How Can America Create Wealth If Our Industrial Base Is Destroyed?

The Economic Collapse ^ | 03/26/2011 | Michael Snyder

[bigbob]

I’ll give you some support, as this is not a popular view on FR.

This is nothing new - the theory of comparative advantage goes back to the early 1800s, when David Ricardo used trade between England and Portugal as an example. It was very hard to produce wine in England but fairly easy to make cloth. Both could be produced in Portugal, but it was better for Portugal to focus on making wine, and trade it’s excess wine for English-made cloth. Likewise, the theory is that we will be better off by allowing the Chinese to make our iPads while use create software applications that run on them.

One can argue that there is a role for government to help define and focus investment and innovation on key national priorities. This was the role played by MITI in Japan in the 1950s focusing that countrys energy on miniaturization, which led to industrial growth ranging from transistor radios (semiconductors) to cameras (video and optics).

It is hard to urn-ring the bell. Outsourcing non-core functions to a country or region with a comparative advantage is what good businesses are supposed to do. It may be possible to find a middle ground that aligns corporate profits and potential with public value, but the leadership of the last 40-50 years has not risen to that challenge. The last example was Kennedy’s “putting a man on the moon and returning him safel to earth”...think of the power a unifying national vision might have today. (And I don’t mean “green jobs”).

[Uncle Miltie]

"Why isn’t this one of the many main issues actively being attacked in Washington by the conservatives we voted in?"

In a way, it is. 0bamaCare and the Nanny State Spending are the main impediments to any sort of productive enterprise, manufacturing or otherwise. So, they are focused on the right thing: blow up the barricades of 0bamanomics!

[Uncle Miltie]

[Uncle Miltie]

[meadsjn]

David Ricardo was such an unprincipled corrupt scumbag, that his own father disowned him and his mother quit speaking to him. Cato pretends it was because he married a Catholic, but no mother would permanently shun her son unless he was a complete scumbag. And that Ricardo certainly was.

Ricardo took some of Adam Smith's theories, re-threaded them with corruption and graft, and managed to buy himself a seat in parliament, where he continued to infuse the British economy with corruption and graft -- to such an extent that Britain's economy was sucking hind tit throughout most of the 1800s, while the rest of the modern world was moving into the industrial age.

Cato Institute supplies all the economics propaganda (complete with an online matchbook certificate of achievement), and their disciples keep marching forth across cyberspace drooling their pablum.

[Uncle Miltie]

[Uncle Miltie]

[Uncle Miltie]

[RayChuang88]

In my humble opinion, the ONLY way to save America is simple: make it economically viable to host manufacturing companies in the USA.

That means we must do the following:

1) Overhaul our national taxation system so it encourages businesses to operate in the USA. This means going to the Steve Forbes flat income tax plan starting the current tax year and begin a process that will will starting the 2016 tax year end all income taxation in favor of a consumption tax like FairTax (H.R. 26/S. 13).

2) Overhaul our financial system far beyond what was done last year. This means re-imposing the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, banning certain types of high-risk investments, increase the minimum margin requirements for trading stock, index and commodity futures to at minimum 15%, and begin a ten-year process to phase out the Federal Reserve Note fiat currency in favor of a new US dollar backed by a combination of gold, silver, platinum, palladium, copper and nickel (the most common metals used to make bullion blocks and coins used in monetary exchange).

3) Drastically simplify all regulations so there is a single national standard.

4) Audit every government agency at the Federal, state and local level for any overlaps in oversight and size bloat and use the audit results to cut down the size of government 30% now, with a realistic goal of 55-60% in 4-5 years.

Impose these four changes and the US economy will come roaring back in no time flat.

[Uncle Miltie]

[Uncle Miltie]

Let's argue about 0bamanomics:

[SeekAndFind]

Hey Uncle Miltie, how’s life like on the other side? :)

[Uncle Miltie]

[Uncle Miltie]

[Uncle Miltie]

[Uncle Miltie]

I surely can’t defeat the intellectual force of that argument.

[Uncle Miltie]

“We thank you for your support!”

[Gaffer]

Only if you can find a bar of gold in a “Biggie Fry”.......

[Uncle Miltie]

Holding my own, thanks. Bring it. :-)

[Gandalf_The_Gray]

We can make stuff: Intellectual stuff.

Which is promptly hijacked by overseas competitors who cheerfully violate intellectual property rights with impunity.

Regards,
GtG