How to improve the US economy

The 64 dollar question of today is how to get our depressed economy growing again. The president says job creation is the answer, and all the Republican candidates for president more or less agree. The only thing they disagree on is how to go about it. The president wants to create jobs through government spending to stimulate the economy, and then raise taxes to pay for it. The Republican candidates want to lower taxes and cut government spending in order to stimulate the economy, and thereby create jobs. The only problem is that neither of these approaches will work. The current recession is different from past recessions. This country has arrived at a unique place in its history. This recession, as well as our intractable unemployment problem, is the result of the long process of off-shoring our manufacturing base, and the economy will only continue to decline until we bring manufacturing back to this country. Manufacturing jobs are “wealth creating jobs.” Service jobs are not. Manufacturing has always been the foundation of our once thriving economy. Moving manufacturing jobs out of this country in search of cheaper labor has gradually undermined our economy. This fact has been masked over for years by federal borrowing, but now suddenly the bills have come due. Things will not improve until we can put the millions of unemployed back to work, and we can only do that by bringing manufacturing back into this country. But how do we do that? Simple! Impose a tariff on any product that we import which could be manufactured in this country. The tariff should be set at a level at which it would cost just as much to buy the imported item as it would cost to buy the item if it were made here. At a stroke, that would remove the incentive for corporations to off-shore their factories. Why isn’t anyone talking about this?

Note: the above is a letter submited by my Friend, Ben Bradberry to the Times Union newspaper.  I agree entirely with him.   If you also agree… tell your congressman.