American politicians have been talking about this for some time now, but most of it still is just so much blah-blah wasted talking and lecturing.
The problem is really quite simple. American capitalists by law must seek the maximum profits for their companies. Thus rather than pay the somewhat higher wages for Americans, and have to deal with all those annoying governmental regulations regarding child labor, minimum wages, workplace safety, and the environmental consequences of their businesses, they have shut down most of their manufacturing plants in America and moved their manufacturing operations to countries where they don't have to comply with all these silly rules and regulations requiring them to be socially responsible.
So most of the GOOD jobs, the manufacturing jobs, have left America. The new jobs are low paying, low responsibility jobs like working at Wal-Mart or Starbucks. The solutions which will bring the good jobs back aren't that difficult, and they are good for America and good for society in general.
America needs to impose import duties on all goods entering the country from overseas in order to raise the prices to what they would have been if the overseas companies had obeyed the same laws that America companies have to follow: Child labor, workplace safety, product safety (no lead paint in children's toys and no toxic chemicals in food), fair labor practices, and the environment. Yes, China will raise bloody hell. They will scream like a stuck pig. Tough luck. The American workers are as smart and as dedicated as people anywhere on the planet. The American workers have been sold out by the capitalists and the politicians.
The second element to bringing the America economy back is to reinstate all of the new deal protections for the financial system which have been eliminated by years of deregulation. Included in this would be moving the American tax system back towards progressive taxation. What we have evolved to is a system where we are now actually taxing the poor and middle classes to make the upper class even wealthier.
This reverse Robin Hood situation is not sustainable. It will result in all sorts of nasty unintended consequences. The longer we wait to deal with it, the uglier things will be when it is finally dealt with.
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