This piece was written by friend Ray Bryant. He had tried to post it here but had problems and asked if I could do it for him.
If you want to comment, please do.
What this country needs are jobs so I have been thinking about this for a long time. There are two main reasons that we don't have enough jobs for the American population. First, automation of our work processes has put thousands of Americans out of work. Some of you have seen the video of the new machines that lay railroad tracks using only a few humans and a couple of really cool machines. This has happened throughout every industry. When I worked, I was able to reduce the number of employees in our unit from 76 to just 17 in a three year period through the use of new work processes and computers. Think of the farmer that can now tend hundreds of acres without the use of any outside labor. We are so smart in America that we have figured out how to gets things done with very little human interaction.
The second thing that has killed jobs in the America is the availability of cheap labor in other parts of the world. America can't put people back to work here as long as there are people in other countries that are willing to work for less pay than the Americans.
What can we do? We have to put people back to work and we have to stop sending all our dollars overseas for goods and services that we need. Here is my plan:
I would begin by taking advantage of the things we have here in America. First I would put people to work here in the USA looking for oil and natural gas. I would build more refineries and put Americans to work producing gas for our homes and automobiles. There are new technologies today (fracturing and horizontal drilling) that makes it very competitive for the US to economically drill for oil here in America and despite what we have been told, there is an abundance of oil/gas here in the good old USA. In addition to putting Americans to work, we would be able to stop sending cargo ships full of American dollars to other countries. Think how many people we could put to work in America with the $85.00 per barrel that we produce here in America. Also think of all the US dollars we could get from China for our oil. China's need for oil is as big or bigger than America's need for oil. If you don't think there is oil and gas in America, just ask folks in Louisiana, Alaska, Texas, Pennsylvania, and many many other states. Don't believe me do some reading.
My next step would be to look at the next most expensive item that we import and see how we could produce it here in America even if we had to subsidize that production. We could recoup some if not all of the subsidies through the collection of taxes from the workers. When you put someone back to work, you no longer pay unemployment so the cost of that unemployment should also be considered when subsidizing jobs.
Another thing we could start doing is charging other countries a fair price for the food that we export. We are currently selling food items to other countries at a discount and subsidizing the farmers for growing their crops. Time to stop these stupid practices. We have to get a fair price for all our exports and those rich middle eastern countries should be charged for our goods just like we have to pay for their oil.
I believe we should also enforce immigration laws and privatize public schools. Both of these items are a drain on our tax system.
I think it's time that we put together some real plans to fix our economy and stop bowing to the wishes of the special interest groups. The politicians need to understand that if they don't start fixing things they are out of office anyway so they should do what's right for the country and stop worrying about getting re-elected.
That's may opinion. Anyone else have any ideas that will get America moving again?
