I don't agree with that assessment. Simply working harder won't accomplish a thing. Nothing. Nothing at all.
True one does have to work, but if we let the other football team have 15 players on the field then pretty much no matter how hard we work we are going to lose.
Work harder, work harder... always its work harder. That is not the solution.
Its about like comparing a ditch digger to a book reader. To the ditch digger the book reader is doing nothing.
But in the end, who gets paid more. When the ditch digger sees the other guy's paycheck he decides he'd better 'work harder'... He can dig sun up to sun down but he will never, never, never win until he fundamentally changes the way he thinks. When he finally realizes that digging ditches sucks then he's made more progress than all those years of 'hard work'.
Insessantly beating our heads against the wall with the system 'as is' is useless. That is exactly why the vast majority of the people in my age group don't give a dang about much of anything.
If other countries are going to compete via their government, I say we do the same thing. They put tarriffs on our products, I say we do the same to them. If they truly want to trade, lets get it on.
In heads up competition sure, we should work harder than everyone. But thats just it. Its not heads up competition.
Sitting around crying and begging someone to protect us from it because we are, after all, Americans serves no purpose whatever because it is FAR to late for that in any case.
Its never too late to stack the deck in our favor. We can have trade. Sure. But its time for hardball and the hardball must be done via the government because if you think other governments don't interfere with trade, you are full of crap. If they want heads up competition, fine. If not our government should interfere and punish them just as much as they seek to interfere against us.
We have to do whatever we must do for the short term as we are where we are but I never suggested that working harder in order to earn more money was a solution to anything! In fact, that is part of the problem rather than the solution! We DO need to work harder at properly supervising our employees in government. MUCH harder!
It has been said by others long before now much better than I can say it. Read the following and point out to me where these folks were wrong.
"When you become entitled to exercise the right of voting for public officers, let it be impressed upon your mind that God commands you to choose for rulers, 'just men who will rule in the fear of God. The preservation of government depends on the faithful discharge of this duty; if the citizens neglect their duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted; laws will be made, not for the public good so much as for selfish or local purposes; corrupt or incompetent men will be appointed to execute the laws; and the rights of the citizens will be violated or disregarded. If a republican government fails to secure public prosperity and happiness, it must be because the citizens neglect the divine commands, and elect bad men to make the administer the laws." Noah Webster, 1832
“It is the highest impertinence and presumption, therefore, in kings and ministers to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, and to restrain their expense. …They are themselves always, and without any exception, the greatest spendthrifts in society. Let them look well after their own expense, and they may safely trust private people with theirs."--Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations [1776]
And then there is this:
"A people may want a free government, but if, from insolence, or carelessness, or cowardice, or want of public spirit, they are unequal to the exertions necessary for preserving it; if they will not fight for it when it is directly attacked; if they can be deluded by the artifices used to cheat them out of it; if by monetary discouragement or temporary panic, or a fit of enthusiasm for an individual they can be induced to lay their liberties at the feet of even a great man, or trust him with powers which enable him to subvert their institutions; in all of these cases they are more or less unfit for liberty; and though it may be for their good to have had it even for a short time, they are unlikely to long enjoy it." - John Stuart Mill - Essay on Representative Government