Help me fix the Economy

Economic Reformation in 1165 words.

While driving down Main St. in your home town you start to notice that the businesses you grew up shopping at are disappearing. The corner store is dark at night with plywood boards covering the windows. What used to be beautifully manicured lawns and thriving population is now turning into a tick and flea infested eyesore scarring the face of our Mother Earth. While our representation makes deals with foreign markets, immigrants both legal and illegal take our children's jobs. Some of our most wealthy companies are employing our fiscal adversaries. When you call for tech support and the person answering the phone can barely communicate with you because of both distance and language barriers, is that helpful? In turn, is it helpful for US(Citizens of the United States of America) to allow our biggest bread winners to give the bread away overseas?

The simple answer: No.

WE the PEOPLE of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA still hold the keys to economic stability and superiority. Our mothers and fathers and again their mothers and fathers have already told us the stories. They told us what it was like in the Great Depression. Being human beings did we listen? No. Is it too late? Never.

Now you ask, "How do we fix it?"

The simple answer: Buy American.

ABSTRACT:

Walking through my local store of choice with a list of things I need for dinner, we will save a small part of the economy and start training ourselves in a discipline that will indeed save our entire way of life. The list:

Meat (chicken and beef)
Beans (pinto)
Rice (Mexican)
Tortillas
Green Pepper
Onion

BEEF: Thank God that our beef is still grown on a farm just outside of our city. The beef is untainted and as fresh as our current system will allow. Beef is easy: Buy daily, eat daily. This allows you to not only have a higher quality of flavor from the food but to also dodge any microbes that would find their tiny little pincers in the flesh of your meat. This will reduce the amount of WASTE from food that sits in the fridge and does no one any good. That could have fed a recently laid off factory worker who is now unable to find work because he is either over or under qualified. WE as God fearing, loving, and faring people are SUPPOSED to take care of each other. Not waste food on the garbage disposal. If we had BOUGHT AMERICAN those people would still be working.

CHICKEN: Buy American. Look at the packaging. Where was it made? Do not be fooled by, "Lovingly Distributed by Washington and George, Inc." This is how those who are not US subvert our good senses and feign being family. There is not a single religion in the world who believes in lying or cheating. It is OUR complacency that makes us walk down the isle and grab the CHEAPEST thing on the shelf. BUYING AMERICAN may seem to cost more at the point of sale, but in turn, every dollar we give away could be used for them to advance their technology, their education, and their weapons. Again, BUY AMERICAN.

BEANS: There is a generations old family in this country who advertises that their secret recipe is known only to the dog. Not to name names, but from my most recent shopping adventure, they are the ONLY brand of pinto beans on the shelf that are MADE IN THE USA. So what if it costs me fifty cents more. That is fifty less cents that THEY have to make bullets with. That is fifty more cents that WE have going into our government's tax coffer. The net gain, one US dollar. BUY AMERICAN.

RICE: Being but a humble man of meager means and with a wife who cut the legs off of my pants, I was forced into buying a product that was NOT MADE IN THE USA in this category. However, I did have many choices. Let us look at some nations who make and sell rice. China, India, Mexico, and South Korea. I am pretty sure that the Chinese should be using their own rice to feed their own people.
India = See China. Mexico (this is the product I bought, we were making fajitas.) and South Korea. Of these four nations, Mexico and South Korea are most definitely our allies. If you don't buy from the local producer, maybe it was Sunday and he was not working, you may as well buy from someone who sits next to him on the Chamber of Commerce. It is better to provide bullets for a neighbor you trust than for one who covets and envies what you have. BUY ALLIES.

TORTILLAS: Amazingly, WE have a lot of people in this country who used to be from further south. These people PAY THEIR TAXXES. These people smile at you when you walk by. These people make some pretty darn good authentic tortillas. So be it, they may send money to their family down south, but that money is NOT to buy bullets. That money is to provide a better quality of living for those that they call family. That is exactly what we are trying to do here.

GREEN PEPPER and ONION: Seriously... this is a no brainer. You stick a seed in the ground. Later on through the magic of God and Science, a flower blooms. Then, get this, the flowers falls off and a FRUIT comes off the plant. Holy cow, and you thought fruit came from the super market. Grow your own. If you can't, go to the FARMERS MARKET. If you can't, then at least BUY AMERICAN. If that is impossible, fajitas taste just fine without them.

