and not just profits for the rich, then you are going to have to face some harsh realities AND you are going to have to lead the American public into an acceptance of those realities.
1. Allowing our manufacturing companies to move their operations into "cheap labor" countries without paying any reparations to the Americans whose jobs are erased is wrong. THIS DOES NOT CREATE AMERICAN JOBS. Again, let me reiterate, sir: If you REALLY want jobs for Americans, you have to face this reality. This is not an opinion; this is a fact. Moving jobs out of America and into Honduras or China, Vietnam or Turkey does not create jobs for Americans. I know this may be a difficult concept to grasp, but it is a fact.
2. Encouraging Americans to buy cheap throw-away merchandise that they really don't need with money they don't have is not good for the economy. I understand that this is a cornerstone of a consumer economy and the lifeblood of the advertising industry. But when people are bombarded with commercials and advertisements to buy, buy, buy, buy, buy they are often put deeply into debt which requires them to (collectively) demand higher wages and lower prices. This is not economically feasible. Our consumer economy has generated a demand for a higher and higher and higher minimum wage, but at the same time we want cheaper and cheaper and cheaper goods, which means more manufacturers are "forced" into cheap labor markets.
3. Allowing a very few people to accumulate vast amounts of wealth is destructive of a healthy economy. A healthy economy depends on the continuous circulation of wealth. If it accumulates in just a few spots, it can act exactly the way a blood clot acts on a human circulatory system. Those who are billionaires should be taxed accordingly. Those who have "unearned" income -- and by this I'm speaking primarily of capital gains but also income from rents and royalties -- should not get tax breaks for simply being wealthy enough to have unearned income.
4. Of all the categories of "unearned income," none is more "unearned" than inheritance. Those who have businesses they wish to pass on to their heirs should be able to make provisions for that transfer long before their death by bringing their heirs in as partners. This makes the inheritance "earned" rather than "unearned." But to give a large estate intact to someone who has no participatory interest in it is anathema to the American ideal. Those who have died no longer need the estate ("for their reward is in heaven") and those who inherit should either be active participants or be taxed on "unearned" income.
5. Regulation of those "industries" -- especially financial services (including banking, investing, insurance, etc.) -- that do not actively create wealth through manufacturing but rather skim off excess "profits" to the benefit of few and the burden to many is absolutely essential to the restoration of economic health in this country and therefore to the creation of jobs for Americans. This is the concept at the heart of "jobless recoveries," such as we are about to experience. Gross domestic production may be up and the stock markets showing gains, but if the wealth so produced ends up only in the hands of the already wealthy, then there is a cancer in the economic body. When you have a whole team of economic advisors whose philosophy AND actions are contrary to healthy economic policy, you should remove them and replace them with other advisors who will work for healthy change in the system.
6. The 535 legislators in Washington DC who have been elected to serve the people should be free to do so. That is, they should be free of the pressure of lobbyists who have the power to "buy" a legislator's vote on issues in which they have a vested interest. Corporations are not people and should not have a "voice" in shaping legislation to the extent that they are allowed to contribute huge sums to election campaign funds. Legislators who speak out in favor of corporate interests should be required to include a disclaimer that makes clear to the public that they have received significant sums from the industries and companies they are protecting. A violation of free speech? No, merely truth in advertising.
7. Wars are sinkholes. They suck up lives and money. The death or serious injury of a single soldier can affect dozens of lives: the immediate family, the community, the employer, to name just a few. As the US has moved over the past few decades into a two-tiered military that consists of volunteers on one hand and highly-paid private contractors on the other, the cost of war has skyrocketed. War is not healthy for humans or economies. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan MUST be wound down immediately. As truly horrifying as the prospect may be, if Afghanistan descends into chaos and bloodshed after an American withdrawal, then there is little we can do about it. If other nations are appalled, then they can join in a truly international coalition. They can put economic pressure on whatever passes for a government in Afghanistan. But leaving thousands of Americans -- military and private contractor alike -- to hold Afghanistan together at great financial and human cost to America is not the way to create jobs in America for Americans.
