Posted on 09/05/2011 9:49:48 PM PDT by Bratch
Once, it was a Labor Day tradition for Democrats to go to Cadillac Square in Detroit to launch their campaigns in that forge and furnace of American democracy, the greatest industrial center on earth.
Democrats may still honor the tradition. But Detroit is not what she was, not remotely. And neither is America.
Not so long ago, we made all the shoes and clothes we wore, the motorcycles and cars we drove, the radios we listened to, the TV sets we watched, the home and office calculators and computers we used.
No more. Much of what we buy is no longer made by American workers, but by Japanese, Chinese, other Asians, Canadians and Europeans.
"Why don't we make things here anymore?" is the wail.
Answer: We don't make things here anymore because it is cheaper to make them abroad and ship them back.
With an economy of $14 trillion, we may still be the best market in the world to sell into. But we are also among the most expensive markets in the world in which to produce.
Why is that? Again, the answer is simple.
U.S. wages are higher than they are almost anywhere else. Our health, safety and environmental laws are among the most stringent. Our affirmative action demands are the most exacting, except possibly for those of Malaysia and South Africa.
Does the cost of production here in America alone explain the decline in manufacturing and stagnation of workers' wages?
No. For since the Revolution, America has had a standard of living that has been the envy of the world. From the Civil War through the 1920s, as we became the greatest manufacturing power the world had ever seen, our workers enjoyed pay and benefits that were unmatched anywhere.
Yet our exports in those decades were double our imports, and our trade surpluses annually added 4 percent to the gross national product. How did we do it?
We taxed the products of foreign factories and workers and used the revenue to finance the government. We imposed tariffs of up to 40 percent on foreign goods entering our market and used the tariff money to keep taxes low in the United States.
We made foreigners pay a price to get their products into our market and made them pay to help finance our government. We put our own country and people first.
For corporate America, especially industrial America, this was nirvana. They had exclusive free access to our market, and foreign rivals had to pay a stiff fee, a tariff, to get their products in and try to compete with U.S. products in the U.S. market.
What happened to this idea that made America a self-sufficient republic, producing almost all it consumed, a nation that could stay out of the world wars as long as she wished and crush the greatest powers in Europe and Asia in less than four years after she went in?
A new class came to power that looked on tariffs as xenophobic, on economic patriotism as atavistic and on national sovereignty as an antique idea in the new world order it envisioned.
By 1976, editorial writers were talking about a new declaration of interdependence to replace Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, which was now outdated.
The new idea was to replicate America on a global scale, to throw open the borders of all nations as the borders of the 50 states were open, to abolish all tariffs and trade barriers, and to welcome the free flow of goods and people across all frontiers, thereby creating the One World that statesmen such as Woodrow Wilson and Wendell Willkie had envisioned.
By three decades ago, this globalist ideology had captured both national parties, a product of universities dominated by New Dealers.
But why did corporate America, with its privileged access to the greatest market on earth, go along with sharing that market with its manufacturing rivals from all over the world?
The answer lies in the trade-off corporate America got.
Already established in the U.S. market, corporate America could risk sharing that market if, in return, it could shift its own production out of the United States to countries where the wages were low and regulations were light.
Corporate America could there produce for a fraction of what it cost to produce here. Then these same corporations could ship their foreign-made products back to the USA and pocket the difference in the cost of production. Corporate stock prices would soar, as would corporate salaries -- and dividends, to make shareholders happy and supportive of a corporate policy of moving out of the USA.
Under globalization, America's investor class could and did get rich by the abandonment of America's working class.
America is in a terminal industrial decline because the interests of corporate America now clash directly with the interests of working America -- and, indeed, with the national interest of the United States.
And both parties are either oblivious to or indifferent of what is happening to their country.
As we speak the EU is falling down. Some argue for a United States of Europe, without sovereignty.
Countries can't prosper when their Gov't doesn't look after its own populace.
The WSJ chants of 'there shall be open borders' wont win any acclaim on FR.
Free trade is for chumps and losers. China does just fine with tariffs and barriers to entry. So does Japan, Taiwan and Korea. Tariffs have worked out great for America in our past and we can do it again.
C++ ? C++ ? It was eclipsed by Java, and Java is ancient history. It’s all apps now. Who programs? What do they program in? I don’t even know!
