Economics

I wanted to try out a rant on one of these things too; so here goes.

Our economy is made up of a variety of influences and forces, just like any other great system in the world. The problem is that we have allowed too many different people to influence our economy. We've sold ourselves out in the quest of higher profits. We outsource jobs to countries like China, India, Pakistan, and a variety of others. We have done this and left ourselves at a severe disadvantage. I highly doubt the Chinese would produce what we need if we were to enforce our political will on them. No one else would either, and so we've gone from a might production nation of the 1920's,30's, and 40's to a nation producing nothing but middle management and engineers. Our basic jobs in production no longer exist.

Somebody without a college education is truly screwed, but we encourage everyone to get a college education, making a Bachelor's degree a meaningless piece of paper, only a hair above an Associate's, which is really a minor. Now, to get a decent job you have to have a Master's or Doctorate degree. While this is happening people are complaining about the increase of cost that is forced by universities. This could be an entirely seperate rant.

We need to cut out this idea of outsourcing jobs by entire companies and fields of work. Nobody wanted to do call center work, it sucks, but at the same time, it was money to fuel our economy and now it fuels the Indian economy. I'm not trying to be racist, but if I'm calling across an ocean because the PC that was made in China that I ordered through an American company isn't working, I don't want to speak to an Indian guy, and I'd have preferred to have my PC made in America. Made in America. Decades ago, that phrase meant something, now it's a dream, it's a phrase we throw at various things that have nothing to do with American made goods. We would rather save a few bucks on a blender and fuel the Chinese economy than fuel our own. We're not even fueling an allies economy, but someone who's economic principals are directly contradictory to us. What happened to that sense of American pride? When did we decide that we should help the people who are against us? Isn't that why we stopped using Cuban goods? What about the Iraqi oil we turned away? These were countries who opposed us directly (until we took over Iraq), but now we're going to help them, and throw the Mighty American Dollar at them, which is hardly mighty anymore. It's one thing if we're fueling the British or Irish economies, or even the Israeli economies, these are nations that haven't hurt us. I shudder to think what would happen if Iran suddenly decided to drop their labor wages to a few cents an hour. When did it become okay to support countries who were behind us on Civil Rights issues? Not that we're the best, I think we were rated 7th in Civil Rights. I don't blame any particular manufacturing company for our problems. I will say that Wal-Mart certainly played a role in it though with there demand of cutting production costs, or they'd cut shelf space.

My solution for the economic problems are as follows: 1. Slowly increase the importation tax on goods coming in from China, India, Pakistan or any other nation, especially those that are against us when it comes to systems of government and/or Civil Rights. 2. Offer tax incentives to companies who want to open manufacturing plants in the United States; let's put the American worker back to work and pull our economy out of the gutter while we're at it. 3. Every time a company that has outsourced production must recall an item for a manufacturing fault (lead paint issues maybe), we should increase the importation tax on that company's goods across the board, not by much... let's say 0.5% each time it happens. These three steps will help to make sure that the American economy doesn't go any further down the porcelain white bowl. If these aren't substantial enough to pull out back up to floating position, we can look at foreign spending for a little bit too.