Posted on 04/01/2016 12:14:48 PM PDT by central_va
In recent years the U.S. has been steadily traversing down a path of destruction. While many Americans have begun to open their eyes to America’s plight, most are still oblivious to the factors that led to our downfall. Recently, the media has been touting recovery, but there are numerous urgent changes that need to be implemented before the U.S. can even think that we are emerging from today’s recession/depression.
The New Depression
The economic decline in the United States began long before the official beginning of the recession in December 2007. The U.S. is not merely experiencing a “down cycle.” Very simply put, we are no longer producing wealth. Our balance-of trade deficit is constantly on the rise, Americans individually are living beyond their means and the government has followed suit. We are forced to live on imports and debt at every level as we no longer produce enough in our own factories to support ourselves. To make matters worse, we are losing over 20,000 jobs a day as our factories are closed, sold or bankrupted.
“Free Trade” is Destroying Us
The American media favors “free trade” almost unflinchingly, despite the fact that even a cursory overview of global economies shows that no nation is being more adversely affected by this practice than the U.S.
The U.S. is oppressed by the chains of “free trade” through treaties like the North America Free Trade Agreement, undemocratic and secretive trade regimes like the World Trade Organization and border tax inequities allowed by the WTO, such as the Value-Added Tax, which is utilized by 150 of America’s economic competitors.
(Excerpt) Read more at economyincrisis.org ...
Of the “evils” invested on our society, Free trade is far lower on the list that what this author proposes. What is driving American companies to use cheaper labor is the high tax rate on US companies.
It is simple math. Profit = Revenue - Costs. Cost includes cost of goods, costs of overhead, cost of TAXES and cost of Labor. In many companies, TAXES and Labor are both within the top 5 costs of the company. Since there is no alternative to paying taxes, the cost reduction has to come from labor.
So if the intent is to keep American companies American, then you need to lower the corporate tax rate. Lets talk about that first.
Or, you've been paying attention to the wrong sources, like ABCNNBCBS, NYT, WA COMPOST, LAT, public TV/radio, etc.
Breaks down to either bug or windshield.
The democrats and rinos want us to be the bugs.
President Trump !
I know he is a neo-conservative but he’s got a LOT to lose, otherwise he would not have bothered to run.
The other choices are too terrible to contemplate.
Make America great again. Please.
The more government, the more they “do” for us, the more our wages stay stagnent, the more the entire economy stay stagnent.
It really isn’t hard to figure out.
M A K E T H I S G O V I R A L
The Money Masters
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbEu-OLMKLQ
Predator Nation: Corporate Criminals, Political Corruption, and the Hijacking of America
http://www.amazon.com/Predator-Nation-Corporate-Criminals-Corruption-ebook/dp/B005DXOQMC
Debt Slavery
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKwO1onXAaI&list=RDbKwO1onXAaI#t=127
M A K E T H I S G O V I R A L
-- Mark Twain
In service companies of course but not in manufacturing.
“The WTO and NAFTA are choking U.S. companies out of business”.
Because, per the U.N. our high standard of living is not “Sustainable” and must be brought in line. The way they have sought to achieve that is with their Agenda 21/ Sustainable Development Plan. This is now become official U.S. Gov. policy. NAFTA actually cites “Promotion of Sustainable Development” as a Goal in the Preamble.
America’s economy will not recover and the re-distribution of our wealth will continue until all the Agenda 21/Sustainable Development policies are terminated. That’s the only way to “Make America Great Again”.
Our so called leaders (politicians) should be jailed for this monumental fiscal mismanagement. They should be jailed for conspiring to crush the middle class and for shifting the wealth of our economy to foreign countries.
This IS a national security issue and should be dealt with accordingly.
Preach it baby! We need Fair Trade. Vote Trump.
Currently, the islamist in the shi...I mean White House, and the US Congress.
That’s a pretty generic statement.
this is from the site’s “solutions” button linked page (it is not my opinion because I don’t know enough about it to have an opinion):
The United States is facing economic disaster on a scale few nations have ever experienced. Most people are unaware of the easily observable signs of this emerging crisis. While we persist in our superpower mentality, we have quietly become a second-class country in many respects.
We no longer manufacture what we need to sustain ourselves, we import much more than we export, and we are selling off our assets and taking on massive debts to sustain a standard of living we can no longer afford. Not only is this not the way America became a superpower but it is a sure way to lose this status.
We are failing even to acknowledge predatory foreign trade practices undermining US industry. Instead we encourage US manufacturers to design, engineer, and produce in third world markets like Mexico and China.
Reversing the Trend: Some Suggestions for Action
Access to our markets must be conditioned on a strategic analysis of our own national needs first and foremost. As things stand, we have handed our sovereign rights to our domestic markets to international bodies like the World Trade Organization and are committed to disastrous “one-way free trade” agreements such as NAFTA, CAFTA and KORUS. We are in a dramatically different position from emerging low-wage markets. They have everything to gain, and we have everything to lose. Our policies should carefully protect our wealth and resources rather than simply provide the lowest consumer cost regardless of the impact on our industries and our workers.
Promoting open markets and economic growth abroad will not alone rebalance America’s trade accounts and domestic industrial collapse. Our industries have been so disarmed and dismantled that we now lack the knowledge, capacity, and investment capital to facilitate self-sustaining production. Dramatic new direction is required.