I mean, what was “Angry Birds” programmed in? Tell me it was C++ ! Ha, could be for all I know.
“Yes, the late Edsger Dijkstra (goto is evil) was a teasip.”
And despite his work in computer science, Dijkstra didn’t actually use one until a few years before his death, and only for a few basic tasks like e-mail.
Losers will always exist, and we need people to flip burgers and work at Big-O tires too. But one should not design the working population around loser jobs. We need to emphasize high talent, high IP skills.
A lot of scripting languages are used for rapid development (FR uses a lot of Perl). Much of of the web runs on PHP and JavaScript as well as variants of those.
Still those high-level languages have to be written in something and that something is often C++ or even C. The operating systems themselves are written in some combination of C, C++ and assembly for the hardware-specific code.
It follows that factory work nowadays requires more technical skill than in olden times. Same with the military. You need at least a GED to serve in the US armed forces now. It’s not like the Civil War where you take the boy off the farm and hand him a musket.
Not everybody should be a software engineer or an executive. We have a tremendous shortage of CNC operators, plumbers, electricians and other journeymen - - the schools could help if they would wake up to the need.
They don’t need to put down their wrenches and shovels, they need to turn off their TV.
Stir in overzealous government regulation and you strangle the most fundamental aspect of the economy - actual production of physical goods.
The mantra here in the UK is that now we are a "service economy." Servicing who or what is never stated, but it is certainly not myself, my neighbors or my friends. None of us have money!
The core economic value of a country is what it physically produces, and the production value per capita. Did you know, for example, that the UK (yeah, I live here, so I use it as an example) cannot actually feed itself any more? What sort of country outsources food production? That is just begging to be held hostage by any Tom Dick or Harry who fancies it. And why? Because the bottom line for supermarkets, and their shareholders is an ever increaasing share price and profit.
Any monkey can get a GED. And with the level of factory automation today, any monkey can press a button to keep the production lots moving. Ergo, factory work (of almost any kind) will continue to pay low, as it should.
I respectfully disagree. All need to aim high. Not all can reach it, but one must try. Unfortunately, today, American boys want to be jocks, and girls want to be sluts. We are raising a generations of arrogant ignoramuses.
I think we can start by de-emphasizing useless majors like Womens Studies, AA Studies, and Communications.
“I respectfully disagree. All need to aim high. Not all can reach it, but one must try.”
And if you don’t, you still need to do something productive and not become a welfare leech.
“I think we can start by de-emphasizing useless majors like Womens Studies, AA Studies, and Communications.”
101%
As always, Buchanan nails the truth.
The average IQ in Mexico is only 90. And it's not the higher part of the bell curve that is walking across the border.
The average IQ of the single women (girls, in many cases) whom the government pays to go to nightclubs and get pregnant by various men is at the lowest rung of a very low scale.
These are growth segments of our population. They are not going to be software engineers.
Yeah, America is on the verge of a Depression ... GO FREE TRADE!
Yep.
Funny how everything in Wal-Mart is made in China, Japan, Guatemala or some place like that. But don’t worry, Wall Street has invented “credit default swaps” and “sub-prime mortgages,” the financial instruments of the future!
The welfare class are the people who should be doing those jobs, but aren’t because they have no motivation to.
We're surrounded by sellouts and traitors right here in America, who could care less about Americans or our country. Profits regardless of consequences.
I disagree.
(1) The currency of tomorrow ... like the currency of the Western Roman Empire in the sixth century ... is brute force.
(2) How many people work for YouTube, Facebook, Google, etc?
(3) There isn’t going to be a globalized economy 10 to 20 years from now. Just because globalization has been a fad since the demise of the USSR doesn’t mean it is something that will go on forever.
(4) Yes, these companies have hired plenty of foreigners and lobby Congress to bring in ever more foreigners. So what?
(5) This problem will correct itself within the next twenty years ... the zero sum economy, the post-growth economy, the brute force world ... which we recently saw on display in Britain.
Tariffs are a tax, and their effect on an economy has to be seen in light of total taxation. There is a tax rate at which income of government is optimized (Laffer curve peak). Assuming the tax rate to be optimal now (which it may not be, but for sake of argument suppose it is) then one could push tariffs up if in compensation one pushed other taxes down, and end up with no net impact on the economy.
There is something to be said for national self sufficiency helping national security.
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