[Murp]

No. Tax incentives to keep jobs at home, tort reform, elimination of punitive EPA regulations, and a general attitude that American workers are, in fact, the consumers of our products will unleash a revitalization of domestic manufacturing that will lead us out of this economic disaster. A country that sends its raw materials abroad and allows other countries to add value is by definition a third world country. We are rapidly, beyond belief, heading in this direction. The trade imbalance we face is punitive and if a tariff on the disparity of wages is necessary to level the playing field, go for it. I had rather pay $10.00 more for an American made shirt than continue to send the “value added” dollars to China. We need to get past Smoot-Hawley and remember what Henry Ford did. One morning he walked into his factory and DOUBLED his workers wages. Critics asked, “what in the world are you doing?” He replied, “I figured if I doubled their wages, they could buy more of my cars!!”

[sefarkas]

America has the largest economy in the world; approximately three-times the size of the new #2 announced this morning with great fan-fare. All the pronouncements about the imminent demise of America seem overwrought and repeated by doom-and-gloomers who have been wrong as long as I have been alive. Putting folks back to work and growing the economy will happen under the correct political leadership. Every generation seems to need a Jimmy Carter lesson. The means of putting folks back to work and growing the economy is well known — unleash the small and mid-size businesses, i.e., lower their taxes and mandates, void regulation that force business to create forms and reports no one understands even if they bother to read it at all. Taking business out of the tax collection roll would alone send the GDP figures soaring so that the Chinese will never catch us.