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
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 ...
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.
My brother is a small business owner & I used to be his office manager so I know the struggles of trying to keep a business afloat in these troubled times. Heap Obamacare on top of all the other rules, regs, and confiscation of profit via every method Congress can think up and you have the reason why China, etc. are doing all the manufacturing ... it just doesn’t pay to do it here in the US. Get government OUT of business as much as possible ... free market, free enterprise. The “will” is still there & America has lots of entrepreneurs with ideas, but the “way” has been taken away by an overbearing, intrusive, confiscatory, Big Brother/Nanny of a government. For jobs to COME BACK to America, Big Government needs to GO.
That's the constant refrain of a singular Freeper (who shall remain nameless).
I've talked to him until I'm blue in the face about HOW to bring jobs back to America, but he has little interest in effective solutions. He prefers to spam every job related thread with his slogans.
I hear your frustration and share it. “Bring the jobs back” is ‘moron-mantra’.
I get really, really frustrated hearing Lars Larson’s diatribe against tariffs to level the playing field, “free trade” & all and that it will all even out.
‘Splain that one to me...
Educate ourselves. Here’s a place to start:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage
Study Adam Smith and David Ricardo. Learn about wine-and-cloth until you can explain to others why it has always made sense and created greater wealth for a country, city, region, company, or individual to specialize in the good where it has comparative advantage, and trading that good for the other things that are needed. This is all that’s going on between the US and China at it’s heart.
An intelligent person will instantly see the oppportunity. Rather than bemoan the shifting of production to lower-cost regions, find ways to take advantage of it. Research the value chain to understand where the profit zones are, and talk with users and customers to understand what they need that is not being provided - that is where opportunity lies.
Examples are all around us. Take the iPhone for example. One option would be to bring iPhone production to the US where it would raise the manufacturing cost to the point where only an elite few could afford to buy one, and Apple could not sell enough to stay in business. Until the inevitable failure happened, it might create a few hundred or even a few thousand jobs.
Or, do what Apple did and take advantage of low-cost manufacturing in PRC and elsewhere to produce the best product at the lowest possible cost. Sell millions of them, and enable others to use their intellectual assets to create software and accessory products. How many jobs have been created as a result of the iPhone? How much wealth exists within the Apple ecosystem?
Comparative advantage is an integral part of free enterprise economies. It’s only when gov’t gets involved with its misguided and always failed attempts to “create jobs” that economies collapse and unemployment results.
Capitalism, works every time it’s tried.