CONCLUSION:

As you can see this is a pretty simple process. It might take you an extra twenty to thirty minutes to get your shopping done. Don't have thirty minutes to spare? Why not? Maybe because you are working two jobs to support a way of life that you want. If you had BOUGHT AMERICAN in the first place, you would have more than enough time to enjoy shopping again.

These simple principles can be carried out on EVERY purchase you make throughout your lifetime. This method of thinking is not limited to food. See that faded sign across the street from your old stomping ground? Remember how you grew up with the children of that small business owner? By failing to BUY AMERICAN you supplied the bullets that got them killed in a war you do not believe in. By failing to BUY AMERICAN we have all weakened ourselves.

This country was based on adhesion. We are based on brotherhood. We are based on a true grit and God guided persistence that cannot be stopped. If your great grandfather could make it through a depression followed by this nation's greatest feats, why can't you?

-God's humble servant,
your humble helper,

-Sean P. Smith

While I agree with the premise of your desire to change what has been done, I hate to say it, but this was attempted by people in the US Congress, Corporate America, and Main Street America during the 1990's and it failed measurably. I remember seeing television advertisements from Congressmen and major Corporations telling people to look for the USA flag on the goods they bought. Businesses that tried to compete against other businesses who didn't participate with it, saw record losses.

This wasn't due to experiencing a loss of profit from sales, but rather due to the US tax code that hit them with heavy taxation of Capital Gains. While the businesses who participated with the Made in USA campaign were based in the US, the businesses who didn't participate, were obviously not based here. What happened was that the businesses based in the US had to pay Capital Gains Tax on not only the profits they produce here in the US, but they also had to pay taxes on what they produced over seas from other counties as well as in the US. Meanwhile the businesses who were selling products from overseas were smart enough to realize that if they based their corporation overseas in one of the handful of countries at the time that would NOT tax them on profits produced from other counties, they would not only be able to compete against the Made in the USA campaign, but destroy their competition.

To date I believe the US is one of a handful of counties still trying to tax profits from businesses produce in house and over seas. This is one reason why you see the shift to outsourcing telecommunications and other relatively virtual services.

The other unseen issue is that the cost of building the infrastructure necessary to produce a product in the US is drastically higher compared to countries that have no environmental laws, no labor laws, no civil rights, and much lower labor cost.

In business the ability to make money means more than the ability to support patriotism. This is the cold hard truth. If the US wants their jobs back? If they want their control of the economy? If they want to know what it means to be responsible for themselves? They must be willing to take it back.

At this point in time, I don't believe it will be taken back in my life time. I have seen too many of our rights, freedoms, and responsibility just pushed aside without any remorse or thought to consider the impact. The reason why the businesses left is because they realized they couldn't succeed in this county anymore. They saw how the far left were going to rob them of their ability to make money. They understood that the US government was ready to assume control of every aspect of their business lives.

There is a Quote that has been around for a while....

The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence

From Bondage to Spiritual Faith
From Spiritual Faith to Great Courage
From Courage to Liberty
From Liberty to Abundance
From Abundance to Selfishness
From Selfishness to Complacency
From Complacency to Apathy
From Apathy to Dependency
From Dependency back into Bondage

Most commonly attributed to
"The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic"
by Alexander Fraser Tytler Lord Woodhouselee (1748-1813)
(Scottish judge and historian at Edinburgh University)

If this sequence represents an accurate prediction of a Republic based on a Democracy, I would say we are well on our way to Dependency.

The question is how long will our dependency last, and how bad will our bondage be, before we can see the Spiritual Faith we need to obtain the great courage we must have to experience the liberty we once knew?

Good reads ^

I agree with much said and I think the sequence of civilizations is often the sequence of peoples lives., unfortunatly.

I wish trade with other countries did not exist at all. Or if it did then I wish the taxes were complete opposite, making it more worth for the people to buy inside their own countries.

As a nation blessed by the Almighty I'm afraid we have squandered away the blessings.