When there are not enough good paying jobs for everybody, it
drives people to depend on the government for financial assistance. This is considered the compassionate thing to
do, a safety net, but the result of this is to increase the role of government
in the lives of everybody.
Throughout history, there have been essentially only two
forms of government: tyranny and freedom.
Most governments throughout history have been tyrannies. Life isn’t necessarily miserable under a
ruler, but our nation fought a war to get the kind of government and the
freedoms that we have.
When we think of tyrannies, we usually think of kings or
dictators where one person basically rules the country, but freedom can be lost
piece by piece as people gradually trade freedoms for security, prosperity for
a safety net, and responsibility for dependency.
When you have a massive government with an ever increasing
number of rules and laws, the will and the power to force compliance on more
and more things that were not issues in the past, when the government believes
it is responsible for the economy and is responsible for solving all the
problems of society, then your government is going from freedom to
tyranny. For many countries today,
freedom and tyranny exist together on a continuum with varying degrees of each.
Our nation is moving slowly from freedom to tyranny. Instead of being ruled by a king, we are
being ruled more and more by government officials who want to protect us from
ourselves and the evil around us, but are just as likely motivated by the power
and the money that comes with their position.
The issue of jobs is possibly the single most important
factor in preserving our freedoms, because when a person can no longer provide
for oneself or one’s family, they cry out for somebody to take care of
them. This causes the government to
grow, requiring more of your money and expanding the government’s reach into
every area of your life. The loss of
jobs reduces revenues to the government while at the same time creates pressure
on the government to grow, assume more responsibility, increase governmental
spending, and consequently government debt.
Our churches used to be the primary source of public charity
in our country, but the government has now become responsible for the welfare
of the people. The government is now the
protector and provider of the people.
The government has assumed responsibility for, and consequently the
control of, the economy.
So the economy is basically about freedom, but according to
Forbes[1],
more than half the people in our country now receive some form of government
aid. When this happens slowly and each
new generation is not taught what freedom is all about and each new generation
gets used to the increasing role of government in their lives, freedom is
traded for rulers who are now looked upon as our benefactors.
The loss of good jobs has also been a large factor in the
deterioration of our families and as a result the moral deterioration of our
country. Those who do work work more
jobs and more hours to try to provide for their families and more and more
parenting is done by day cares, and raising children becomes a lot like having
pets. Feed them twice a day, and see
that they don’t soil up the house. The
lack of good jobs takes parents out of the homes and children are raised too
often by people who have little or no vested interest in their lives.
Broken families lead to more crime, but it also contributes
to the moral breakdown of our country.
What I mean by moral breakdown is that there are a lot of things that
are wrong but not illegal. All kinds of
corruption, mean-spiritedness, unkindness, abuse, exploitation, indifference,
negligence, selfishness, hatred, anger, things that laws either don’t touch or
can’t fix, come from the breakdown of the family. Bringing American jobs back to our country
will do more than probably any other one thing to help our country
economically, but also in strengthening our country morally.
So why did we lose all these jobs? Labor has almost always been cheaper
overseas, but the jobs didn’t leave to get cheaper labor.
Our corporate taxes are among if not the
highest in the world, but the jobs didn’t leave because of high corporate
taxes. Corporate tax rates were raised
to help make up for all the money the government no longer was getting from
working people. We are told that we must
lower our corporate tax rates to bring jobs back to our country, but if that
isn’t why they left, it won’t make much difference in bringing them back.
The jobs left as we stopped taxing imports.
We have forgotten that taxes on imports paid for almost our
entire federal budget for most of our nation’s history. There was no federal income tax before 1913.
We are told that taxing imports will raise the prices that
consumers pay for those goods. Yes, but these
taxes used to be collected in lieu of income taxes, so income taxes should be
reduced accordingly.
We are told that Herbert Hoover raised taxes on imports as
the Great Depression was just starting, and that was responsible for prolonging
and intensifying it. But the Great
Depression lasted for another eight years or so under Franklin Delano Roosevelt
who raised all kinds of taxes and created all kinds of government programs, and
nobody thinks that had anything to do with prolonging the Depression?
Without taxes on imports, the jobs will stay overseas.
We are told that taxing imports will start trade wars, where
other nations will tax the goods we send to them, thus hurting our export
industry. But this wasn’t an issue for the 140 years
before we had an income tax, and this wasn’t an issue before we stopped taxing
imports and sent our jobs overseas
We are told that the world now has a global economy, that we have
to support a global economy, and that to resist it is economic suicide. By a global economy, they mean simply free
trade, no taxes on imported goods. They
use words like protectionism and nationalism to describe those who oppose this,
as though we are supposed to understand these words as obvious proofs of these
people’s folly.
