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Troubleshooting Our Stalling Economic Engine
By John Kelly
If Sadi Carnot, father of your car's engine, were asked to analyze our nation's troubled economic engine he would simply tell us we are defying, if not denying, the operating principles of that which we claim intent to repair.
We know the distortion created by counting only Americans actively unemployed as such, but do we realize the lie of calculating economic growth using false inflation numbers? John Williams at shadowstats.com apparently does. Asst. Treasury Secretary Paul Roberts calls today's government numbers "statistical artifacts," not facts. Our manufacturing dwindles, trained specialists and youth are underemployed, private sector career prospects are glum, and family dwellings bleed value. Problems run much deeper than government debt. Before corporate-government elites finish butchering our country for parts and draining its resources for use elsewhere, let's troubleshoot the problem.
The first question any good troubleshooter asks is: Did the thing ever work? The answer: Yes, it once ran great. That's a sign of hope. Fixing it shouldn't require novel upgrades or futuristic schemes, only a return to basics -- getting back what has worked not to what might or should -- simple natural truths.
In an economic engine, motivated people with their ideas, abilities and materials go in one end; sustenance and well-being come out the other -- quality in, quality out. Allowed to run reasonably and freely within protective yet competitive national margins a good running economic engine creates useful product while it sustains and betters peoples' lives.
Looking at automobile engines for clues we find that it needs just three essentials -- good fuel, solid compression, and strong ignition. Other factors contribute to those three but engines simply won't run without them. Ask any mechanic.
While Washington elites attempt futuristic, socially compensating, redistributive, Euro-style, eco-amazing globalization schemes, America's economic engine really needs its three basics, a civilized people, a solid nation and strong incentive. Other things, natural resources, commerce, and currency play their part yet those basic three are rock bottom necessities.
Engines need good fuel. An economic engine uses the fuel of civil people who flow through its economic engine supplying their work product, creativity, and protective strength. Our nation's potential equals its peoples' potential in terms of civility, work ethic, and resourcefulness.
An automobile engine's cylinders use compression to contain and direct fuel combustion. They can't leak outward or inward. Our nation should be a stronghold that protects the lives, work product, homes, and future of our people -- our people, not the world's people. National "compression" requires a solid border, self-interested trade and labor policy, reasonable law, and a capable military.
Friendly international rivalry is healthy. Historically, says Cambridge economics professor Ha-Joon Chang, building the economies of "Britain and the United States depended on protective tariffs to a significant degree." Our first apologist in chief, Woodrow Wilson, abandoned them.
Combustion engines use a high voltage ignition to explode its fuel's potential energy. Freedom is America's ignition. Protecting both property and individual rights "ignites" civilized peoples' inborn incentives to better life by creating work product, industry and commerce. Their creativity and work expands within a strong, self-interested nation's borders benefiting all involved citizens. This ignition of protected rights and freedoms was once America's overriding secret of success.
Notice how vastly different that outline of our once well functioning, traditional economic engine is from the stalling, sputtering mess now developing before our eyes. According to business school professor Peter Morici, "Gains are concentrated in areas such as restaurants, health care and education, and business services categories -- waiters, nurse's aids and record keepers, not teachers, architects and lawyers."
Obama was quoted as saying, "Industry tells me that they don't have enough highly skilled engineers." That quote's source, Center for Immigration Studies, speaks of "1.8 million U.S.-born individuals with engineering degrees who are either unemployed, out of the labor market, or not working as engineers." This headline, "The Demand for Foreign Scientists and Engineers Increasing" should have read, "The Demand for Long Hours and Low Pay Increasing." The government grants 125,000 foreign work permits every month competing against Americans.
Taking on other countries' fuel gives cost benefits to employers, while Americans work for less pay, sit idle or retire. State and Federal budgets endure a $19,588 net annual cost per typical low-skilled immigrant household. Our natural environment suffers increased human overload while our society assumes the manners of a mismatched, stew-like culture, a recipe for civil unrest and failure.
People once came to America to be part of a nation unlike all others. Now people come here to make America like all others. Roughly 85% of legal immigrants are from various countries lacking egalitarian rule of law, constitution based governance, or high standards of civil society. Even Texas' economic growth tale was really about jobs filled with anyone but Americans.
Our engine's compression is lowered by a hapless free trade policy that pursues global corporate interests, not the American peoples' interests. Rampant globalism creates deep trade deficits and encourages off shore investments that flush what were once "high compression" industries and jobs. The border, our economic engine's "head gasket" leaks while lawmakers discuss amnesty options and increases visa numbers. Our over priced education system fails to teach its three basics -- reading, writing, and arithmetic -- while promoting anti-American culture and eccentric, anti-family social behavior.
Even our most critical "high-compression" feature, military readiness, is becoming economically and culturally threatened. Bogart's character, Joe Gunn, in Sahara attributes American fighting prowess to a striving to preserve one's "dignity of freedom." Now, with freedom waning and our country culturally confused, for what and for whom are we fighting? The term "nation," take the Arapaho Nation for example, used to denote a proud self-identifying people. Under globalism a nation is just a tired brand name, logo, and set of colors.
