He does, in the next sentence beyond your selection.
So for a while longer, we need the miner, the oil pumper, the farmer, the fabricator, the carpenter, the road-builder, the railroad guy, the cement layer, the chemist, the computer engineer — and the system that allows them all to create wealth unimpeded by government and in an environment in which the citizen who benefits from their labor appreciates their industry. [emphasis added]If you think VDH is going to come out of the protectionist closet and say, "the road to prosperity is for the the government to randomly make stuff more expensive," then you are projecting Pat Buchanan.
There is a great deal of sound and fury about government impeding industry, but the problem with that is those impediments have largely been in place for forty or fifty years. And corporate tax rates are actually lower than they were a few decades back, the top rate going from 52% to 35%%.
What’s changed is US markets have been opened to cheap labor nations for years so the place people now look for lower domestic costs is corporate taxes and regulation. But why not actually look at what’s happened to corporate taxes since the 1960s:
VDH neglects to discuss all the impediments he decries. There is no making up the advantage cheap labor nations have when their labor costs and labor overheads can be as little as 10%, or less, of what they are in the US.
Just to highlight the fact that VDH props his entire column up on that sweeping generality, an easy thing to do. But just what are the specifics that he would change to restore the competitiveness of the categories of worker he mentions?
He could have at least mentioned the obvious possibilities in increasing domestic oil and gas production, but he just gives us a big generality, maybe because he has no specific solutions.