Laugh or cry

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In previous posts I have discussed what I call fantasy explanations of the very bad economic and jobs situation in good old USA.  Fantasy explanations are presented to hide the real cause of the problem, namely that we shot ourselves in the foot by sending, or allowing the sending, of manufacturing jobs overseas.


Now there is a new crop of fantasies along the following lines.  America has had its great days on the upswing, and now is going down, similar to "The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire".


When I see these new fantasies, I don't know whether to laugh or cry, whether to become physically ill, or simply give up the fight against the corrupt authors of these fantasies, and their corrupt employers.
 

The fall of the Roman empire was due to myriad, complex internal and external developments.  The problem in America is due to one simple thing that we did to ourselves, namely sending our manufacturing jobs overseas. 


Since the cause of our problem is very simple and identifiable, it is only logical that the SOLUTION to the problem is also simple and identifiable.


All we have to do is cut imports and thereby encourage increased domestic manufacturing.


I presented a very simple, fair, balanced, and do-able proposal in previous posts:


Country by country, allow imports of manufactured goods from each country only to the extent that that country buys manufactured goods from us.


Right now we have a trade deficit in manufactured goods with every foreign country.  The trade deficit with China is the largest.   Then there is the European Union, Mexico, Japan, the "ASEAN" countries, and others.  This is a ridiculous and impossible situation.


We can easily get into a balanced situation with each of these countries or entities, so there would be a ZERO trade deficit with that country or entity.  In this way we would eliminate our trade deficit in manufactured goods with all foreign countries of over $500 billion per year.  This outflow is a devastating hemorrhage of wealth, a direct cause of the impoverishment of our country.


Our politicians over the last 50 years have been criminally negligent in allowing this impoverishment to come into existence.  Today our politicians are hysterically arguing over every irrelevant/trivial issue they can think of, rather than getting down to the business of cutting imports to encourage increased domestic manufacturing.



Polls show that the ordinary working men and women of America understand very well the importance of domestic manufacturing.  Polls show that the American people are prepared to pay a bit more for "Made-in-USA" goods but all we see in the stores is "Made-in-China".



Why is it so difficult for a simple and obvious idea, Made in USA, to gain traction?   Basically, the reason is corruption in our national government.



There are some politicians who understand, and are speaking out about Made in USA.  But the vast majority of politicians PRETEND not to understand.  This is where the corruption comes in.


We used to worry about organized crime infiltrating into legitimate business firms.  It is possible now that we have a much bigger problem.  It may be that China has infiltrated into the US economy in a major way.  China may already own or control thousands of U.S. companies.  All it takes is own 10% of the shares of a company, and you can get your own man or woman on the board of directors, and thereby influence the policy of that company. 


All of these companies have much easier access to government than the ordinary working men and women of America.  These companies want to keep the status quo of unlimited import of manufactured goods from China and other countries.  This may be the reason why America is not picking up and running with the simple solution of cutting imports to encourage domestic manufacturing.


The situation could be so bad that if we knew the extent of it we would yearn for the good old days of organized crime infiltration!


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