Am I wrong?
BTTT!!
Vote Trump.
The loss of our manufacturing base is also a huge national security problem. In both world wars, many manufacturing plants that turned out civilian products were converted to the manufacturing of military products. When you need weapons and ammunition quickly, there’s no time to build a manufacturing plant from the ground up.
Additionally, there is evidence that the Chinese have installed backdoors on military microchips they sell to us.
The question isn’t the number of jobs, but how well-paying are jobs. As you know the official unemployment rate is low, and there are real shortages in the labor force. Also, we as a county are addicted to debt and this has implications for our trade deficit.
The twin deficit connection: By not saving and relying on borrowing from foreigners to finance our spending, we necessarily run a balance of trade deficit. Therefore, balancing the federal budget and otherwise strengthening the national saving rate are the only ways, in the long-run, to fix the problem of our trade deficit.
Regarding increasing the number of high-paying jobs, on the supply side, we need to restore the incentive to work to people in the low to middle class through tax and welfare reform, re-orient education away from college degrees that aren’t marketable toward vocation skills, and end social promotion and insist on self-discipline as well as high academic standards in school.
On the demand side, we need to replace Obamacare with health insurance that is actually affordable, ease up on the regulatory burden on business, promote development of our natural resources, and rationalize business taxation (tax reform appears on both the supply and demand side).
If we do these things, the economy will grow by about $2 trillion (equal to the gap between the current GDP and what GDP would be if projected by its trend prior to 2008). This is a huge amount of money, equal not just to more jobs, but to more full-time jobs with benefits and pay increases. Even more, it means that a worker’s job security is independent of the fortunes of the particular company at which he works. This kind of increase in GDP would enable us to balance the federal budget and secure S.S. and Medicare into the indefinite future. Instead of people being so worried about the future, they could look forward to a future with confidence.
This country is in danger of losing its faith in itself. Fear and not merely anger is out there. We must be brave as well as free.
so when will trump have all his products made in America?? when he does then he’ll be taken seriously on trade.
countries where trump products are outsourced to-
china
japan
hondoras
brazil
italy
norway
germany
In fact trump supported outsourcing
“We hear terrible things about outsourcing jobs — how sending work outside of our companies is contributing to the demise of American businesses,” wrote Trump. “But in this instance I have to take the unpopular stance that it is not always a terrible thing.”
“I understand that outsourcing means that employees lose jobs,” continued Trump. “Because work is often outsourced to other countries, it means Americans lose jobs. In other cases, nonunion employees get the work. Losing jobs is never a good thing, but we have to look at the bigger picture.”
What free trade?
I said this in another article earlier, but if Trump doesn’t get the nomination I’ll write him in.
Let the MSM try to explain why Trump got so many write-in votes. If he doesn’t get it, this country is done. Hell it may already be too late, but at least I and others can make a statement.
Trump 2016.
Yes, I think it will spiral out of control, and I think we are in a bubble right now which hasn’t popped due only to uncertainty in the rest of the world.
I think we can still save ourselves from this vicious cycle.
NAFTA
The number one issue which will make America great is bringing back manufacturing jobs. Who prefers to make minimum wage and work time and buy cheap stuff at Walmart over making $40+/hour and buy American made goods? Only fools and financially challenged.
Free trade is great when it is also fair trade. There is no free trade if you try to sell high tech machinery to Japan & China. The barriers are 100 times worse than their high tech goods flooding into US markets.
In my humble opinion, there is no one better experienced and qualified to re-negotiate trade deals than Trump.
Isolationism for 3 years concept to regroup, recover, repair and respond to threats that got us here, both foreign and domestic.
Where does the cash come from ?
Fines to businesses that employ any illegal or foreign national who’s work visa has expired. Sugar Ant theory, clean up employment laws and illegals go home, to prison or worse when they turn to violent crimes against a armed citizenry .
Stop foreign aid to all nations who are proven enemies or sponsor terrorism.
Jobs for repairing, roads, railways, sea ports, airports, utility projects.
350 new thorium type reactors for power production, 1 per million population.
Overhaul and modernize the DOD.
Abolish the EPA.
Criminal justice system overhauled with 50 new supermax prisons, no parole,
constitutional carry for adult citizens, speedy trial / sentence. Death penalty executed within one year of last appeal. Work release for non violent prisoners.
National right to work, bye to union choke holds on manufacturers. Federal employee protection laws to prevent employers from abusing employees.
Department of education abolished, return control back to each state.
