Sunday, February 03, 2008

Straight Talk Express on the Economy...

A while back, McCain talked in Michigan and gave them some 'Straight Talk' stating that they needed to face reality that their auto jobs weren't coming back to America. Like many other economists and experts, McCain is happy with manufacturing jobs leaving America. He thinks that we are now a service-oriented economy and that we don't have to have manufacturing jobs here because of that.

The truth is, the loss of manufacturing jobs, of blue collar jobs...that's what's killing the middle class. It used to be that a worker could put in a 40 hour work week of honest, hard work, and make a descent living at it. No longer. Those jobs have all but left...to China, Indonesia, India, Hong King, Taiwan, etc.

Why? Because it's cheaper. Think about that for a second. It's cheaper for a company to build a manufacturing plant in another country, pay for cheap labor, pay for global shipping, and pay low import taxes/tariffs than it is to keep a plant in the United States. Does anyone else see anything wrong with that?

Sure many people make companies out to be the bad guy...to be all about the almighty dollar...and in many cases they are true. But wouldn't you rather have those companies here, keeping solid jobs in the United States rather than sending them abroad?

We charge WAY too high taxes on companies. So much so that they would rather leave than keep the American dream, of merely making a descent living, alive for fellow Americans.

In one way, this may be the perfect time to reduce corporate taxes and make it easier on companies to produce things here. So many manufacturing jobs have left...there are so few here now...that we can create a new set of rules with wish to reward companies to come back. Make it beneficial to have them bring jobs back and make the plants and buildings environmentally friendly. Or not. But what I think is a mistake is to depend on the rest of the world to provide us with all of our "stuff" that we buy. We must demand that government make it easier for Americans to provide ourselves with "stuff". Perhaps then can we create the honest, hard-working middle class again.

2 comments:

Rocketstar said...

We will never be able to compete with the global economy for manufacturing jobs, our standard of living is too high. Cutting corporate taxes may help, but in the end the cheap labor will win out as it is doing now.

The Mad Hoosier said...

Slave labor, I think you mean. There's no way that labor is merely cheap when it's more cost efficient to build a plant, pay for shipping back to our country, pay the import taxes, and pay for shipping to distribution centers...when they could simply keep plants here and pay for shipping to stores from within the US.

I tell you, I'm shocked that the liberals, with all their equality causes, conveniently turn their head to this kind of blatent slave labor. Even illegal immigration has a hint of slave labor to it...but no, let's overlook that and give them a free path to citizenship. Because it's not that illegal immigrants are doing the jobs that Americans won't do....they are doing the jobs that Americans won't do for SO CHEAP.