Buying Back America’s Future
James Dugan
If you could take a pill that would make you skinny and keep you skinny no matter what you eat, would you do it? The quick response is of course. Why wouldn’t you? It would lower your chances of heart disease and stroke while allowing you to enjoy all the cheese fries and half pounders a person could consume.
If you could somehow download all the books in the world into your brain and become the most erudite individual in the world, would you do it? Why wouldn’t you? If you could become smart and essential instantly then you would never outlive your usefulness while never having to suffer through the tedious process of reading and highlighting again.
If someone gave you the numbers to tomorrow’s Powerball lottery and you could be rich without ever leaving your house, would you do it? Why wouldn’t you? If all your money worries and occupation schemes could instantly end tomorrow, you could live for something else; whatever else you decide should replace that universal preoccupation.
I worry that most Americans, if not all, would answer yes to at least two out of three of the above scenarios. And that leads me to the failure of America ever achieving full employment. The business model of capitalism makes us strive towards efficiency and lower labor costs to meet higher profit. In the pursuit of profit, we are willing to subtract or add any means to reach them. If money is the ultimate goal in a nation’s economy, then we are doomed to perpetual 20% unemployment, higher costs of essential goods and energy, and increasing global perturbations.
Citizens need to work. Citizens of a nation need to support the society with fundamental goods exchange that benefits them. Business goals run counter to a government’s goal to provide for the safety and happiness of its members. Remember this is what Jefferson wrote in the Declaration:
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
We need to remember in the face of Wisconsin that the fundamental reason for growth in America was opportunities to find a decent job. We citizens and our government should not be looking to cut the budget at the cost of laying off workers. We should be looking at every product we buy, every store we support, and every business we come into contact with, and see if they are doing their part in providing American jobs, offering healthcare to their employees, and giving back to the community. These three criteria need to be examined with even more scrutiny than the price tag.
We do not have to raise business taxes or increase the tax rate on the wealthy, but as citizens, we must look at whether a job for neighbor is worth the $300.00 patio furniture from China. We must think that if we exchange police officers for cameras, then that is another lost job for a neighbor. When we use the self checkout line in the grocery store, then that is another job lost. When we use EZ PASS, a neighbor will be unemployed. When we shop at stores that only buy foreign goods, that place has placed many neighbors out of employment. We might even think where we will vacation. The money could be better spent in our own communities this year as we suffer to make ends meet and provide jobs.
Frugality is a virtue. Prudence in money matters is something we must teach to the next generations. Our budgets are growing smaller, but we must look at ourselves, as a society, a consumer and voter, for the blame. We must begin to support our own community in creating jobs, whether they are in the public or private industry. We must make sure our community has partners in providing businesses who care for their employees and provides them with decent, living wages. If we don’t, then we will be the next neighbor to lose their job as people shake their head and say what’s wrong with America.
I think America once took a pill. The pill promised that if they focus on money and its growth, then everything would be theirs including happiness, peace, and endless prosperity. Even if I was to get wealthy on my stocks that benefitted from that $300.00 dollar patio set from China, I or my neighbors, did not make it and were not given a job. Maybe a guy in the brokerage counted an increase and of course a couple of CEOs. For my part, I do not want the pill. I want us to work for a better society. I want to have more jobs in America than people. This can happen if we support American made products, but especially local businesses that employ our neighbors.
Here is a list of sites that support American Businesses and the Workers.
Reader Comments (4)
Passionate argument. Allow me to raise some counter points. First we should not shun technology just because it removes human manpower. Instead we should think of new ways to utilize this newly freed labor source - ie. creating more information-based jobs or spurring new industries like the green energy sector.
Who should we look towards to create these new jobs? Existing companies? No. As you point out, most companies are looking to cut labor costs and probably already secured their niche market.
Is it government's responsibility to create jobs? I don't think so. One only has to look at the failures in Wisconsin and New Jersey to see that the government model of managing public sector employees is in trouble. For the last twenty years, governments have only proved good at running up deficits, and now their spending habits are causing layoffs of the workers that society needs the most - cops, teachers, firefighters, etc.
I think you misuse Jefferson's quote. In the Declaration, he also state that the Rights do not come from a government, rather from God. He also only listed those few Rights he knew government would be able to secure. Notice the right to a job or the right to a stable income is not among them. In fact, as you well know, Jefferson changed John Locke's original rights of man from "life, liberty, and property" to "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness." With amazing foresight, Jefferson knew that any government who guaranteed property and wealth to its citizens would become a self-devouring institution doomed to collapse. Rather, the state should function to make sure the opportunity to earn property is available. Jefferson knew that a strong central government would be drawn to corruption and therefore left the management of private property out of their purview.
So who should we look to for our next job? Ourselves, of course! The individual should be dynamic and self-reliant. If there's no jobs out there, become self-employed. Thousands of Americans are able to do it every year and the best of our citizens have gone on to create businesses that make more jobs for their neighbors. This is the true innovative, entrepreneurial American spirit that people from all over the world immigrate here to partake in.
I agree with you that we should avoid giving business to corrupt companies which harm Americans. I also agree that capitalism has flaws and should be regulated in some areas by the government to best "effect safety and happiness" where behemoth, private, multi-national corporations threaten to infringe upon it. However, the scope of this regulation should be limited, or we run into the slippery slope of your argument. There is never going to be an "equal playing field"; it doesn't happen in nature and it won't happen in the society of man. By looking outside of ourselves for our livelihood, there is the real danger of our citizens denying self-responsibility and becoming complacent complainers with no upward mobility.
