Save America, Buy American

And that means, MADE IN THE U.S.A. Many years ago, seeing that on a label meant having a quality article or garment at hand, meant getting top quality, at top price.

It has been a while since I saw something Made in the U.S.A. and quite frankly, I miss it, and I'm tired of the alternative.

I'm tired of the mega corporations taking profits from small town USA into billionaires pockets. Sorry Megastores, you know who you are. Everytime you guys open a store, a bunch of small businesses will dissapear soon in the neighborhood. Quit trying to give that "neighborhood friendly" face. You do not benefit America, you're pocketing our money, buying everything abroad, and destroying our way of life.
Same goes to the "Depot" that employes a dozen people, and leave hundreds without biz. Yes, those family-owned businesses that had to shut down because you sell everything AND the kitchen sink, those businesses stimulated local economy.

This is what most people don't realize. Any of those large corporations take our local money to their out-of-state bank accounts. They employ few people locally, so they can't really say they are helping the local economy.

Small businesses, family owned, employ far more people. Yes, they may not have everything on a single location, but that's what free market is all about, finding what is needed and providing it. But the huge difference is that small biz, locally owned, spends LOCALLY. Their profits stay in town, that money ends up circulating in our local economy.

So how about we bring back Made in U.S.A.? How about we tell those huge corporations to take a hike, and urge our law makers to pass laws that will not allow companies to grow so big that they hurt the local economy?
Sure, there are companies such as utilities that benefit from large scale, and that makes sense, but anything that has to do with retail, should be gone.

Let's bring back our manufacturing power. I'm willing to pay more, if I know that the extra dollars end up in American worker's pockets, in our roads, in our schools.

Where is MY JOB?

Alright, let's be honest here. How can an AMERICAN company close down a division, layoff hundreds of employees screaming cost reduction, and open the very same division abroad, paying half the money, and still have the face to come and sell us their products and services?

Here is another huge finger pointing: those companies outsourcing who have cut US jobs to increase their profits have contributed, in a very big part, to turning the American people into poverty. SHAME ON YOU.

So maybe the answer is not so much creating NEW jobs, but getting our jobs BACK. I find it funny how there are the so called minuteman protecting the Mexican border from those who come to pick tomatoes, but say nothing to those large companies that fired middle and upper management jobs, professional and technical people who were making a comfortable living, just to give the same jobs abroad for a fraction of the money.

And it is not just that the government will stop receiving taxes from those workers, but the actual people, their families, will NOT be spending the money here in the US. Everyone talks about a slowdown in the spending. Well, if you have no job, how are you going to spend money? If your $70k/year job was shipped to Asia, how are you going to spend the money?

Perhaps it is time to stop being so naive and tell those companies that shipping jobs abroad threatens national security.
Everything from back office and call centers to management, even interpretation of xRays have been shipped out. There are very few factories left in the U.S. We have lost our capacity to manufacture, the expertise is not here anymore.

And the gap keeps growing. Soon the American people will not be able to afford many things because we are all getting poorer as time goes by. What we once knew as the world's leading economy will come down crashing and we will lose the respect of the financial community.

Bring the jobs back. Take away any tax credit and benefits to companies that layoff US workers just to hire abroad. Put taxes and tariffs to those products and services so they will not be so attractive anymore for employers to go hire abroad.

Sure, this is very unpopular, but the truth is that if we keep going at this pace, the US will have a financial breakdown, and we can swallow our American pride because we let it happen.

Those who have free trade agreements, well, they are the lucky ones, but we should not continue to export jobs. They should make it as hard to export a job, as it is to bring someone with an HB1 visa to work in the U.S.

So dont' worry about the mexicans picking tomatoes, worry about the guy with a Masters or a PhD who can't get a job because someone else, thousands of miles, has taken his position.