturing jobs in America just like in Italy. It’s a win for America’s one percenters and a win for Americans!
The solution is very simple:
America needs to start bringing back American jobs.
For over an entire generation we have been exporting American jobs.
Constantly.
That must end. Bring back American jobs.
The solution is simple. Cut taxes and get government out of the way of business.
The American worker has always been more productive than other countries. Therefore if the tax and regulation situation is not too burdensome the employer can pay his workers more. Unfortunately the government has interfered so badly in the employment relationship that it is bad business to hire anyone (because you can’t really fire them).
Why expand a business if there is no financial reward to it? Government has stolen the financial incentive.
1)Get a different president
RE: America needs to start bringing back American jobs.
Please read Post #1 above.
This is very important, because I see the Chinese trying to do this here whether with Chinese nationals (there are several interesting Chinese "company towns" springing up) or illegal aliens.
http://www.policymic.com/articles/8603/china-to-build-cities-and-economic-zones-in-michigan-and-idaho
They are also buying distressed property in the USA maybe to make dormitories.
http://blogs.marketwatch.com/thetell/2013/03/22/wealthy-chinese-desperate-for-property-investments-turn-to-detroit/
The New York smoke detector should have had a made in the USA requirement.
Eliminate the minimum wage and virtually all “health and safety” regulations. Let the free market decide what a fair wage is and acceptable level of worker safety needs to be. Also, taxes should be slashed.
This is, of course, in and of itself a drastic violation of the free market and imposition on the personal freedom of each American who wants to do business with someone overseas.
OK, let us assume that conservative principles will allow us to support this, on the theory that it is necessary for a greater good. Lesser of two weevils and all.
What would be the unintended consequences of drastically restricting imports? Well, the first and most obvious would be a significant increase in cost of the goods everyone buys, most greatly impacting the lower end goods, in other words those most often purchased by those with less money. A true tax on the poor.
The increase in cost of goods would be significant. I'm not enough of an economist to determine how much, but I would suspect it would be in the vicinity of 20% or more at the least, for those items that are now imported.
This would equate to a cut in pay for all Americans. For some reason, people will sneer at lower prices, while nobody at all sneers at increased income.
As an interesting side note, some of those who support protective tariffs today are the same people who use the protective tariff of the 1860s to justify secession. Yet the protective tariffs of the 1800s was, in theory, put in place to protect American "infant industries" till they could compete with established European industries.
No such claim is made today. American consumers must provide corporate welfare forever to companies unable ever to compete in an international free market.
Do we really want to go down that road?
The managed-economy "solution" is to impose tariffs on imported goods that could as easily be made in the United States. However, that would be likely to trigger a trade war and the handful of American products that are exported would suffer. Such a practice also promotes second-rate quality in the American market by artificially protecting substandard work.
Another suggestion would be to discourage unions, and to keep pay in line with work performed. To pay someone $15 an hour to flip burgers is ludicrous. To give auto workers cradle-to-grave pensions is equally insane. Pass right-to-work laws in every state and outlaw closed-shop bargaining at the federal level.
Then get the government out of business. Lower marginal tax rates on companies that hire or expand their use of domestic workers. Eliminate draconian regulations that cost businesses millions of dollars in bureaucratic red tape and protect no one.
Then there's the matter of educating our work force so that they can actually compete with people who are willing to put in an 8-hour day for 8 hours' pay ...
OK then here is a simple solution:
(It is a serious proposal)
America needs import tariffs. We have exported far, far too much “American” industry to China.
This is a huge problem, because China has five times our population, and an average wage a fraction of our own.
America needs to bring back true American industry. How to do this?
I say, we need import tariffs.
After thinking long and hard on this subject however, the only way I can think of to introduce import tariffs such that they don’t become a tool of Democrats, is a universal import tariff on EVERYTHING imported to America.
Oil. Food. Manufactured goods. All of it.
One. Universal. Flat charge on everything imported.
We however need to get started. America is in danger.
Don’t allow China to become stronger than America. (which is happening right now)
America has never, ever faced a competitor in the globe of China’s potential power. A billion people, all of whom will work (quite hard)
That will be the end. Period.
I like China. Quite a bit in fact.
But China is a very real, increasingly immediate threat to America.
I like China.
But I support America first.
Ask yourself, why have the jobs left ?? Because it’s increasingly expensive and difficult to do even the SIMPLEST things in Nanny-state America. After you’ve paid far more than your fair share of taxes, you then get to shave your margin even more complying with the ever-multiplying regulations and mandates. . .
For starters, we should stop treating countries like China, who are clearly not equal trading partners, identically to allied countries which are.
But then, who would BO get to buy all our bonds to finance his growing deficits?
I have been working on doing that here in Buffalo.
http://MiniMaxConcrete.com
What America needs is entirely new industries. (See: fracking, which our government naturally is trying to destroy).
That will not happen on a large scale until we decide to: radically reform our tax code to stop destroying capital and punishing domestic investment; stop Federal subsidies for failing industries and for schools that teach hatred of American values rather than teach young people the skills required to grow and succeed; reverse the growth of the Federal government via central bank currency debasement and unchecked regulatory expansion, both of which drive businesses and capital overseas.
America can be a manufacturing power again, but not so much in the industries that have already departed as in entirely new, high-tech fields that are being crushed by Washington's mania for control and power lust, before they can ever get off the ground.
Without having to support the underclass in their lavish lifestyle, our economy would be booming.
If you want to bring America back, you have to make being in the underclass suck. It will encourage people to get out of the underclass, and will, of course, mean lower tax rates for the working classes.
The jobs left due to costs imposed by government regulations.
They will not come back unless those same regulations are rolled back.
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