Agriculture , ranching, fisheries, food processing
Water conservation, distribution, desalination, treatment, storage etc
Reduction In Force (RIF) all government civilian jobs by 50%.
Just a few ideas I would think would make this nation a little better.... my opinions only.
Stay Safe !
Cruz has solid plans for bringing back manufacturing:
1. The Cruz tax plan is unique because of how it taxes business who engage in imports. That means manufacturing has powerful incentives for being within the United States. This is far better than protectionism or tariffs that hurt the consumer and lead to trade wars— that further hurt our manufacturing.
2. A solid energy plan like Cruz’s is key. Energy is a key cost for manufacturers. Texas is leading the way to more manufacturing by way of cheap energy. Our fracking innovations have made natural gas cheaper than ever. This creates industry here at home and makes energy costs lower than China. That attracts manufacturing.
States like Texas prove that we can restore manufacturing to America.
Other nations cannot compete with out innovation. Beating the Federal government in the courts on EPA actions kept Texas free and strong.
America is the most productive and therefore cost effective place on earth to do business. Would America aggressively engage in real actual genuine free trade, that is trade without the government regulations and regulators and without business taxes, the economy would be so much better than the rest of the world that all large businesses would be striving to locate HERE and to employ Americans.
Amen, Amen and Amen!
The principle of free trade is absolutely solid. Competition is one of if not the most important elements of capitalism. Just look at free trade between the states for example. If Pennsylvania was the leader in producing toasters, but suddenly New York figured out how to make toasters cheaper and better, free trade between the states will mean Pennsylvania will face closed factories and job losses in the short term. If Pennsylvania reacted to this by putting a big tax on toasters made outside the state, then New York would retaliate by doing the same with other Pennsylvania goods and Pennsylvania would retaliate again with more tariffs. Suddenly both states’ citizens have less choice on what they can buy and their businesses are unnaturally protected from having to compete with each other.
As barriers are put up, each state also loses the chance to take advantage of unique talents or natural resources that another state might have that they don’t. These principles apply between countries just as they do between states. Every invention starts in only ONE place. If we don’t have the opportunity to trade with the place that makes the invention, we’re deprived of something that might help our lives.
In our system, the states also have to compete with each other in the regulatory and tax atmosphere. Free trade within the states means states have to keep the atmosphere for business friendly there or that business might close down and move to another state. Greater international trade means we also have an incentive to de-regulate business here as well as another argument to make to stop NEW “carbon” taxes and other regulations from being passed that would make us less competitive with other countries. The argument is always made that China and India aren’t subject to the same penalties in some of these climate change schemes that we are, and that’s a very effective argument.
Barriers to trade bring back memories of the Soviet Iron Curtain that built walls to keep its citizens trapped inside. Freedom doesn’t mean adding in more rules and more opportunities for the government to tax and punish you for things that aren’t even biblical sins. We don’t want a government trying to control the free exchange of goods and services or picking winners and losers in businesses.
The example above about Pennsylvania and New York does show that free trade itself creates winners and losers. Increased competition means some once successful companies will fail. But this is the dynamic nature of capitalism. Companies fail all the time because of basic supply and demand. Jobs are lost all the time because of things like technological advancement. Ultimately, the fundamental purpose of capitalism is to provide people with the goods and services they desire. Jobs are a side-effect of capitalism but not its purpose or goal.
Yet, jobs are something that any functioning economy will always create. It’s not in the nature of human beings to be satisfied with what they have. We used to have 3 TV channels, now we have hundreds plus home video. People will always want more. That desire for more will come in many forms. To get something that doesn’t currently exist requires people be employed to create it. Just think of how you run a household. If someone used to do a chore that you then bought a machine to do instead, you don’t let that person sit on their butt all day. You find something else for them to do to make your home better in some other way.
That does, of course, beg the question of why there is any unemployment. First of all, the labor participation rate that candidates and pundits often mention is a number that has very little analysis out there unpacking it. Some of it comes from a greater number of older retirees and from younger people staying in school longer. Some comes from stay-at-home moms who don’t want or need to work. It’s not clear to me that unemployment is at a crisis level. I think we can perhaps all agree that if a factory closes down for any reason, but everyone working there is able to quickly find jobs that are equivalent elsewhere, then nothing bad happened for the economy.
Obviously, there is always a transition period after some jobs go away before those people can find work again. This is something that we should be prepared to deal with WHENEVER it happens, not just when it happens due to offshoring or imports undercutting a domestic company’s prices.
