FOOTNOTE ON GOD AND COUNTRY
John Q. Pridger
"Those people who will not be governed by God will be ruled by
tyrants." William Penn
William Penn was right, of course. The federal and state governments
have long ago thrown off the constitutional fetters that once mandated
"limited republican government, by consent of the governed."
That circumstance has effectively left government answerable to God
alone (for the people have remained silent and accepting of more and
more government power). If the notion of God above can be successfully
eliminated from the official political culture, the Almighty State will
be upon us in all its destructive and tyrannical glory. In truth, it is
already upon us. But for some important references in the Declaration
of Independence and Constitution (which is still acknowledged as the
Supreme Law of the Land — even by the ACLU), state tyranny is all but
an officially established fact.
The desired elimination of all religious reference and official
acknowledgement of God in the halls of government power may appear a
matter of simple and unimportant semantics to the average humanist —
and even some Christians. But there's more at stake here than they can
possibly realize — otherwise there could be no call for the official
elimination of God from our political mask regardless of religious
belief, or lack thereof.
Has God favored our nation and the fifty states and their peoples? Do
men (and women, too, of course) — as opposed to governments and
multi-national corporations — possess "God-given,"
unalienable rights? Or shall we accept what the almighty lawyers at the
ACLU and in the federal courts seem to wish to mandate — that the
state has no power above it, and is, itself, the nearest thing to a
heavenly father we can ever hope to have?
Ironically, the Constitution is acknowledged as the Supreme Law of the
Land by the ACLU. But the Constitution is null and void without
official acknowledgement of God, for it is predicated upon, and given
validity by, the Declaration of Independence which preceded it. The
Declaration of Independence (and, of course, the brave God-fearing men
who fought the American Revolution), established the right to form a
new nation, independent of the mother country, invoking Divine guidance
and officially establishing (for the first time in the history of
governments), the unalienable God-given rights of men. If those
references to God are officially discounted today, that makes the whole
document and all that has proceeded from it (including the Constitution
and national government itself), a huge, two century old fraud.
If there is an Almighty God, it is imperative that men and their
governments acknowledge subservience to Him. If there is no God, it's
even more imperative to keep government fettered and constrained by an
official fiction that there is. Else tyranny has a broad and unimpeded
path to follow.
John Q. Pridger, 11 February 2004
JOB OUTSOURCING
"If we lose top level knowledge work -- architecture, engineering
and IT -- to offshore then our economy is in real trouble."
(Brandon B. Read, in the April, 2004 issue of the "Call Center
Magazine")
The economy was in real trouble the moment the national leadership
committed to globalism and began using taxpayers' money to the
subsidize the export of American factories and industrial jobs.
The economy was in trouble long before that, of course. It was in
trouble as soon as Congress forgot what "limited government"
and "balanced budgets" were. It was in trouble when Congress
forgot what "government of the people, by the people, and for the
people" was.
But now that "knowledge workers" are seeing their jobs
heading to the four points of the compass, articulate people are
beginning to complain loud enough in the right quarters, and are
beginning to be heard.
Others are beginning to make themselves heard too. On January 23, 2004
the federal budget signed by president Bush contained an amendment
preventing the outsourcing of "new federal contracts." This
seems like a somewhat good idea, of course. Imagine if all federal
agencies began doing contract outsourcing of all their lower and
mid-level desk jobs! Pridger wouldn't put it past our national planners
to encourage such a thing.
No telling how many federal contracts had already been outsourced to
save tax dollars. Presumably the IRS staffers are still in the various
Internal Revenue Service Centers rather than in India or the
Philippines.
Apparently, our politicians and elected officials are beginning to
think. Obviously, they're trying to head off any future movement to
outsource "their" jobs.
One of the wonderful things about having exported such a large
percentage of our good, high-paying, industrial jobs, and the
outsourcing of knowledge workers jobs, is that none of the workers
filling the new offshore jobs have to pay any income tax. This not only
thwarted the intents of "trickle-down" economics, but all
attempts to balance the budget on the backs of labor. This has had its
downside, of course -- mainly by having having gutted the national
economy of the benefits of millions of "good jobs." The up
side is that labor no longer pays the lion's share of the costs of
government that it once did, back in the good bad old days before
globalization.
While Joe Six-Pack was losing his good job, and the great middle class
was shrinking and getting poorer -- and the poor classes getting poorer
and much bigger -- the last three decades produced an awful lot of
millionaires and a considerable number of billionaires. After all, what
would have been the wages of all the down-sized workers had to go
somewhere -- and not much of it went to the new $.50 to $2.00 per hour
offshore workers.
In spite of all the tax cuts for the rich, and all the additional tax
breaks they continue to enjoy, the rich now pay more of the costs of
government than ever before in our nation's history. There has
apparently been a total reversal of the classes that pay the major
costs of government. The rich pay more and the poor pay less. The
working poor (at least those who still have fairly decent jobs), still
pay too much.