But the problem is our own companies making our own products and
then sending them back to us. Foreign goods were always available in our country, and we
always paid a premium for them. But
these were actual foreign products, like Swiss chocolate and German watches,
not American companies making things somewhere else and then shipping those
products back here.
Our political leaders have forgotten our Constitution, which our
Founders fought a war in order to be able to establish it. Our government exists to promote the
general welfare of the people of the United States. It’s like when parents give everything they
have to their children. That doesn’t
mean that they hate or don’t care about the other children on the block. But they can only be responsible for those
that belong to them over whom they have some control or major influence. We cannot control the events, the people, and
the governments of other countries, so frankly they have to take care of
themselves, except perhaps in the case of a major natural disaster.
We are told that globalization is good for everybody because
everything is now cheaper. What they are
not telling us is that, with globalization, most people are making a lot less
money as a global labor market keeps driving wages downward. A global economy is like adding 3 billion people to the labor
force. There are always people who will
work for less somewhere in the world, and wages go down everywhere else to try
to compete with that.
Rich nations become poorer, and poor nations stay poor. The poor nations are not starting their own businesses;
they’re just relying on ours.
And,
besides, it is a very dangerous policy to build or base an economy on
exports. That means that our prosperity
depends first on the prosperity of other nations so that they can buy our
goods. Basing our economic health on a
global economy ties the economic health of all the nations together such that a
problem in one country affects all the others.
What this does is create a new normal of a sluggish world economy. Some major country is always experiencing
some kind of downturn or economic crisis.
This
ideal world of free trade also requires everybody to ‘play fair,’ nobody gaming
the system by manipulating their currencies.
So the experts want to build a global economic system that requires
nobody cheating for it to really work?
Seriously? You want to build a
system that every nation in the world is dependent on but that requires
everybody to follow all the rules? Can’t
be done unless you create a new world system where everybody is subject to a
new world government.
Quite
frankly, I think the motivation behind this is resentment for the United States
being so prosperous. At least it used to
be. Before the jobs went overseas, our
federal debt was minimal. Now it is
almost 20 trillion dollars and counting.
And, yes, the two are related, and we won’t fix the one without fixing
the other.
How
can we have a robust American economy when it is dependent on nations all over
the world having the money to buy our stuff first? We have 330 million people in our own
country. If that is not enough of a
market for a company to prosper, please don’t blame our trade policies.
Before
the jobs went overseas, we had plenty of jobs for everyone, good paying jobs,
and our nation prospered. When we
made all of our own stuff, the jobs grew as the population grew. Taxes on imports went away, and the jobs went away,
government debt skyrocketed, and wages stagnated. Now we don’t have enough jobs for all
the people who are living in our country, yet at the same time the government
keeps bringing millions more people into our country as well as allowing untold
numbers of people to just come in however they can.
We now
have record numbers of people on government assistance, which ends up lowering
the standard of living of everyone through government borrowing, inflation, and
higher taxes.
So how do we bring the jobs back to our country? Corporate tax rates are too high. But they are high only to make up for all the
loss of revenue from the loss of jobs.
The jobs didn’t leave because tax rates were too high, though more have
left since they were raised. The jobs
didn’t leave because labor was cheaper somewhere else. Labor has always been cheaper somewhere else.
The jobs left because we stopped taxing imports. And they will not come back until we do that
again. I should add that we have also
lost jobs due to the increase in government regulations.
The Presidential candidates all talk about the issue of jobs
in various ways, but this issue needs to have a national debate and reach some
kind of consensus. The reason is that
moving a company from one country to another is a major decision that can
involve billions of dollars. If one
President instituted a policy which the next President might want to reverse or
change, companies could be slow in doing anything differently because the cost
of changing could outweigh the cost of staying put.
Right now most opinions you will hear on this matter support
free trade. Much of that I believe is
due to do politically correct thinking that views taxing imports as the work of
greedy American companies who want to charge high prices free from the
challenges of competition or the outdated notion of putting American interests
above that of other countries.
But taxing imports again is the most important means for
bringing jobs back to the United States. I would suggest a blanket tax on every product
brought into this country. Let’s say
20%. We can calculate the projected
income from imports, though total imports should decrease a bit. The tax is paid by the company, and the
consumers will then pay them back as they buy their products. Income tax rates should then be lowered corresponding
to the projected income. As jobs come
back to our country, the revenue from taxed imports will decrease but more people
working at better jobs will reduce government spending and increase government revenues.
[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/merrillmatthews/2014/07/02/weve-crossed-the-tipping-point-most-americans-now-receive-government-benefits/#56676bea6233
