Strengthening America and The Public’s Vital Understanding of Productivity

This is a guest post by Dan Focht

America’s strength and its ability to serve its citizens is dependent on its wealth and ability to generate wealth.

Therefore, it is important to understand where our wealth originates as well as a politicians stance on improving life in America.

To illustrate, I’ve divided our commerce into three basic categories to demonstrate where years of political mismanagement have diminished America’s strength and burdened its citizens.

1. Government-induced commerce, which includes the government bureaucracy, military, education and public services. These activities consume enormous amounts of money but they do not produce additive revenue to fund our needs. The government can only redistribute what we have and put us further in debt by borrowing from other countries. BTW, Printing money is not a solution because that does not increase our wealth but it does diminish the value of what we have.

2. Domestic commerce, including domestic consumer spending which includes domestic retail sales, service businesses, health care, insurance, and repair shops etc. These activities are beneficial and essential to our society. However, from an economic perspective, they only shuffle money, that we already have, around within the country. These activities do not contribute to generating new or additive wealth for our country.

3. Domestic production of internationally consumed goods including agriculture, mining and manufacturing. These are activities that generate new and additive revenue by producing items that other nations want and need. Therefore, the purchases from other nations directly increase America’s wealth, enables employment of Americans and generates revenue we need to support ourselves, and our essential obligations! Everything we have and do, even the service sector, is dependent on a healthy productive infrastructure.

America and its productive infrastructure has been weakened by the influence of a liberal sociopolitical philosophy which has resulted in diminishing our ability to grow as a nation and compete globally. From day one through the twenty years post-World War II, free market enterprise and capitalism have provided the incentive and ability for the U.S. to become the most powerful and greatest nation on earth. By the 1960’s while we were enjoying a growing prosperity, the liberal concept of the “Great Society” was used to influenced legislature to enact so many additional taxes, over-burdensome regulations and poor trade laws that our vital productive infrastructure is in a severely weakened condition. The few domestic companies that currently are showing a profit are not sufficient to sustain the entire economy.

Now the Biden administration has been devastating to our vital productive sector. It is the responsibility of our government to provide and sustain an environment conducive to American domestic productivity. It is the responsibility of American business to utilize that environment and be productive.

Unfortunately for the last 50 years government has dropped the ball. We are at a point where we have lost our momentum in the steel, aluminum, auto, tool and die, plastic, electronic and even pharmaceutical industries to name a few. The mining of our natural resources is way over-regulated and agriculture doesn’t pay like it used to. This situation has gotten so bad that even when we develop a new technology the physical products of that technology are typically made elsewhere. The result is, we end up losing our intellectual property and much of the revenue it could have produced if the products were made here! This situation is an example of the effect that the liberal philosophy of overtaxing and over regulating our productive sector has had on America. There are less jobs and opportunities for advancement for American citizens and America becomes more dependent.

The sad reality is that the bureaucracy is now choking on the bureaucracy and our society is paying the price. Many people believe that jobs and the production of products have gone away because greedy companies are looking for lower labor costs. As a manufacturer, I can assure you that U.S. companies prefer to have their products made right here in their own facilities under their own direct control and communicating with English speaking employees, not elsewhere.

The main reason jobs and opportunities are leaving is because of a hostile business environment imposed by our government’s insatiable need for revenue. If Americans want to have job opportunities, products made here in America, a strong economy, restoration of our strength as a nation and not have insurmountable debt, it is imperative to actively support the most powerful economic principle on earth. The incentive that comes from conservative values such as capitalism and free market enterprise, even if it is not politically popular with the libs!

The general public’s view of business is often times misunderstood for the following reason. In America’s early years nearly all companies in America were American owned. They produced and sold their products here in America as well as exported them. As time went on the growth and success of the nation provided the opportunity for greedy power hungry political operatives to influence the government to impose high taxes, over-regulation and poorly thought out trade laws on our vital productive infrastructure.

Due to these pressures, many domestic companies were forced into multinational activities in order to have their products made in a manner that they could remain competitive. They sought any country that gives them the best deal to produce their products. This leaves our domestically owned companies overburdened and disadvantaged to be able to compete globally. As a result our domestic productive infrastructure declined and along with it our ability to employ Americans and generate the wealth we need to sustain and grow the country. Like it or not this is what has happened!

Unfortunately, the general public’s perception of business relates more to these large, politically influential, multinational companies that are not as loyal to American interest as the domestic companies. The public sees only the surface of the issue and tends to vote with the philosophy of “lets stick it to them, because we’re not getting our fair share”.  I can understand the public’s frustration. However, the misdirected anger and political influence has become detrimental to the country.

The Democratic party has harvested and misdirected this perception to lure and attract supporters. It would have been more beneficial to America if the Dems would have been more supportive and favorable to our domestic producers by educating both the public and legislature of the vital necessity of improving Americas domestic productivity. Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be their objective.

The American people have the determination, ability, equipment, and intelligence to work and earn our way out of this problem. If you want jobs and adequate financial resources to meet our needs, lets together make the U.S. a place that both domestic and multinational companies find attractive to be productive. We first must pass legislation that both favors domestic productivity and provides a hospitable environment to be productive. Then and only then will you see the United States return to being a strong, stable, reliable country. Unfortunately it can’t happen overnight, it will take years of physical and political effort. It comes down to this elementary lesson.  “You can’t get away with biting the hand that feeds you and not go hungry”.

We need to have the ability to generate not just wealth but excesses of wealth in order to have enough wealth to meet our needs and care for those truly in need of assistance. Void of that excess of wealth we end up borrowing from other countries thus weakening our global standing. Myself and most other domestic producers are very scared of the near future. If everything that should be done to improve the business environment for domestic American productivity was done today, it would still take a minimum of at least five to seven years to rebuild, retool and reclaim the level of productivity that we should have right now.

We don’t have five to seven years!!!  Now consider the speed of congress and the political forces that shape our nation. Then you realize that we are in big-big trouble!  Even if you are a person dependent on the government, for whatever reason, you should at least understand and follow a philosophy that is supportive of strengthening your country. If America isn’t strong economically, militarily and maintained in a position of world leadership, America can’t help you either!

Politicians have always promoted increasing revenue through tax but they don’t talk about improving our ability to generate wealth.  Pres. Trump’s recognized that America is already broke and he was taking the appropriate steps to loosen the reins on our “domestic” productive sector so we can once again excel and compete effectively in the world? That started to benefit everyone, even the people too unaware to appreciate it! Now with our new clueless president we are seeing America’s productivity diminished again and at a faster rate than anybody expected.

Many companies that I have talked to tell me that they are still trying to recover from Obama years and now that we are being hit again with more of the left’s thoughtless policies they will have to close their doors, do the best they can to take care of their own then and whatever happens, will happen. There is nothing an individual company can do to make up for the ineptness of the administration and the nefarious forces that are controlling the nation.