JOHN KERRY'S "JOBS" CREATION PROGRAM AND THE ABCs OF
ECONOMICS
John Kerry has revealed how he is going to save and create American
jobs. A president Kerry would stop subsidizing American corporations
willing to move their production overseas! He doesn't believe American
workers' ought be be forced to pay companies for exporting their jobs,
as they have been doing for a couple of decades or more.
Well, so far so good. American workers should not have to pay to
encourage their employers to go elsewhere leaving them with an empty
bag. Unfortunately, few Americans (even at this late date), realize
they have been doing this.
Neither political party has advertised the fact, nor has the media
spent much time telling the American people how they are being abused
by the "free trade" policies promoted and passed by both
Democrats and Republicans.
The left hand of government (the Democrats), thought it was a good idea
to build up the international competition in poor countries so that
their poor peoples would have more and better employment opportunities.
The right hand of government (the Republicans), thought it was a good
idea to give American Corporations a competitive advantage by helping
them move offshore where they could cash in on the bonanza of cheap
labor and much higher profits. Together, they decided that it would
speed things up considerably to pay American corporations to move
offshore. They both considered that this made good economic sense.
Kerry would free the taxpaying public from having to pay to send jobs
abroad. This is how he would "save" and/or "create"
ten million American jobs. To help make this more palatable to
corporate America, he's also going to cut corporate income taxes by
10%.
He is not proposing to do anything to actually bring industry back to
America, or to really discourage companies from moving offshore. That
would be anti-free trade and anti-free market -- globalistic heresy. He
thinks they ought to have the right to move offshore to gain the
benefit of cheap labor -- that's business as usual, as it ought to be
in a free market -- but he would force corporations that do move
offshore to move at their own expense, rather than requiring the
taxpayer to pay the fare.
So Kerry has promised to address at least the most malicious aspect of
the job export problem. At least that's more than the Republicans have
as yet proposed.
"Economics is a lot simpler than economists and ideologues would
have you believe. Capitalists are motivated by greed. End of story. To
change their harmful behavior, you have to take away from them the only
thing they care about -- money." (Charley Reese)
In the arena of international trade, protective tariffs (and even
punitive tariffs when appropriate), together with rational levels of
regulation of capital, are the only rational way to stop capital
depredations in their tracks and insure a sustainable economy and
prosperous America.
You don't pay capital to move production abroad so it can take
advantage of cheap labor. It will do that anyway if it is in the least
more profitable to do so. The only solution to the problem is to make
it prohibitively expensive for capital to betray both the flag and
American labor.
American workers have not only been required to stand helplessly aside
while their own government betrayed them, but to purchase the bullets
with which capital (and their own government), has been assassinating
them.
We must not forget that the real costs of our free trade policy, and
all those inexpensive imported consumer goods, are even now becoming
exponentially higher in terms of what the taxpayer is being required
provide in subsidies. Bringing Homeland Security to the global arena of
international trade, including our seaports and maritime assets, is
coming with a mind-boggling price tag -- none of which will ever show
up at the Wal-Mart checkout counter. Nor will they do anything for Wall
Street, except maybe eventually help deflate it.
WHAT PROTECTIVE TARIFFS DO IN A NUTSHELL
If an American factory, with American workers, can produce a pair of
shoes for $10.00 and the shoes sell for $25.00 at the Wal-Mart checkout
counter, and...
If a foreign factory, because of cheap labor, can produce an identical
pair of shoes for $5.00, and sold at Wal-Mart for $25.00, then...
A $5.00 tariff on the importation of each pair of imported shoes
produced for $5.00 brings the price to $10.00.
The $10.00 "cost" then is equal, whether at the American
factory door, or at the the seaport warehouse door.
Price parity has been achieved at the point where the pair of shoes
begins its march through domestic trade channels, enroute to the
Wal-Mart shelves.
This is what "protectionism" does for American factories and
American workers. It is an equalizer with an added bonus. The $5.00
tariff becomes government revenue which means that $5.00 will not have
to be extracted from American labor through income tax.
Before 1913 there was no income tax. Tariffs and duties were two
significant means by which the federal government was financed. Ah, but
those were simpler, more rational, times!
All modern day economic arguments against protective tariffs are made
by and on behalf of international capital, though the consumer is
always used as the supposed beneficiary of their free trade agenda. It
is said that to engage in protectionism is to deprive the consumer of
the full array of potential bargains the international marketplace
would otherwise offer. But in the arena of consumer markets, prices
always rise to what the market will bear. That's an immutable law of
business.
The only time when this "law" of business does not apply is
when competing businesses underbid one another in an attempt to gain
market share, dominance, or monopoly. This is referred to as healthy
competition.
When imports from cheap wage countries are allowed to compete for
market share in a high wage country, domestic production will be
knocked out every time. Once domestic production has been forced from
the field, normal pricing law reasserts itself, and the price will be
set at what the market will bear.