Americans' incentive to pursue self-interest -- our engines ignition -- is being weakened by government mandates, environmental regulations, social engineering, progressive taxation, and over advantaged foreign competitiveness. The left's current watershed era of booming government including Obama's allusion to militaristic compliance hastens the growth of government-corporate cronyism and moves America toward a globalist, Mussolini style fascism. Fear and uncertainty loom while political correctness twists the words and arms of anyone sounding alarm.
A simple "tune-up" won't restore our engine. The restoration of fundamental design standards is vital. We must restore our freedom and our nation's traditional integrity while dealing more cautiously with global economics.
To enrich America's fuel, resume pre-1965 immigration policies, end birthright citizenship, and restore border integrity.
To regain America's compression, enact a simple Natural Strategic Tariff to rebuild manufacturing industry. Educate our selves 'how the U.S. once succeeded so well under tariff regimes that were not particularly sophisticated."
To rekindle America's ignition, reinstate our constitutional foundation of individual and states' rights.
All engines run on simple, essential, and self-evident natural laws. Our country's leaders deceitfully avoid this truth.
Read an excerpt from Deneen Borelli's new book -- 'Blacklash'
By Deneen Borelli
The Dangers of an Unhealthy Liberal Agenda
There has been a notable shift in our discussion about health care. We don’t talk about ways of using innovation and advanced technology to cut costs and improve the actual health of Americans. We don’t talk about free market approaches that would increase competition and cut costs. We don’t talk about malpractice reform that would reduce the volume of unnecessary tests that contribute to the unsustainable price tag of health care. Instead, we talk about the president’s plan—his backward vision that effectively keeps us under the government thumb, enslaving us to a cold and uncaring bureaucracy, while exploding the public debt.
ObamaCare isn’t about medicine for your children. It is not about improving the benefits you get at work. And it does not help prevent illness in order to limit health problems down the road. Rather, ObamaCare is about Obama’s overriding philosophy that decisions are better left to the government than with the individual and that the state is a better arbiter of how to allocate our health care dollars than the free market. Obama’s vision is one of a traditional liberal: to expand the entitlement state to cover health care coverage through an existing infrastructure. Once in control, however, Americans will be empowering bureaucrats to deny treatment and services, especially to the most vulnerable, in an effort to control costs.
The United States is an exceptional country—we are “a shining city upon a hill.” Americans are extremely compassionate and generous. When disaster strikes anywhere in the world, we are the first to jump into action, providing aid and our expertise. It doesn’t matter if it is on another continent or as close to home as New Orleans. We are there committed to helping people help themselves. We can do this because it’s part of our national character and because our free market economy has provided us with a degree of wealth that gives many of us disposable income that can be allocated to charity. Our economic strength has made us the single most powerful nation on earth.
But we are at a crossroads. Do we want to continue in this direction, or do we want to become a nation of people enslaved to our national debt, weakened by our country’s gross spending habits?
ObamaCare is also about spending money we don’t have and it will greatly contribute to our national debt. Sure, it has a nice ring to it—the government will be your health care backstop, ensuring that you and your kids will be safe and secure. The government will not be doing this. The government is going to be pouring money into unworkable, inefficient bureaucracies and in doing so, it will stake claim to the biggest entitlement expansion since the 1960s.
Make no mistake about it: The promises of ObamaCare are terribly misleading. Name just one government program that has delivered a cost-efficient and reliable service? The United States Postal Service? Amtrak? Compassion, caring, and fiscal efficiency are not characteristics of government enterprises—period. The care in ObamaCare is about Obama caring about a progressive legacy that will greatly expand government control over lives. Oh, yes, your care will suffer. If tragedy strikes and your child needs special medical treatment, how long will it take to get an appointment with a specialist—assuming there will be one to find?
By the time many of the adverse consequences of ObamaCare kick in, Obama won't be in office, but on the speaking circuit cashing in while the rest of us suffer.
Obama is an elite, and after his presidency he will never have to worry about money or not being able to buy the best health care for his family. Meanwhile, you will be struggling to figure out how to get quality medical services.
The liberal agenda is a double-edged sword. Sure, it always sounds nice. Clean and renewable energy from the wind and sun. Accessible, affordable, and quality health care for all regardless of your employment or health status.
It has a feel-good kind of ring to it. The government will always be there to take care of you. If times get tough: The government will pay for your health care. The government will protect your mortgage. The government will give you jobs, money, food, and housing. But the fact remains, the government can’t pay for this agenda. The liberal agenda is thick with sweeping generalizations and false promises of hope. The only consistency is its failure to deliver yet with such a dismal record. Too many Americans get lured into the progressive fantasy that through the grace of big government man can create heaven on earth.
Someone has to pay these ObamaCare bills. Sure, Obama will pay his personal share but he can afford it with his million-dollar-plus income. It is me, you, and our children and grandchildren who will pay. What we are paying today is only a down payment for the future cost of the program over the long term. Its cost will drain our economy, raise our taxes, and lower our standard of living and for all of that we will beg a bureaucracy for treatment.
That’s what I mean when I say Obama is ensuring we will always be slaves on the government plantation. We need to break these chains. We need to send those overseers packing. We need to become masters in our own homes and control our own destinies. We need to be responsible for buying our own health insurance and take responsibility for our lifestyle choices. And most of all, we need to recognize that the care in ObamaCare is an illusion, just like the rest of the progressive agenda.
Text copyright © 2012 by Deneen Borelli. Published by Threshold Editions, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc. Printed with permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
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