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Strengthening America A Vital Understanding of Productivity
By Dan Focht
America’s strength and its ability to serve its citizens is dependent on its wealth and ability to generate wealth. Therefore, it is important to understand where our wealth originates as well as a political parties stance on improving life in America. To illustrate, I’ve divided our commerce into three basic categories to demonstrate where years of political mismanagement have diminished America’s strength and burdened its citizens.
1. Government-induced commerce, which includes the government bureaucracy, military, education and public services. These activities consume enormous amounts of money but they do not produce additive revenue to fund our needs. The government can only redistribute what we have and put us further in debt by borrowing from other countries. BTW, Printing money is not a solution because that does not increase our wealth but it does diminish the value of what we have.
2. Domestic commerce, including domestic consumer spending which includes domestic retail sales, service businesses, health care, insurance, and repair shops etc. These activities are beneficial and essential to our society. However, from an economic perspective, they only shuffle money, that we already have within the country. These activities do not contribute significantly to generating new or additive wealth for our country. Domestic commerce is like putting money from your right pocket into your left pocket. You still have the same amount of money it’s just in a different place!
3. Domestic production of internationally consumed goods, includes agriculture, mining and manufacturing. These are the activities that generate new and additive revenue by producing items that are used domestically and exported. Therefore, we have something to sell that other nations need and want. When they purchase our products that transaction directly increases America’s wealth. This enables employment of Americans and generates additive revenue for our country that we need to support ourselves and our essential obligations! Everything we have and do, even the service sector, is dependent on a healthy productive infrastructure.
Unfortunately America and its productive sector has been weakened by the influence of a liberal sociopolitical philosophy which has diminished our ability to meet our obligations and grow as a nation. From day one through the twenty years post-World War II, free market enterprise and capitalism have provided the incentive and ability for the U.S. to become the most powerful and greatest nation on earth. By the 1960’s while we were enjoying a growing prosperity, the liberal concept of the “Great Society” was used to influenced legislature to enact so many additional taxes, over-burdensome regulations and poor trade laws that our vital productive infrastructure is in a severely weakened condition. The few domestic companies that currently are showing a profit are not sufficient to sustain the entire economy. It is evident that America has endured years of devastation to our vital productive sector. It is the responsibility of our government to provide and sustain an environment conducive to American productivity. It is the responsibility of American business to utilize that environment and be productive. Unfortunately for the last 60 years government has dropped the ball. We are at a point where we have lost our momentum in the steel, aluminum, auto, tool and die, plastic, electronic, gas, oil and even pharmaceutical industries to name a few. The mining of our natural resources is way over-regulated and agriculture is severely strained. This situation has gotten so bad that even when we develop a new technology the physical products of that technology are typically made elsewhere. The result is, we end up having to give our valuable intellectual property to another country in order to have the product made. Therefore, we loose the revenue it could have produced if the products were made here! This is just one example of the effect that the liberal philosophy of overtaxing and over regulating our productive sector has had on America. Regardless of ones political affiliation you should recognize this has had a profound affect on America. There are less jobs and opportunities for advancement for American citizens and America becomes more dependent.
The sad reality is that the bureaucracy is choking on the bureaucracy and our society is paying the price. Many people believe that jobs and the production of products have gone away because greedy companies are looking for lower labor costs. As a manufacturer, I can assure you that U.S. companies prefer to have their products made right here in their own facilities under their own direct control and communicating with English speaking employees, not elsewhere. The main reason jobs and opportunities are diminished is because of a hostile business environment imposed by our government’s insatiable need for revenue. If Americans want to have job opportunities, products made here in America, a strong economy, restoration of our strength as a nation and not have insurmountable debt, it is imperative to actively support the most powerful economic principle on earth. The incentive that comes from the ability for Americans to generate their own wealth in a supportive business environment. That environment consist of conservative values such as capitalism and free market enterprise. As an example, most people don’t know or realize just how detrimental the tax code is to American productivity. American companies understand the need for a tax system to sustain the country but damn, what is so hard about implementing it fairly in a manner that doesn’t diminish America’s ability to be productive and maintain its strength?
The general public’s view of business is often times misunderstood for the following reason. In America’s early years nearly all companies in America were American owned. They produced and sold their products here in America as well as exported them. As time went on, the growth and success of the nation provided the opportunity for greedy power hungry political operatives to influence the government to impose poorly thought out taxes, create over-regulation and poorly thought out trade laws that don’t benefit American companies. Due to these pressures, many domestic companies were forced into multinational activities in order to have their products made in a manner that they could remain competitive. They sought any country that gives them the best deal to produce their products. This leaves our domestically owned companies overburdened and disadvantaged to be able to compete globally. As a result our domestic productive infrastructure declined and along with it our ability to employ Americans and generate the wealth we need to sustain and grow the country.
Unfortunately, the general public’s perception of business relates more to large, politically influential, multinational companies that are not as loyal to American interest as the domestic companies. The public sees only the surface of the issue and tends to vote with the philosophy of “let’s stick it to them, because we’re not getting our fair share”. I can understand the public’s frustration. However, the misdirected anger has grown and produced political influence that has become detrimental to the country. The left has harvested and misdirected this perception to lure and attract supporters. It would have been more beneficial to America if the left would have been supportive to the needs of our domestic producers by educating both the public and legislature of the vital necessity of improving the business environment for Americas domestic productivity. Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be their objective.
The American people have the determination, ability, equipment, and intelligence to work and earn our way out of this problem. If you want jobs and adequate financial resources to meet our needs, let’s together work to apply the necessary political pressure to make the U.S. a place that both domestic and multinational companies find attractive to be productive. We first must pass legislation that favors domestic productivity and provides a hospitable environment to be productive. Then and only then will you see the United States return to being a strong, stable, reliable country. Unfortunately it can’t happen overnight, it will take years of physical and political effort. It comes down to this elementary lesson. “You can’t get away with biting the hand that feeds you and not go hungry”. We need to have the ability to generate not just wealth but excesses of wealth in order to have enough wealth to meet our needs and care for those truly in need of assistance. Void of that excess of wealth we end up borrowing from other countries thus weakening our global standing. Myself and most other domestic producers are very scared of the near future. If everything that should be done to improve the business environment for domestic American productivity was done today, it would still take years to rebuild, retool and attain the level of productivity that we should have right now. We don’t have years to accomplish this!!! Now consider the speed of congress and the political forces that shape our nation. Then you realize that we are in big-big trouble! Even if you are a person dependent on the government, for whatever reason, you should at least understand and follow a philosophy that is supportive of strengthening the country. If America isn’t strong economically, militarily and maintained in a position of world leadership, America can’t help you either!
Politicians have always promoted increasing revenue through tax but they don’t talk about improving our ability to generate wealth. Pres. Trump1 recognized that America is already broke and he was taking the appropriate steps to loosen the reins on our “domestic” productive sector so we can once again excel and compete effectively in the world? That started to benefit everyone, even the people too unaware to appreciate it! With improvements starting to occur It is sad that due to the previous administration with its clueless president we have seen America’s productivity diminished even more. Many companies that I have talked to tell me that they are still trying to recover from Obama years. Now that we have been hit again with more of the left’s thoughtless policies many have had to close their doors, do the best they can to take care of their own then and whatever happens, happens. There is nothing an individual company can do to make up for the ineptness of the government imposed restrictions and the nefarious forces that have influenced the nation. Fortunately we now have a business savvy president with a focus on improvement and bringing pressure to government to keep us on the path to sustainability and growth.
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