Restore Free Enterprise

START HERE: Bring Home the Factories and Jobs by Either Creating a Revenue Neutral Value Added Tax, or Exiting the WTO and Adding Tariffs.

Every industrialized country in the world has a Value Added Tax which acts like a trade tariff. Except the United States, which stands alone in not having a VAT. Lacking a VAT puts manufacturing in the United States at a huge disadvantage. It sends factories and jobs out of the country. The only way to get them back is to institute its own VAT.

Or, the US could exit the World Trade Organization (WTO) and implement a system of import tariffs. This always brings-on trade wars with other countries. The recently implemented US tariffs are not allowed under WTO rules. These have resulted in the expected retaliatory tariffs of the current trade war.

The United States developed into the world’s greatest industrial power with the most prosperous middle class by promoting and protecting American industries and American jobs. Joining the World Trade Organization and abandoning our sovereign policy of import tariffs has led to massive unemployment, underemployment, and a decreased standard of living. Import tariffs are the only proven way to cause domestic industrial investment and prevent the siphoning-off of the assets and wealth of the nation. The greatest loss of prosperity and assets occurs in the middle class. Restoring the import tariff system will rapidly restore the economy of the United States and the prosperity of the middle class.

The reason for the implementation of the World Trade Organization and the so-called policy of “Free Trade” is to allow multinational corporations to outsource production and pocket the extra profits that come from the seemingly lower costs in other countries. But this “Free Trade” isn’t free at all. The costs of these extra profits are extracted from the Middle Class and Poor of the United States. But, it is even worse than that.

There is a simplistic and fallacious argument that the outsourcing of jobs is justified because labor costs are less in the outsourced foreign countries and that the people of the United States are getting lower cost products and services. This argument is utterly false. They actually cost us MORE than domestically produced products and services. The products only appear to cost less because they do not include all of the hidden costs that we must pay to subsidize the foreign production and extra profits. The Hidden costs include the loss of jobs, the downgrading of the quality of jobs, the loss of revenue to the ancillary and service businesses, and the loss of opportunity for Americans to start small businesses in the USA. Each of these is paid for by all Americans. When a job is lost, the unemployed person does not magically disappear. They are still living and consuming resources from other Americans by getting Welfare, unemployment benefits, help from friends and family, or engaging in crime—which raises the costs of policing, the judicial system, prisons, and the actual damages caused by their crimes. There are also the costs due to increased drug and alcohol use, and added health costs from the increased stress of not having a job.

We hear that we are now in the age of globalization and must adjust to these new realities of free global trade. This is not true. There is nothing new about it. We have had widespread and heavy global trade for at least 400 years—going back to about 200 years before the founding of the United States.

This same “Free Trade” scheme was used to decimate the middle classes of each of the previously strongest national economies of the Netherlands and Great Britain.

Making It Work for Both Sides

• Bring Back the Off-Shored Manufacturing Jobs
• Eliminate Unemployment
• Create Low-Cost Non-Fossil Sustainable Energy
• Increase Industrialization
• Develop an Advanced National Infrastructure
• Expand the Middle Class
• Create Enduring Prosperity
• Restore the American Dream

Optimize the Left and the Right

Just as birds fly best with two healthy wings, economies function best when simultaneously utilizing both the left and right wings of economics. It is disastrous to exclude half of the economic tools. It is also pathetically ineffective to hamstring a policy by compromising in the middle. But this is the typical solution to resolving the differences between the Left and the Right.

Eaglenomics has a groundbreaking political stance on economics: it  has determined that the best results come from combining left wing economics with right wing economics. It optimizes the balance between the business free market and government programs. The economy is further enhanced with a corrected application of the fiat monetary system which unshackles the economy for maximum employment, production, standard of living, and national financial health. Eaglenomics has determined how to combine the opposites in a way that produces a much greater outcome than prior economic approaches.

Eaglenomics includes restoring development policies that were implemented early in the history of the United States. These policies were put in place to cause the industrialization of the United States. At that time we imported industrial goods and exported raw materials. It was not possible to compete with cheap European manufactured goods because their wages were much lower than ours and their industrial base was already built-up. Global trade was destroying our ability to advance our economy and standard of living. To counter this, we implemented a series of heavy import tariffs to allow domestic manufacturing to compete with European manufacturing.

Because we have abandoned the tariffs that created our industrialization and wealth, we have been losing the manufacturing to countries with lower labor rates. It is not possible to stop this slide into impoverishment without restoring the policies that protect our industrial base. Eaglenomics will restore the industrial base by either working within the rules of the World Trade Organization or by reverting to the policy position that had created unrivaled industrial strength.

In the more than 50 years that have transpired since the 1960’s, tremendous advances have occurred in science and technology. We should be seeing a huge rise in the standard of living, yet the new generations are facing ever more difficulty in achieving a modicum of their parent’s and grandparent’s standard of living and security. The current economic approach has not converted these knowledge advances into broad economic improvement. With a shrinking middle class, disinvestment, de-industrialization, and massive unemployment, it is time to look to a new economic paradigm.

Under the innovations of this new economic system, we will see the virtual elimination of unemployment and poverty; drastically reduced fuel costs; free advanced education; free health insurance; drastically reduced crime and incarceration rates; the rapid re-industrialization of the nation; the rapid expansion of the middle class; the restoration of upward mobility; increased opportunity in business; and a secure and abundant Social Security retirement system. As we examine each area’s improprieties, the potential for colossal improvement should be glaring.

Eaglenomics utilizes the best economic tools from both the liberal and conservative sides (the Left and the Right), and also from the government sector and the business sector. Simultaneously using the best economic tools from each of these areas creates the best solutions.

THE GLOOM AND DOOM FALLACY

You’ve been told that the United States is doomed: that we’ve mortgaged the future of several generations of Americans due to the national debt; that we can’t compete; that there’s no hope of restitution. But, these are merely the result of failed economic knowledge and policies. Correcting the economic deficiencies that suppress prosperity will unleash the tremendous capabilities that have built up with the advancements in science and engineering over the past several decades.

THE WAY TO FREEDOM, STRENGTH, SECURITY, AND PROSPERITY