Wednesday, January 28, 2004

These are important issues nobody is addressing

I do not know which way to vote in the upcoming election. I am not really seeing much discussion on the issues that I am concerned with in any of the media. There are certain key issues that need solutions or this country will continue to decline into debt and mediocrity.

Free trade does not work when your trading partners earn 63 cents an hour, don’t buy your products for patriotic reasons, or simply are more interested in capital accumulation then consumer goods.

If our trade deficit, which is half a trillion per year, continues to climb, we will bankrupt ourselves. That money only comes back to this country when the Germans, Japanese, Chinese, etc. buy our assets or our debt. They are gradually becoming our landlords.

When you take out a home equity loan to buy a big screen TV, where do you think the money comes from?

We need high tariffs on goods and services which force the jobs back home. There will still be competition; Toyota and BMW should still be able to open plants here (just not export from cheap labor nations).

Our federal government is spending like a drunken sailor on leave. At $450 billion per year, our federal debt will soon saddle our children and grandchildren with a $10 or $20 trillion national debt. They will be forced to pay crushing taxes to service that debt and receive very little in the way of government service in return.

Social Security and especially Medicare/Medicaid are actuarially unsound. We can’t afford a $300-billion military year in and year out. And we sure don’t need an institute for snowball research and other pork projects. When are we going to take the Constitutional restrictions on government and government spending seriously?

We are aging as a nation. We probably do need foreign sources of labor in the future because of this. But it does not need to lead to permanent immigration. We need a guest worker program that allows people to come here for a few years, work, then go home. If immigration, both legal and illegal, is allow to continue, we will find great-grandchildren living in a nation as crowded as China or India. Do you want the streets of Atlanta to look like the streets of Calcutta?

We have a marauding class of predators, nearly a million strong, preying on the hard-working business people of this country. Yep, I’m talking about lawyers.

This is the only country on earth where lawyers are allowed to use the court system to strip business of wealth based on judgments that vastly outweigh the injury or damage inflicted. It is not just the doctors who are at risk. Cars, houses, and every other consumer product are much more expensive because of the legal costs built in.

Our schools are generally poor and ineffectual in this country. The college programs that our teachers emerge from are turning out the wrong product. We need schools like we had 40 or 50 years ago. The old methods must be brought back. High expectations, effective homework, memorization, grading on the curve, and strict discipline (including paddling) all need to return.

I care deeply about these issues, but I am not sure if others do. The candidates of neither major party don’t seem to care.

The sky may not fall in 2005 if these issues are not addressed in this election. But what about the long-term future of our children? Are they going to have to seek opportunities overseas because we ran the country into the ground.

Bill Gilmer

wmgilmer@mindspring.com