BUILDING WHAT?

For any country to be a world power, it must have a strong manufacturing base. Buying and selling items built by someone else is an essential part of any economy, but it is important to be self-sufficient by building the things we need in our own country. Today we Americans are facing competition on a global scale. We must compete with countries that are using, in essence, slave labor; many of those workers are paid 30 cents per hour. Common sense will tell you that it is next to impossible for American companies to compete even when they are only paying the minimum wage for our workers.

When you open your Christmas gifts this year, take a look at where those items are built. Most all of the electronic gadgets that we enjoy are entirely built in Asia, or at least most of the components are built there. One example is Video Recorders, that technology was developed here in the United States, but you will not find any built here. We Americans are getting to the point where we actually build very little; we are becoming retailers that only sell other people’s products.

America was once the manufacturing giant of the world, and because of that ability our country played a large part in winning the Second World War. Our fathers and grandfathers didn’t win WW2 because they were smarter than the axis powers. They defeated them because they were able to produce the material needed to support the war effort. We Americans have gotten into a bad habit of assuming that the flow of the necessities that we need will always be there. Politics and world opinion change every day. There can be a terrorist attack or some country may decide to place an embargo against us.

We often hear about our need to be energy sufficient, but we hear little about being sufficient in our manufacturing base. Over the next few years, you will be hearing big plans for the government to provide increased worker's pay, college tuition, health-care costs, and other issues that touch all Americans. We need to remember that all of these things sound good on campaign ads, but they all require money. When we put more pressure on the existing employers in this country, it will only drive more of them to do business with countries with a huge cheap labor force. 

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