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In The News 'Made in America' Our Only Hope By Bob Lonsberry June 26, 2006 If addiction to foreign oil is a bad thing, why isn't addiction to foreign manufacturing? It's a serious question, and the future of American prosperity and security hangs on it. If we believe it is wrong to allow foreign countries to control one essential part of our economy, why is it not wrong to allow foreign countries to control another essential part of our economy? We doggedly try to throw off reliance on foreign oil while we wholeheartedly throw ourselves into ever-greater reliance on foreign manufacturing. How can both policies be right? The simple fact is that they are not. The simple fact is that self-reliance is always right and international dependence is always wrong. And it is astounding that the people in Washington refuse to see that. It is astounding that the people in Washington are so in bed with the people profiting from the imperiling of America that they not only don't sound the alarm of economic jeopardy, they promote policies which actively create it. One aspect is the trade deficit. We buy dramatically more from the world that we sell to it. We get their stuff and they get our money, and that will work fine until we run out of money. Which will come sooner rather than later. We are a nation engaged not in the making of wealth, but in the dissipation of wealth. And each year ever more billions of dollars go overseas to enrich foreigners with money from the pockets of Americans. That is because they make things and we don't. American manufacturing is in collapse. We make a tiny fraction of what we use. Many whole manufacturing segments have been lost to overseas producers. The day-to-day items used by American families are only rarely produced by American manufacturers. There are a variety of reasons for this. One is that American labor is too expensive. Another is that American business is too expensive. Though greed of unions and executives plays a role in both those situations, most guilt lies with the government. We have so encrusted the workplace with regulations, taxes and expenses that American manufacturing has been priced out of existence. In an effort to protect the American worker, the government has made him obsolete. The prudent workplace safeguards begun a century ago in the mining and meat industries have grown like a cancer to cripple and kill almost all American manufacturing. In addition, the government's slavish dedication to "free trade" in recent years has opened our economy to gang rape by everyone from China to Mexico. Other nations practice natural - and sometimes ruthless - protection of their own self-interest while the United States rolls over and gives the world free shot at its unprotected underbelly. We have repeatedly made trade decisions which have ravaged our interests. And traitorous corporate types have led a stampede of jobs and factories overseas. Countless American companies - which rose to wealth and prominence on the back of the American worker - have gutted their American workforces and built sweatshops in Asia and Latin America. Companies enrich themselves on the American consumer and distance themselves from the American worker, seemingly oblivious to the fact that they are one and the same. Compounding the situation is government neglect of multiple issues, resulting in the export of American jobs and the import of Mexican workers and the volatile social imbalance that results. So here we are. "Made in the U.S.A." is a novelty and "Made in China" is a given. And the "free trade" zealots, drinking freely of the Kool-Aid of national economic suicide, mock those of us who are uncomfortable. They tell us to take an economics course, and they give little sermons on capitalism, all the while not having the foggiest idea what they're talking about. Because the facts remain. The man you rely on is your master. That's true if he's pumping your oil or making your trinkets. When he decides not to supply you anymore, or when you can't afford to pay his tab, you stop being his customer and start being his - uh - female dog. When somebody else controls supply, and you are awash in demand, they have you by the short hairs. We understand that when it comes to oil, but we ignore it when it comes to manufacturing. And we do so at our own peril. Because we won't always be rich and the world won't always be at peace. And every lesson of human existence teaches us the virtue of self-reliance. Yet we pretend the simple strengths of frugality and independence no longer matter. The only outcome for such a course of action is disaster. If we're lucky it will only be economic disaster. Hopefully the other nations of the world will be content to bankrupt us, and won't seek to invade us. Hopefully it will be enough for them to hold our debt and break our industry and employ us like serfs or sharecroppers on a land that used to be our own. We dance at the end of a string held by OPEC and Hugo Chavez, and soon we will dance at the end of another string held by the Chinese. We gained our independence on the battlefield, we're going to lose it in the check-out line. Once we belonged to a British king. Soon we will belong to an Arab oilman and a Chinese manufacturer. And the people in Washington couldn't be happier. - by Bob Lonsberry © 2006 Articles: Reynolds Votes Against Restoring Security Funds |
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