The American standard of living has not increased for anybody (except,
perhaps, the most affluent fifth of the population), during our era of
free trade. For most of us, it has actually decreased, though we may
have a lot more electronic gadgets and diversions than before. Under
trade protectionism we would have got those gadgets anyway, except they
would have been evidence that more Americans were productively employed
than ever before.
Back in the bad old days when Americans made just about everything that
they bought and consumed, things were cheap. Just as cheap (in real
adjusted terms), if not even cheaper, than they are now. And the
quality of American made goods was consistently high. "Made in
Germany" perhaps meant higher quality in some items, but German
imports were more expensive, and rightly so.
Before the era of globalism and capital deregulation, protectionism was
called for by American business. It was American industry that our
government was called upon to protect. Industry has for a long time had
more voice than workers or people. That protectionism also happened to
protect workers and jobs was merely auxiliary to that national
imperative. Now unleashed, and integrated into the global marketplace,
major business interests no longer want protection. Without it they can
make much higher profits.
In fact, if American business was once again required to be loyal to
America, and had to survive paying exclusively American wages to
American workers, it would go into paralytic withdrawal. It simply
can't be done cold turkey -- but it MUST be done by careful and
deliberate degrees if "We the People" are to ever regain any
semblance of control of our nation, and regain the full benefit of
national stakeholdership.
THE CAMEL'S HEAD IN THE DOOR -- FIRST MAJOR CRACK IN OUR ECONOMIC ARMOR
Japan was the first major "cheap labor" nation to be given
carta blanc to penetrate the American market after World War Two.
Initially, "Made in Japan" usually meant "junk" to
most Americans. But quality soon got better -- much better. Before
anybody realized what was going on, the Japanese were able to dominate
the American market in many electronics fields, with high quality
products. Some of America's most groundbreaking innovations, such as
VCR's, never even had a chance for production in America. Then we began
to completely lose radio and TV production industries and more.
We exported billions of tons of dirt cheap scrap steel to Japan, and
pretty soon the Japanese came along with quality automobiles that many
Americans preferred to the large domestic models. The price of gasoline
was on the rise, and Japanese cars were smaller and more economical
than American cars. Since then, the Japanese have continued to produce
an increasingly large share of America's cars and heavy machinery.
The major inroads that Japan made into our markets were accomplished
while Japan was still a relatively "cheap labor" country.
They had some great advantages. Japan was already an industrialized
nation, though recently almost totally devastated by war. And it was a
country full of smart energetic people determined to overcome their
recent national humiliation. But most of all, with regard to its
penetration of the American market, Japan was given privileged access
as a form of "war reparations for the defeated."
No nation other than America had ever been so generous to a recently
defeated former enemy. It seemed only right after Nagasaki and
Hiroshima. And so it may have been. We were big enough to absorb a
great deal of Japanese production without undue economic consequences.
At least, that's what we thought.
Little did Americans suspect that the penetration of the American
market by the Japanese was only a pilot project for bigger things to
come -- that the American market was soon to be similarly opened to
cheap labor countries around the world which (utilizing the tremendous
advantages only America's own capital and taxpayers could provide),
would drive American production away from its own shores in the whole
array of consumer market products. America, the greatest production
engine of all times, was about to serve a New World Order as a large
consumer market, actively undermining its own productive industrial
base.
Pridger has always thought it nothing less than "funny" that
we have often expressed our national displeasure that Japan has never
been eager to buy American cars. We accused them of
"protectionism" and "dumping," and refusing to
"Buy American!" But why would the Japanese buy American when
they can produce whatever they need? They only need raw materials, not
finished products, and they have always been ready and willing to buy
them from us as cheaply as we are willing to sell. We dumped a lot of
scrap metal on them, and they thanked us. Why wouldn't they
"dump" their products on the American market? That's
business. That's how market share is gained.
For some odd reason, the Japanese have continued to run their nation as
if they had their own national interests foremost in mind. How
peculiar!
THE AFTERMATH OF WORLD WAR TWO
Germany and the other nations devastated by World War Two were given
plenty of help too, of course. But there was a significant difference.
Europe rebuilt itself with our help by producing first for its own
continental consumer markets, quickly restoring and exceeding their
pre-war living standards. The pre-war living standards in Japan had
never been very high in Western terms. So Japan rebuilt itself by
producing first for the American market, and only secondarily upgrading
the wages and living standards of the Japanese people.
Both the Japanese and German economic models proved to be miraculously
successful. In an ironic twist of history, both nations were to soon to
become America's chief creditors. Thirty years after the war a detached
observer, with no knowledge of previous events, looking at economic
strengths, might have thought it had been America that had lost the
war. And Great Britain? The observer would clearly see that it had lost
the war, for its great empire was gone. Clearly, the winners had been
the Soviet Union, Japan, and Germany.
John Q. Pridger