An Economic Opinion

The rolling tide of real economic change looks to be more of a wavelet than a sweeping reform.

The government seems to be relentlessly committed to throwing our money at the economic problems they created. I see there is $275 billion "stimulus" earmarked as tax breaks for business that invest in new machinery and equipment. That is well and good, but does nothing for the small businesses that are the backbone of economic America. Why should they go in debt for equipment they do not need just to get a tax break? I'm sure big business will suck this up by buying machinery they don't need and sticking it in a warehouse and then taking depreciation deductions for several years, or even show a loss of profit or even a net loss by making the expenditures.

Every once in awhile, you will hear of someone actually addressing the root of our economic mess, but they are quickly and quietly shushed by the ones that know "the real facts". The basis of the problem lies in the Ronald Reagan era when government deregulated big businesses that needed regulation, castrated the laws that would allow regulation when it is warranted, and brought the working man's power to bargain collectively for a fair wage and decent working conditions to its knees. Big business was given a free reign to do as it pleased, even with tax breaks for which working America had to pay and are still paying. George H. Bush just wanted to go down in history as being a President of the United States, and was incapable of doing anything positive. When he was running against Reagan for the Republican nomination, H. Bush called Reaganomics "voodoo economics", then did nothing to change things when he could have done so. Bill Clinton exacerbated the stink by shoving the so called North American Free Trade Agreement (N.A.F.T.A. or NAFTA) up our noses. Nothing was ever said about it being a fair trade agreement. I was for the law when it was first publicized, but I looked into what Ross Perot was saying about the bad things that could and would come of any such agreement; remember "the giant sucking sound" from south of the border? Mr. Perot was correct in a lot of his assumptions, because a huge amount of American jobs went south to Mexico and beyond. How many textile mills or furniture factories or consumer electronics producers now exist in the United States? I don't blame our North American neighbors; I blame us!

Then came the clincher; not only as wise citizens did we allow George W. Bush and Dick Cheney to steal the 2000 election, we allowed them to throw unwarranted fears into us that ended up getting them elected for real in 2004. We deserve every underhanded deal done by that administration which has resulted in the direness of the situation we are now facing.

In short, we need to address the root problems somewhere along the line before all that borrowed money is shoved into the hands of big business. It likely will not happen because there are too many politicians left in Congress that cannot admit they were wrong for so many years. We do need some stop-gap fixes before all is lost, but has anyone said "what if all this money doesn't work"? Remember this: big business in the United States is not for creating lots of jobs for a lot of workers; it is for creating a lot of wealth for a few. Just look at Wall Street if you want proof. Is General Motors creating jobs with its billions in bailout cash? They are actually cutting jobs and wages.
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