No question our domestic economy continues to struggle, what with continued painfully high un- and underemployment (“ Unending nonrecovery,” Dispatch editorial, May 7). The editorial correctly concluded our perceived decrease in unemployment/underemployment is, in part, the result of work-force frustration with long periods of joblessness.
If lower taxes for America’s “job creators” provided incentives for them to do so, President George H.W. Bush’s 1991 and 1993 tax cuts should have done the trick for many years.
President George W. Bush’s decision to save General Motors and Chrysler by starting their financial rescue was the right call.
America’s economic plight can be traced to our country’s financial and monetary policies following World War II when, during the decade of 1946-1956, we were hellbent to rebuild war-torn countries, and then, in subsequent decades, America gave away its manufacturing and assembling prowess to the defeated and developing countries.
Lack of foresight by America’s consumers aggravated the problem. Too many of us didn’t care where the widget was made, as long as it was (perceived to be) cheap, and often the product was.
From the end of World War II and more aggressively in the 1980s, Congress’ monetary and tax policies encouraged American industry — always in search of “cheap” labor — to outsource manufacturing and assembling jobs to Mexico and other cheap-labor countries; over time, America’s vital middle class was decimated and now is second to Canada.
The first budget of President Bill Clinton’s administration in August 1993 put policies in place that begun the best eight consecutive years in our economic history: nearly 28 million net new jobs created and four consecutive years of surplus federal budgets. Economic and tax policies and federal budgets implemented between 1993 and January 2001 had America well on the way to eliminate our nation’s debt in or about 2014.
Americans’ quality of life would be dramatically improved by all of us demanding products made in this country. Over time, this would result in greater numbers of decent, good-paying jobs here, enhancing our housing recovery and generating much needed revenue for all levels of government — local, state, federal and public schools, which are the one great equalizer. This would start the comeback of America’s middle class, along with the desperately needed reconstruction of our national infrastructure, and position us to pay down, then eliminate, our national debt.
The Dispatch may be correct that presidential approval of the controversial TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline may temporarily create some 42,000 “well-compensated” jobs in America — not to mention the number of jobs to be created when the inevitable spills occur. Whether the XL pipeline should come to fruition, one must question why Canadian provinces also are rejecting this project.