Greg (gansky1):
I do understand what you are saying, and you're absolutely right that there's no simple solution. What I am trying to speak to is the present tendency of many corporations and businesses to have it all their way, with no responsibility to anyone.
One thing that might help is if health insurance was the law of the land, instead of an optional benefit. If every business pays a share (with people picking up their own share, which should be the largest piece of the pie; they're not working 24/7), then no one has a cost/price advantage based in not offering coverage. Massachusetts has already taken steps to do this; there are governmental subsidies for those who genuinely cannot afford coverage. The system will, hopefully, pay employers back for their insurance coverage expenses in the form of tax savings when people in desperate need no longer have to run up huge, unpayable bills in taxpayer-funded public hospitals. Like every other change, the Massachusetts system will undoubtedly have some kinks in it, and some unintended consequences. But they're trying something, which is more than I can say for most places. Here in Atlanta, our major public hospital, Grady, has ended up in dire trouble over uninsured patients. Saving it has been a booger, and it's not over yet.
In my opinion (and I consider this an appreciative discussion between friends, not an argument), it might help the American worker a great deal to make plant closings and outsourcing less immediately profitable. The job-elimination tax I propose would serve one purpose I consider very necessary to this country's future: Making companies and corporations consider alternatives to the easy way out. Right now, if you are a washer manufacturer, you can profit immediately and enormously by closing your American plants and having machines made in China. Finding ways to remain competitive while continuing to contribute to the prosperity of your community takes a lot more work, work many CEOs and management people don't seem to be willing to put in. Is is possible that an American company might be able to produce a product with advantages and benefits that cannot be matched in other countries? I'd like to see companies spending a little more time trying to figure that one out, instead of just saying to workers, "Don't let the door hit ya on the way out."
I know enough about you as a person, Greg, to know that your position is what you say it is, and that you are conscientiously struggling with realities you didn't make. But I want to offer the viewpoint that perhaps we should all be working together to change the rotten realities we've got now. I've mentioned some things that I think business might do or be required to do by government. I also think that individual consumers are going to have to grapple with the end of the free ride they've been getting. I remember when a 5000 BTU window air conditioner was about $225. Today, it's $89 on sale, and that's great if you're just worried about being cool. But people have to have at least some willingness to consider what happened to an American manufacturing plant, the people who worked in it, and the city in which it was located, to make that $89 price possible.
That will be the hard part. For a long time, it has been easy to be spoiled, without even admitting you are spoiled. Prices on many things have been artificially low for a long time, with many people receiving fat American paychecks, and demanding prices based on Third World wage scales. But as the economies of operation possible in the Third World increase in popularity with companies, fewer Americans will enjoy that fat American paycheck. What began as a few attractive bargains is becoming an addictive way of life, fueling a race to the bottom that is snarfing up American jobs and communities. Low prices are just the beginning.
One way that our government could help is to re-examine free trade agreements, and begin a process of redefining them so that we have free trade only with nations that have wage scales closer to American ones. Not identical, mind you, but something closer than we have today. It would be a very intricate and difficult task to accomplish, and it would have to work hand-in-hand with the acceptance of higher prices I mentioned in the previous paragraph, but it is another idea that might have some benefit. It's another way the playing field might possibly be re-levelled. At least let's look into it- that's more than our gummint is doing now.
I do appreciate the position of business owners like yourself. But I do want to see some of the excesses we've gotten trapped into curbed, and that's going to take a lot of ideas and frankly, some balls. But if we don't do it, the next jobs lost may be our own.