Our welfare system is broken. People being allowed to park on welfare means that labor is less available and costs more. This only gives more incentives for companies to offshore or beg for foreign labor to be imported. Welfare absolutely has to be made to require community service as a prerequisite for receiving it. Studies have shown that when this is tried, welfare use goes down dramatically because people refuse to do the work and don’t really need the welfare. They may realize that getting a real job will pay them more.
Our education system is also broken. Like any industry that’s socialized or subsidized, we get low quality at high prices. We absolutely need school choice to revolutionize our economy and create more innovators and entrepreneurs who will employ people in jobs we can’t even imagine now (outer space truckers?). Every public school needs to be privatized and every student should have the right to leave and go to the school of their choice. We also need student aid for college to be based on what jobs are actually in demand by businesses and not given out for vanity educations. Extra consideration for aid can be given to people who get laid off because an entire business or location closes down.
Whatever else you can say about our economy, most human beings possess a greater abundance of goods and services than they did 5, 10, 25 or 50 years ago. The cell phone is ubiquitous and performs an enormous amount of tasks that used to take many more products and much more effort to do. Even if people are making less money now or wages have been flat, that might be offset by how much more stuff they can buy for their dollar. Inflation is under control and we might even be getting more bang for our buck when all things are taken into account.
In terms of taxes and debt, I don’t think free trade is much of a driver of that. I think recent numbers have shown that our government is receiving record tax revenue. The economy is working well enough to deliver big tax revenue to the government. It’s the spending that’s the problem.
I would look at federal entitlement programs as the number one cause. Social Security by its very nature is constantly expanding to cover more and more people than it was ever intended to, including through the much-abused disability segment of it where young people are ripping off a program meant for the retired. Social Security is a Ponzi scheme that is headed to insolvency. The constantly expanding health care entitlements are of course another big problem.
Our military expenditures are also very high. Perhaps getting reimbursement from other countries for receiving our military protection can address that. South Korea is a booming economy now so they should be able to chip in something for having our military protection.
The last private industrialist who held the office of President was Herbert Hoover. The great engineer who gained his introduction into goverment service by serving under Wilson’s heading european food distribution program he set up after WWI. I believe both the Hoover Dam and the Goldengate bridge were instituted during his administration. But so were protectionest tariffs which Trump advocates. Even GWB tried to protect our steel manufacturing base employing the same tactic and was forced to recind those protectionist tariffs.
What we should be doing is protecting our intellectual base and refuse to permit goods and services developed here through the patent/copyright process which are superior which can be internationally in demand stay here to be manufactured here.That includes drugs, electronics, specialised manufactured products. In addition we have basic comodities iron, coal, oil gas, we could be selling halted by government EPA policies.
About Mr Trump. The conduct of this election as evidenced by those so called debates which were reduced to cage matches. Where discourse on the direction of where and how these candidates would lead US is completely absent .In fact if one asks Trump supporters exactly what Trump will do ? They could not tell you . Because he has not done so in any specific way .His use of this rhetoric gets any discourse on the issues to be avoided,and from even being approached. It is designed to lead into confrontation and get his name out there which it does unfortunately .
Ted the parrot
Thanks Boss,
I wrote this today for a FReep article. Keep your head up you old farts. I went from being a lead designer in three of the five divisions at Wright Patterson to being let go (2008) at 56 with the other older people at my company. I had just salvaged a multimillion dollar project for them too that wasn’t one of my projects. Nearly two and a half years later with no interviews I landed a temporary job physically catching diapers off the end of an experimental packaging line. The irony is I was a designer on one of the most advanced packaging lines ever in the 80’s. Walmart considered me for a “greeter” job at 60. We’re talking a guy here who designed a first generation hypersonic test chamber. I still rage. A young woman at P & G interviewed me for a contract job and she selected another person. A thank you letter to her for the interview kept me in mind and he only lasted four months, so I got my shot. Mr. machinist, photographer, statistician, product testing and evaluation, analysis and reports, testing machine improvements and lab work. When things were slow, I farmed myself out to other groups there, lol. Everyone there always asked me if there wasn’t anything I couldn’t do. I hope some HR types are reading this, just because we’re old don’t count us out.
To all here, would you prefer me to be a Walmart greeter or working on technologies to propel us to Mars and yes there’s not a whole lot I can’t do. This is all about us, our jobs, our children, our future. From a lead designer on national aerospace plane technologies to catching diapers, that’s where we’re at.