8. There are many ways to "create" jobs for Americans, more than I have time or space right now to detail. Throwing money, especially borrowed money, at amorphous ideas is not only not the best way to create "jobs" but it may also be the very worst thing to do. It's all too true that our national infrastructure -- roads, bridges, schools, hospitals -- need maintenance and repair and replacement. But so does our national manufacturing infrastructure. We should not be in a position where our military even considers buying ammunition from contractors who are selling old "Made in China" materiel that's been "laundered" through Albania. As long as, however, we are a nation that by our actions puts more importance in the accumulation of wealth by a few individuals than in the health of our national economy, such abuses will continue. We must do what is necessary to encourage the development and redevelopment of manufacturing in our country. If that means tariffs on certain imported goods, then we have to do it. To NOT do it is to maintain the status quo. In order to change the status quo, in order to bring back jobs, other things must change. If you only want to protect the wealthy, then continue the present course, because that is what has happened. But if you truly want to change the economy, if you really want to create good jobs for Americans in America, then you must return to the economic policies that created those jobs and nourished that economy.
9. One last thing, Mr. President. I would suggest you read an old book, Allen H. Eaton's "Handicrafts of the Southern Highlands." Published in 1937, it's a survey of the skills and products made by the Americans of Appalachia in Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia. Allow me to quote a small portion from a segment titled "Life of a Mountain Chair":
The length of service of mountain chairs varies, it would often seem, with the opinion of the informant. Some declare that they will last a lifetime, some a hundred years and others say forever. There seems to be evidence to support all claims unless it be the "forever" one, and if that is freely interpreted to imply "as long as a man lasts," that claim could likely be supported, too.
In an old home not far from White Top, Virginia, several chairs known to have been made on the place thirty-seven years ago are in prime condition, only the bottoms of oak splints having been replaced. Bud Godlove of Wardensville, Hardy County, West Virginia, one of the best known mountain craftsmen, whose father and gradnfather were chairmakers before him, says his family every day use chairs made over fifty years ago. Edward Loudermilk of Caldwell, Greenbrier, West Virginia, writes:
I make the life-time split bottom chairs. I use white tough hickory, fire-dried rounds, posts of young growth tough white oak. . . . My father taught me to make chairs when I was a boy. I have been making chairs for forty some years. . . . When a man buys chairs from me he gets what he needs and he is done buying chairs as long as he lives. . . . Nothing cross grain.
(emphasis mine)
What fueled our economic health for a while, Mr. President, was our insatiable need for the new. Unlike the mountaineers who made what they needed and made it to last, our advertising-fueled need for more and more and more created an economy that consumed itself. In order for Detroit to sell more cars, it created "planned obsolescence." We made and sold paper plates and paper napkins, throw-away plastic cups and spoons and forks. Single-use Styrofoam containers that last forever in our landfills and along our highways. Pampers, Huggies, Luvs -- the disposable diaper is now just about the only kind here is.
Unfortunately, our demand for disposables of all kinds also created "jobs," in a vicious cycle of need. The more goods we needed, the more jobs we needed, too. Not just to produce the items but to generate the wages to buy them. And always, always, always, there were the "investors" to siphon off a part of the profits. When the investors got greedy, they broke the golden goose by shipping the jobs to cheap labor markets.
But in truth unlimited economic growth is no more sustainable than unlimited biological growth. We must scale back our consumption and ramp up our production until both meet at a sustainable level. It may begin with as simple a concept as making a chair that lasts a lifetime and learning to take pride in owning such a chair rather than in showing off and then throwing away a new one year after year after year.
To restore American prosperity -- and that means the prosperity of ALL Americans, not just the rich on Wall Street -- we must and YOU must begin to understand what makes an economy healthy. None of the current policies contribute to economic health. NONE OF THEM, Mr. President. They must be changed, and some of those changes may indeed be painful for a few of your friends. But those changes will ease the pain of many many many many more Americans who put their faith in your promise of change.
Yes, Mr. President, we CAN do it, but not without your leadership and insistence that change applies to everyone, even the wealthy. This is no longer a campaign, this is an administration. Some of the work isn't fun, and not everyone is going to like what you do. But that's the nature of the job.
So if you REALLY want jobs for Americans, you're going to have to implement some of that change, not just talk about it. That's the toughest reality of all.
Sincerely,
Tansy Gold
(Disclaimer: This was originally posted as a reply in another thread. The more I thought about it, the more I decided it needed its own thread.)
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