Another way of looking at it is, maybe we should support companies that don't glorify the superficial image of materialism and instead seek jobs that make us happy spiritually, intellectually and/or physically. Maybe instead of looking at the government as legally obligated to help us, we should find charity in the natural human bonds based on love and compassion like our families, churches and neighbors. Your analysis of the inherent danger in using money as the ultimate goal is correct, and I agree with community building as the solution.
I know I went off on a tangent and hope I didn't mischaracterize your intentions in writing this post. Either way, I'm looking forward to your reply.
Great Article but I agree with Nick Carraway.
Thanks for the compliment Right Wing Flier. Nick you make a strong point about individual responsibility, but when the field is not even to start with, then how can we say an individual is in charge of his own destiny. That is like asking two people to get to the same place at the same time but one is going from San Diego to LA by train and the other is coming from Philadelphia to LA on foot.
There are many reasons things in nature don't survive, and don't hand me any of that Darwin shit as it deals with humans. Social Darwinism has accounted for more jerkoffs blaming the poor for their situation than rich people have golf clubs in their trunk. Animals that live in a society and care for one another have a greater chance of survival and happiness if they co-exist. We do not eat each other, but we let each other starve, both physically and spiritually, everyday and all over the world. Greed and apathy is what divides humans and also a feeling of superiority even though we are born the same way and pretty much die the same way also.
We fear and feel entitled. Is that bad? Yes, but it doesn't mean we do not have a responsibility to improve every American's way of life. If American companies treated foreign employees with dignity and respect, paid them a living wage, offered health benefits, and clean working enviroments, I wouldn't be too opposed for them to expand. But that is not what is happening and any person who thinks the world is better off because capitalism has decided to share its spoils with third world and developing nations has to stop thinking that Mexicans really come here for the health care. American companies abandoned our shores for cheap labor, less enviromental regulation, and off shore tax benefits. It was money.
Humans can not survive in competition. We will have war after war until no one is left. We can only prosper if we protect each other's livelihood and communities. We need to invest in the people and stop thinking that if they just get off their lazy asses and get a $8.00 hour job, they will have some dignity. Be careful about comparing us to animals, if we start allowing their behavior patterns to determine our paths, then we are not a different species at all and Darwin would be right. F-Darwin.
Thanks Nick and for the lunch.
Dugan, I don't think I mentioned any thing about Social Darwinism in my response or compared human economics to animals. I simply suggested that an "equal playing field" is an unrealistic goal. To whole sale the idea that everyone will can be equal is to deny the individual traits that make us humans. To give some groups special treatment based on factors outside their control is to punish those individuals who do strive to make good choices.
Either way, I agree with you that companies should be regulated to a small extent by the government and by a large extend by what the consumers deem to be acceptable business practices. The problem is that most people are willing to turn a blind eye to multinational corporations' exploitation of third world human labor and natural resources because the American consumer is so conditioned by advertising and the sense of entitlement that says we deserve everything cheap and immediately. Darwin certainly didn't invent that attitude; we choose it for ourselves. He was just describing the natural world, not humans.
If we really want something close to a level economic playing field and consumer habits that benefit American companies, we have to go straight to the heart of our economy, the currency. In your post you said America took a pill that focused on money, growth and the promise of unlimited prosperity. You are right and that pill was called fiat currency in the form of the Federal Reserve note. Since we got off the gold standard, inflation has risen steadily and the dollar has been steadily devalued.
Why is it so cheap for companies to go overseas for labor? Because of our inflated currency and corporate tax rate drives up the cost of American labor and pushes business out. Also, having an easily manipulated dollar as the world reserve currency drives down the costs of importing goods since most of them trade in dollars, therefore making it even easier for foreign companies to sell goods made overseas here in America.
Why do the top 1% own 50% of the wealth? Why does the finance sector seem to do well in good and bad economic climates? Why are the rest of us encouraged to go into personal debt and sustain it for the rest of our lives? It's the Federal Reserve!!! The dollar is based on nothing! The Fed has numerous tools to manipulate the dollar's value and even if they don't work, Bernanke and his crew of arsonists just invent new ones. The people at the top know this truth and use it to their advantage while the rest of us just complain about how America isn't fair any more. Government regulation can't fix it, because the finance sector is always one step ahead of them and has placed their top guys in every President's circle of advisors since the 1970s.
Meanwhile, the rest of us are encouraged and governmentally subsidized to take out mortgages during housing bubbles and times of arbitrarily low interest rates and make credit card purchases we can't afford. Then when it seems debt will cripple the middle and lower classes, the Fed devalues the currency even more and makes our debt worth less. Sure it buys a few years and we start putting our retirement back in the stock market and it goes up again. But for how long is it sustainable?
When you say "buy American" and "partner with our community", these are all admirable ideas, but they must take place outside of the fiat dollar. An equal playing field has to mean a commodity back currency before anything else. Railing against social darwinism and going off on class warfare rants is playing right into the hands of the elite. We get caught up in the endless cat n mouse game of ideology and the politics, but only ending the Fed and returning the power of issuing currency to congress will put dollars back into the hands of Americans and keep it out of the private bank accounts of multinational corporations.