I believe there are three basic reasons we are losing our design and manufacturing jobs to other countries:
(1) Americans have decided that we are absolute masters at planning, scheduling, shuffling, collating, and organizing. That’s why our colleges and universities are over-run with communication arts, journalism, travel and tourism, and business administration majors. The number of mechanical/civil/chemical/electrical/nuclear engineering, math, physics, and chemistry majors is a small percentage of what it was fifty years ago. And a large number of those who are sitting in those classes are non-Americans anyway. The number of young people attending vo-tech schools is also dropping, as are the number of apprentices in hands-on building and repair jobs. When it comes to designing, hammering, welding, drilling, forging, we’ve decided to leave that peon handwork to the lesser developed countries. We had our fill of that back in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Let the rest of the world get their hands dirty now. We’re above that. We’ve evolved to a higher plane that involves more cerebral pursuits.
(2) Our high standard of living, and the stranglehold that unions and socialist-oriented special interest groups have had on this country for decades, has caused our average hourly wages and benefits to far exceed reasonableness.
(3) The federal/state/local tax burdens that have been placed on American companies have contributed to the high cost of operating a business to the point where a significant portion of the cost of a finished product is money that has been extorted for payment to the government, simply for the privilege of doing business in America (a privilege to which many companies are now saying ‘Thanks, but no thanks’).
As I have already said too many times here, an industrialized society cannot continue to long exist – coincidental with liberty -- when it exports to other countries the design and manufacturing jobs for those nuts and bolts tangibles that it will one day rely upon for its very survival (and the double-edge swords lies in exporting them especially to other countries which are its political and ideological adversaries). It’s not only the jobs we are losing. It’s the physical source parts needed for our existence. To heat and cool our homes and businesses. To move ourselves and our lives’ necessities from one place to another. To build and maintain our infrastructure. To grow, harvest and preserve our food. To purify our water. To have access to the air, sea and land equipment and weaponry necessary to defend our shores. And to possess the wherewithal to repair and maintain all of the above.
If and when the madmen of the world believe they have the upper hand, a nation whose people are masters at scheduling, planning, paper shuffling, organizing, and collating, and who can’t design or manufacture their way out of a paper bag, isn’t going to keep those madmen at bay. It’s not only a serious matter of economics. It’s a matter of survival.
Yet, I strongly suspect that soon-to-be democrat presidential nominee Kerry is going to be running on an It’s the economy, stupid! theme, just as his equally disingenuous democrat predecessor (and his equally disingenuous democrat predecessor) did.
Anyone who believes that the three reasons listed above are indeed responsible for our loss of the jobs needed to maintain our strength and prosperity needs to ask himself, ‘Which ideology (socialist/democrat or less-government/conservative) was most responsible for the evolution of those three conditions?'
I also strongly suspect that candidate Kerry’s solution for our jobs/manufacturing losses will be more of the same programs/philosophies which caused the problems listed above: the continuation of the special interest/union strangleholds, the socialist/anti-capitalist disdain for the profit motive, and the knowledge that government can line its coffers, instill dependence on government, and redistribute wealth, by taxing the makers and producers.
So when the Kerry/Edwards ticket focuses most of its rhetoric on the economy, it will be in order to play on the guaranteed ignorance of the voting public. Because any American who isn’t aware that it has been the democrats' (same old, same old) policies that got us into this mess to begin with will no doubt fall for their empty promises yet again. And we’ll dig ourselves even deeper into the economic/national security hole. (What was it that we used to say as children? If we dug deep enough, we’d eventually reach China? ... Were we prophetic or what?)
~ joanie
>Bingo< (...here, have a ceegar.) {g}
Beautifully said, Mrs.f.
This scrawny Liberal-Socialist POTUS wannabe Ferry, IF successful, will make damned sure -- from the get-go -- not a single act of his administration will not have *something* attatched that'll effectively reinforce his ideological belief(s), in one way or another.
Not *one*.
The entire weight of our own government will be at his disposal, mobilized, & act on his behalf & to his end.
Just as bubba had so masterfully done in the beginning when he fired each & every fed prosecutor in the entire nation as an instrumental, fundemental, & critical step toward implementing his his social(ist) agenda which would necessitat trampling on the constitution even more than it'd ever been, before.
And *mysteriously* the one thing our present POTUS hasn't really done -- in any meaningful way -- for the conservative cause, out of fear of fill in the blank??
Effectively governing to me means knowing how to handle the power so your beliefs prevail above all others.
Of course -- admittedly -- I'm an oddball to embrace such crazy ideas, too.
"So when the Kerry/Edwards ticket focuses most of its rhetoric on the economy, it will be in order to play on the guaranteed ignorance of the voting public."
Yea, well today's ilk of flimflam artists used to have to work some if they expected to pull any *part* of their bullshit shenanagans; but, not anymore, joanie.
"Because any American who isn’t aware that it has been the democrats' (same old, same old) policies that got us into this mess to begin with will no doubt fall for their empty promises yet again."
*Any* American?
Should be a *landslide* this year, young Lady.
Only question is, will the landslide move up or downhill?
~eh?
Can't really say, can ya?
Well, neither can I.
"And we’ll dig ourselves even deeper into the economic/national security hole. (What was it that we used to say as children? If we dug deep enough, we’d eventually reach China?"
HA!!
In such rare form.
So true, to boot.
"...Were we prophetic or what?)"
Not a'tall prophetic, we were just rying to make a point by being silly.
So how'd we know?
...landslides could go uphill? ;^)