Fight for middle class working familes

By Joe "Jay" Haytas

The American people are being told that we are living in the best of times. However, though such prosperity propoganda is foisted upon us all, true prosperity is for the elite at the expense of everyone else. In short, the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and the middle class is doing a disappearing act. Let's wake up.

As a place the American frontier ceased to exist about 1890...What we now call capitalism, democracy and Americanism was simply the 19th century formula of empire building as it worked in this country. Here the process was often called pioneering; its locus, the frontier.

The historical function of the frontier was to provide opportunities, incentives and escape for individuals. Thus private enterprise, parliamentary democracy, liberal freedom and tolerance were made profitable. Our problem today is self-preservation as a people.

We do however, have a frontier of sorts available to us as a people. The new frontier for the 21st Century will be our self-preservation as a people. It is an economic frontier that offers us the opportunity to create well-paying, value-added jobs here at home, and it is economic protectionism. So much of what we consume today is imported, from fax machines and VCR's, none of which are made in the United States, to shoes (85% imported), clothing (50% imported), and cars (33% imported).

As a nation, we have the technology and the skilled work force to capture or recapture the domestic markets for these products. All we lack is the political will to scrap the Establishment's commitment to free trade and substitute an America-first economic policy of import prohibitions and high tariffs.

There should be a minimum tariff, which will accomplish two major goals. First, a minimum tariff will create a collection of revenue that will to some significant extent reduce the burdensome income tax on American workers. This will create more disposable income and free up money for home buyers and consumers creating an economic expansion the likes that we have never seen before. Second, a minimum tariff will to some extent make up the difference in the cost of labor here and abroad by protecting jobs here at home.

In other words, the message to American producers should be thus: If American manufacturers wish to close plants in the United States and go to foreign lands where labor is cheaper, then go. But the products will not re-enter the United States duty-free. They will carry a tariff to make up the difference between the cost of the labor you hired, and the cost of the American labor left behind.

It is far more important to have families with affordable mortgages, worker's with good paying jobs and young people who can once again afford to have families than it is for us to have the cheapest products made by slave labor in foreign countries. If we do not attend to our families and ourselves first, nothing can save us.

Our foreign policy should always represent the interest of the United States, and I believe that it should always be placed ahead of that of all foreign nations. Our future as a people and as a Nation depends on it.

Email: runjayrun@hotmail.com Tel: 626-812-9767 ________________________________________