The Badger Herald: Opinion: Protect American jobs, basic rights

Opinion

Protect American jobs, basic rights

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Also by Patrick Johnson:

Sex column acceptable act of free speech (March 24, 2009)
Parents key to student success (March 2, 2009)
Cigarette tax hike good for everyone (February 16, 2009)
Protect American jobs, basic rights (February 12, 2009)
FIGs offer tasty first-year option (January 16, 2009)

By Patrick Johnson
Thursday, February 12, 2009 12:00 a.m.

7 Vote 1 Vote

As students, putting the economic situation into perspective is difficult. We focus on our classes, some of us on our jobs and maybe our student loans, but beyond that, we are somewhat detached from the inevitable threats to the American Dream. Meanwhile, the real world is aching, pained with an unemployment epidemic and a gangrened market. To help, the government is poised to throw hundreds of billions of dollars at the States to cure our economic maladies.

This new New Deal will be expensive, but it will allow Wisconsin to rebuild its infrastructure and re-establish a sense of order in chaos. Although the plan is no miracle for the economic conflict that we are enduring, the focus on Wisconsin-made goods and services is the right antidote.

In dire times, Wisconsin can’t afford to send profits and job opportunities abroad because the state and its people need the money here. This is exactly why free trade and outsourcing would only further fester our economic infection.

Recently, to complement the stimulus plan, lawmakers in Wisconsin prescribed two laws to help guide recovery, both of which deal with establishing an intimate partnership between the state and its businesses.

The first, called the Wisconsin First Bill Act or AB1, encourages state bureaucracy to spend at least 2 percent of the budget by patronizing Wisconsin businesses and avoiding outsourcing. What the bill means is that approximately $20 million will be spent within our state rather than overseas.

The second bill, called the American Jobs Act or AB2, is very similar — it just binds another state entity to the same cause. It also obligates the state to enter contracts only with Wisconsin and United States businesses that keep operations in America, rather than overseas.

The AB1 should be praised for many reasons, and not just by Democrats or fair-trade super-liberals. What the bill essentially aims for is a local mindset. The bill only affects 2 percent of the budget, yet is essentially a promise for progress, for looking forward, something that Wisconsin definitely knows how to do. The bill also requires that Wisconsin use the state’s businesses in a greater capacity than years previous.

Rather than thinking about the ways that two percent of business can come from Wisconsin, the bill directs more attention to the question of where the other 98 percent of the money is going. If Wisconsin really thinks this will be an effective way to help heal our state, than shouldn’t we strive diligently for it and aim for something like 20 or even 10 percent?

Though the bill has the clear reason like any goal, the outcome is uncertain. Wisconsin politicians predicted the financial gain of the bill is “indeterminate,” meaning that it is too difficult to know if this will make the state gain or lose money. It sounds a bit risky on the surface, but because the logic behind it appears sound, it is an opportunity Wisconsin is willing to take advantage of.

Both of these bills introduce new values to Wisconsin and the United States. Both are more protectionist in nature, allowing local economies to thrive by producing goods and services for themselves rather than paying for the profits of other economies to prosper. They both are deliberate attempts at refocusing state spending in order to help state businesses out, and although their cost to the government is unknown, the effect on the taxpayer and state as a whole should be positive.

One problem with these Wisconsin bills is a possible altercation with the WTO, but this problem is really a possibility.

Because the United States is a signatory with the World Trade Organization Government Procurement Agreement, favoritism in trade cannot be granted to a domestic state over lowest bidder contracts, which often come from overseas.

This is actually opportunistic for the United States because we need some emancipation from the World Trade Organization. While seeming like an organization to help foster economic growth by deregulation of trade, the WTO is just a heavy steel ball that the United States is tied to while at the bottom of an economic hill. If Americans want to climb out of this recession, we can’t depend on free trade to do it.

Because of NAFTA, the WTO, and traditional free trade values, America can no longer produce goods and services, which is how a country stays healthy. Free trade enable countries like Mexico and China to produce everything so cheap that American manufacturers now have no ability to produce. The physical landscape of America shows this; factories that historically employed a bulk of our country are now sparse.

Often times protectionism is criticized as hindering competition, but if such free trade values are preached and practiced like they are today, America will never be able to produce anything domestically because it can be done cheaper elsewhere. Meanwhile, we rely on beating competition from China and India to produce technology and innovation rather than products that actually sell. The United States shouldn’t shut off imports completely, but there should be more efforts to create jobs to protect America.

Patrick Johnson (prjohnson3@wisc.edu) is a freshman majoring in English and journalism.

7 Comments | Leave a comment

Anonymous | February 12, 2009 7:32 AM | Reply
IP hash: 07028cd4

My Trek (Wisconsin) bike is made in China.

Patrick, America does produce; we are a juggernaut in agriculture.

Just because we’re not making greasy ball bearings and Happy Meal toys, doesn’t mean that we’re out of the manufacturing game. But, through this column, you’ve shown that you’re only interested in perpetuating the ignorant thought of the day.

Anonymous | February 12, 2009 12:48 PM | Reply
IP hash: b5e86bea

American manufacturing output, even in real terms, increases almost every year to this day. It’s just that manufacturing employment continues to fall because technology means that we can produce more with fewer people. Just like the creation of tractors meant we needed less people to farm and more people to manufacture, new technology means we need less people working in factories and more engineers and computer programers working to develop new technology. It’s not a step back, it’s the only way forward.

Anonymous | February 12, 2009 1:40 PM | Reply
IP hash: 70642d0d

Repeal the income tax ammendment and make the federal government live off import duties.

Anonymous | February 12, 2009 1:44 PM | Reply
IP hash: 5d914dd7

Per capita income, China: $6,100 (2008 est.)

