We Can Do Much Better than a Trade War
Trump’s promising to put the genie back into the lamp and bring back jobs by making foreign labor artificially expensive with tariffs and his trade war. That’s dubious, inflationary, disruptive, and dangerous. Trade wars can turn into shooting wars.
The Problem
Globalization made a world-wide labor market. The US is so affluent, we couldn’t possibly compete and lost a lot of jobs.
Capitalism worked its magic, gave us a cornucopia of inexpensive manufactured goods, and made the captains of industry obscenely rich.
Unfortunately, our government stopped protecting the working class from the rich and powerful and now half the people have a tiny fraction of the nation’s wealth. The American Dream is all but impossible.
- We should end trickle down now and use Thomas Pickety’s theory of economics.
- We shouldn’t deal with foreign labor at all (until we need their help, invite them in, and they have to fit into our system.)
- We should use local labor to build stuff that doesn’t leave the US: we should make infrastructure.
We’re phenomenally rich. There’s a whole lot that we need and we can afford to build it.
A Solution
For instance, we could replace all fossil-fueled home heating with electric
- That would take $3.9 trillion.
- A 5% (progressive, net) wealth tax on the top 10% would raise $5.5 trillion.
- It would Immediately create many more jobs than the trade war possibly could without needing any additional infrastructure or technology.
- Grow the GDP and world trade.
- Significantly help the fight against climate change.
- And leave $1.6 trillion for other important projects.
We the people can fix the problem. We need to
- Spread the word so that everyone understands the problem and rejects Trump’s propaganda.
- ask our Congress members, by the millions, to fix the problem.
If they don’t, we can make sure their replacements will.
Messages for Congress:
- Remove Trump from office
- End the trade war
- End trickle down: restore the pre-Reagan, highly progressive tax structure.
- Enforce the 20th century protections for working class wealth and small businesses.
- Fight climate change with an infrastructure bill
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