Key Solutions
Drastic action is needed to restore our economic and financial independence and we must begin immediately to rebuild our industries. It is essential that our government should ensure that it is once again profitable to produce most goods and services in American factories employing American workers.
We must establish policies that prevent other countries from doing to us what they would never let us do to them. Specifically,
We must halt the sale of key assets to foreign entities.
We must also close opportunities for foreign corporations to compete unfairly against our home industries.
We should move immediately to curb our out-of-control spending on unnecessary programs and initiatives that are being financed by foreign debt.
We should look to the way other first world nations have established industrial superiority over us and try to copy their best policies.
We should not allow individuals and companies to profit by selling out the United States.
No plan to revive our economic and industrial self-sufficiency will be pain-free. Because our industrial decline has already gone so far – it has been proceeding rapidly for more than 30 years already – restoring our industry to world-leading standards of competitiveness will require serious restrictions on trade and investment flows. Despite indisputable evidence that current policies have proved grossly inadequate or even counterproductive in the past, our leaders remain committed to a business-as-usual strategy that is doomed to failure.
The stimulation for new policies must come directly from the broad American public. Voters must use all reasonable methods to pressure elected officials. Without direct and immediate action, there will soon be little left to save.
Defense
Our industries, assets, resources, and companies need to be protected from foreign countries and corporations seeking to gain control of key industrial processes and technologies. This would include preventing the sale of strategic US domestic companies to foreign companies and eliminating offshore outsourcing except in extreme circumstances.
Fair Trade
Our trade treaties should protect our country from predatory foreign countries and companies seeking to weaken or destroy American industry. To that end, tariffs should be erected where needed and where practical. Experience has shown that it is futile to expect other countries to adopt our policies on, for instance, fair and free competition.
What we can do is control the impact of their policies on our economy. The most obvious tool we have is tariffs on their exports. No doubt our tariffs would set off retaliation abroad. We would also have to accept that demand for US debt would decrease. But in the long run, these negatives would be much more than offset by positive effects as American entrepreneurs and industrial executives enjoyed a massive incentive to renew our industrial base.
Domestic Industry Competitiveness
In addition to establishing protection for our industry and country, we should properly align our companies with the national interest by changing the incentive system within which they operate. The tax structure should be changed to encourage industrial revival, particularly in industries which have been hit worst by unfair foreign competition. One simple but highly effective measure would be to shorten the depreciation schedules on capital investment and research spending. Meanwhile capital gains taxes should be increased to discourage short-term thinking and reduce the incentive for entrepreneurs to cash out.
Great post!
We need to be on parity with other countries on corporate tax, equivalents to tariffs, etc. Our labor is already more expensive, but we are educated better than China and other countries. We have a comparative advantage, but have lost our competitive advantage. Eliminate the corporate taxes, eliminate the cheap illegal labor and stop it with this extravagant government spending. Eliminate regulations. Do everything possible to allow us to be better than every other place on Earth.
What the Hell have we done to ourselves to let things get here? We have an EXCESS of STEM grads and they can’t find jobs. Other engineers have retired early or simply shifted jobs because they aren’t needed any more.
We are shipping our manufacturing to China and paying China to create. This leaves us with nothing but comparatively cheap imports.
We can’t stop the use of China, but we can get on parity and make our imports pay our taxes. Free trade does not mean not taxing trade, so bring up the tariffs and reduce the other taxes. Make other countries pay more of our taxes.
And make Europe and every other d@mn ally pay their own d@mn way on defense and the rest. But especially defense.
>>“Free Trade” is Destroying Us
The Crony Mercantilism that’s been inflicted upon us Oligarchic Collectivists has nothing to do with Free Trade.
>>Because govt. regulation and unions have made employing people a gigantic and costly pain.
11.1% of the labor force are represented by unions. In more than half of the country, the unions have very little bargaining power and really don’t pay much more than non-union jobs. The old “unions are driving jobs overseas” cliche is worn out. It was true 30 years ago to some extent (but we didn’t have so many ways to outsource back then).
Government regulation does add to the costs of doing business, but they add to every facet of doing business. And in foreign countries, there are certain costs associated with dealing with the governments too.
No, another poster was correct: they told us that if we let the rich get REALLY rich, then the wealth will trickle down to us. It did for a while, so the rich came up with new strategies. We call it the Cheap Labor Express.
1) Outsource manufacturing
2) Import cheap foreign labor for service jobs
3) Import/outsource tech labor
4) Devalue labor until Americans will work for foreign wages and voluntarily lower their standard of living.
5) If that doesn’t work, invent an environmental crisis to demand a lower standard of living for those who are laregly unaffected by #1-4.
I don’t care if the rich are rich. But a person really needs to bury their head in...ummm...the sand to not see what is happening here.
I was once pretty solid middle-class. I have been destroyed, especially since 2007-2008. But I saw the effects on the housing market a couple years before, right after Katrina.
Most Americans are not prepared for the major adjustment to their living conditions. Just a few missing paychecks, sometimes even one, and the bottom falls out.
Not at all. If I'm misguided tell me how. I want to know the truth.
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