Per capita income, Mexico: $14,400 (2008 est.)

Per capita income, U.S.: $48,000 (2008 est.)

The horror!

Patrick: The facts contradict your argument, and so does logic. You think it’s money that makes countries rich? You think that keeping money within a geographically restricted area grows economies? Let’s carry this to a logical conclusion. Instead of “Buy Wisconsin” provisions, how about “Buy Madison” or “Buy Milwaukee” provisions. People in Madison can only buy from other Madisonians, and the same for Milwaukee. Think of all the things you own that can be produced solely with goods from one state, let alone one city. I bet you can count them on one hand, if you own any at all.

Wealth is not created by restricting economic activity. If you think that’s the case, I suggest you move to the protectionist paradise of North Korea.

(per capita estimates come from the CIA World Factbook, and are based on purchasing power parity, which means they’re in real terms).

-Corey Sheahan

Anonymous | February 12, 2009 2:41 PM | Reply
IP hash: c5096552

These are not the ‘worst economic times in 80 years’ that Barrack Obama falsely states and liberal demogogues parrot. The Jimmy Carter administration (1977-1981) brought the USA 21 percent interest rates, 13.5 percent inflation rates, and 7.5 percent unemployment. Those were real hard times, my friends!

By contrast, our current recession has barely tepid 5.5% home mortgage interest rates, a less than 2 percent inflation rate, and 7.5 percent unemployment. Yet we are shrilly admonished that ‘the sky is falling’ and ‘only massive spending on pure pork and socialist agendas’ can get us out of this.

What utter hogwash! This is a recession in the economic cycle. They invariable follow the overheated boom times in business cycles. Get used to it. But what triggered this recession? As we kn, it was problems with the home mortgage lending system.

This recession traces its roots to government interference in what was a well regulated home mortgage lending system, going way back to 1977. (1977 again…could there be a trend here? Hmmmm - Let’s see!) That is when Jimmy Carter and the Democrats decided that the qualification requirements for home mortgages were just ‘too strict’. In 1977, the Carter administration enacted the Community Reinveatment Act. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CommunityReinvestmentAct) It was politicized as helping the “poor people achieve the American dream of home ownership”. The requirements for prospective borrowers to have 20% down payments, a reliable job, and little other debt were ‘relaxed’. The easy money began to flow.

Under the Clinton adminstration in the 1990’s, our law makers again saw fit to ease lending requirements and allowed the increasingly risky loans to be packaged in groups for resale. The banks that were assessing the risk of each loan they were writing could then sell the riskier loans in bundles quickly into the ‘subprime’ market. The banks writing the loans were no longer responsible and culpable if the new borrowers couldn’t meet the monthly mortgage payment. Risk was decoupled from responsiblity. With Clinton administration cronies Franklin Raines and Jamie Gorelick running Fannie Mae and lining their pockets with millions of dollars in bonuses in the late 1990’s, the flow of easy money accelerated. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41165-2004Sep22.html

Enter the new decade and century. Alan Greenspan, John McCain, and others expressed concern with the increasing risk to the nations financial health posed by risks and corruption intrinsic within Fannie Mae, Freddy Mac, and the subprime mortgage market. Their valid and accurate assessments of a gathering financial disaster were demogogued again and sneeringly dimissed by the Democrats. The flow of easy money continued building like a rogue wave headed for the shore.

The Bush administration pushed for tighter lending requirements and greater constraints on Fannie and Freddy. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41165-2004Sep22.html ) Legislation to do that was brought before Congress. A Democrat controlled Congress denied there are any financial risks and refused to support the needed legislation.

Thus,our last opportunity to staunch the financial tsunami was demagogued and thrown away. Now the tidal wave has broken. Many financial houses, from the smallest individual home owners to the greatest of century old banks and financial institutions, have been swept away. More will fall in the coming months, too damaged to be repaired.

Today we sort through the wreckage wrought by 30 years of Democrat devolution of a once-robust and conservatively managed home mortgage lending system. Today 1.5 Trillion dollars ($1,500,000,000,000) of our taxpayer money is deemed essential to begin the clean up of this mess, as Barrack Obama, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Charles Rangel, Chris Dodd, Chuck Schumer, and Harry Reid continue their demagoguery. This is the wrecking crew that created the problem. Do you really think you can trust them to ‘fix’ it?

In high irony, hypocrisy, and deceit, today the Democrats in House and Senate berate conservatives for their “free market, unfettered capitalist debacle”. You know now that it was truly a socialist driven distortion to those market that caused our lending problems and triggered this recession.

As the good socialist democrat Mao Zedong said, “A lie repeated a hundred times becomes the truth.” I’m sure we will here this Democrat lie many more times in the coming months. And somewhere, both Barrack Obama and Chairman Mao are smiling…..

Invictus Maneo

Anonymous | February 12, 2009 5:34 PM | Reply
IP hash: 34f51f46

Invictus, you really need to cut down your babble. No one reads your rants. Regardless, Reagan kept interest rates high much of his presidency AND he kept the high incomes taxed to their teeth. Your hero.

Anonymous | February 20, 2009 10:08 AM | Reply
IP hash: 849a9927

Hello, I just wanted to say that I don’t feel like a protectionist to help Americans keep their jobs and be able to take care of their families. I keep hearing about protectionist and those that are trying to say that going to work for a Japanese company for six years and can’t move up in position because they say that their customers want Japanese people to handle their accounts and talking bad about Americans behind our backs. Illegal workers taking American jobs and there is no accountability. I will fight to keep American jobs here in America first before outsourcing.

It’s time to wake up America and that’s why were in the mess were in. Do what you want but I’m not supporting foreign trade. Sorry for your loss.