Pat, we can't be that far apart when we all seem to agree that the long term and sustainable industry jobs are key to recovery, in the private sector.
All I want to know is how you propose to keep the industries and corps from exitting for the lowest tax dollar or cheapest wage, once we get them on their feet with government policies of tax breaks, and less red tape in doing business, etc. It seems to me, that to the extent tax breaks have been given via loopholes to various industries, and isolated and irratic grants and incentives to the biggest lobbying industries, they still migrated to the cheaper labor and there went the jobs anyway. Do you think I'm wrong that big industries were given various breaks over the years, and they left anyway?
We have been duped by a false sense of buying the most stuff as cheap as we can than a better way of buying less, but quality and buying American, quality. It is still the mentality of buying the most you can (consumerism) and dying with the most stuff, winning. the more greed there is to have everything, and the easier it is to get credit that shouldn't be given, to buy more stuff, the deeper out hole. And, when the jobs go away and we couldn't pay the vig of interest on all the loans, we failed.
But, what is at the heart of it? Personal ethic of consumption and greed coupled with an indifference in protecting the American engine of prosperity - JOBs! When we took the bait for cheaper stuff made in foreign countries of cheap labore at the expense of job and industry protection, we went wrong. I would like to see very smart economists rethink the trade and tarrif ideas in the modern context, not the Smoot Hawley 1928-33 context. This isn't the same global arena as when Smoot Hawley was devised or enacted. The needs of our country and mechanisms of global technology and economies are different. I want to see some creative and intelligent people work harder to figure out how to bring back the jobs lost. I want to see them piloried as traitors, the enterprises that would sell out the American worker and the job market national engine of prosperity for the lowest most exploitable third world labor scene. Do that and you will have your America back, and maybe your food and goods will cost slightly more. But, what would you rather do, spend 10-20% more on food and goods, or pay it in taxes to prop up entitlement and welfare rescue government programs?
You don't really think that the underclass is going to go away and shut-up do you? They will want their entitlements paid by your taxes, or they will need a job to buy their own stuff. You decide which method of how you are going to hand over more wealth from those that still have any. Prices higher and more jobs, or prices lower due to foreign made goods and no jobs and more entitlements and 'social' programs...
Redistributionist, I'll plead guilty. But, didn't we have a redistribution from the middle class and lower lower class to the very upper class from 50s to now? What is a little redistribution of the previous redistribution for a while when our future is at stake?