[Cringing Negativism Network]

I am arguing in favor of bringing back American jobs.

How we do that is certainly up to everyone, but we have sold out American businesses.

In the meanwhile we have racked up $17 TRILLION DEBT, and growing. Debt.

Debt. American debt.

We need to make things right here.

Bring back American jobs. Now.

[nathanbedford]

You are quite right in your analysis and in your remedies.

One caveat, the hollowing out of American manufacturing and many American industries which we might define as "service" industries has proceeded much as Obamacare proceeds, as a method of wealth transfer on a massive scale. What we are doing is impoverishing some parts of America, primarily blue-collar skilled workers by shipping their high paid, value-added jobs to places like China and increasingly to India, while we enrich the stakeholders in multinational companies. They profit because they pay lower wages and receive tax advantages for sending jobs overseas.

Meanwhile, the Fed pumps hundreds of billions into the economy which finds its way primarily into the stock market and inflates the value of the stock held by these stakeholders at a rate faster certainly than inflation.

The impoverished workers do receive cheaper goods from China through Walmart etc. but the game has long played out and is now only being sustained by the Fed and by the fact that the dollar is still the world's reserve currency. That too is coming to an end.

There are, of course, countervailing benefits coming from increased world trade but they are outweighed by the disadvantages America faces in its higher costs due to higher wages, regulations, especially environmental regulations, and it's disincentivized tax system. Our recent experiments with crony capitalism and the extension of the military-industrial complex into the whole of the American economy means that, increasingly, our resources and assets are being diverted into politically correct enterprises rather than those which bring wealth home from a mercantile world.

[1010RD]

I am arguing in favor of bringing back American jobs.

But, you don't state how. I'm looking for areas of agreement here. If you're talking about lowering the regulatory gauntlet and returning America to the pre-Jones & Laughlin Steel, pre-Darby, and pre-Wickard era of Commerce Clause jurisprudence, then I'm with you.

If you're talking about corporatism and crony capitalism via trade restrictions, I'm not.

How we do that is certainly up to everyone, but we have sold out American businesses.

You give me a little hope here, but "up to everyone" sounds like majority rule, not individual liberty. We got where we are by observing majority rule. I like liberty, individual liberty and as much of it as we can get.

In the meanwhile we have racked up $17 TRILLION DEBT, and growing. Debt. Debt. American debt.

I'll lump these statements all together for ease. You're right. Our debt is ours and came to us via majority rule and, in part, by allowing the government to expand on the Commerce Clause, making it an instrument of tyranny. This problem is uniquely American and is a spending, not a free trade problem.

We need to make things right here.

What things? Why things?

Bring back American jobs. Now.

Again this vague platitude carries no meaning. Define: American jobs, "now" and how you will do this. Jingoism isn't thoughtful.

[Lexinom]

From a national sovereignty standpoint I agree with you.

Practically, we have Chinese assembling electronics for pennies on the dollar compared to what an American worker would need to make as a sustainable wage.

We have moms Christmas shopping at Wal-Mart whose only concern is buying the next gadget for their kids, gadgets that might last 1-2 years before being tossed into the landfills. Country of origin is the furthest thing from their thoughts.

We could argue "Patriotism!" but are inevitably met with the stark reality that the America of today commands neither the respect nor passion of the America settled by Puritans and later fought and bled over by true patriots centuries ago.

Compound all of the foregoing with the fact that peoples' mean application of logic lacks the rigor it once did, owing in large part to obessive preoccupation with the very gadgets in question.