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America in Lou Dobbs' World
Contributed by: James Esteban on 1/12/2008

What would America look like in Lou Dobbs' world?

Lou, I have never been inclined to be an activist for much of anything and I think that the reason for this is that when I look at things I often find that activism leads toward a kind of blindness that I just don't like. When I investigate an issue I like to be able to fall on either side of it. If it's black then it's black. If it's white then it's white. But I don't like to research an issue in an attempt to reinforce a predetermined point of view.

Now I'm not suggesting that you do, but one has to admit that illegal immigration in this country has had a positive effect on both the growth and the overall well being of our economy. I know your already to fire back and say that the middle class is being negatively effected because we are losing our jobs and our salaries are depressed by their presence. That is true but it's also true that our cost of goods has also been kept much lower for a long time because of their presence, especially in areas such as agriculture.

Lets face it, the middle class American Dream was an unstable equilibrium from the beginning. Whenever workers are making enough income to have a high standard of living then workers who have a low standard of living are going to be on the hunt for a way to get onto the gravy train. So free trade allows us to take advantage of the willingness of people to do a job at a low wage in order to get onto the gravy train. And so it is that companies decided to move their manufacturing to where the labor is cheaper and then ship the product back to the US for sale. We have a choice we can purchase the new "green" compact fluorescent light bulbs from Lites of America in Walnut California or from Sylvania or GE of China. What's the difference? About $4.80 a piece. We make our own decisions about that, every time we purchase anything. And for a lot of years we have been making the decision to purchase the lower priced goods which has motivated companies to move out of the US and into other countries where they get lower labor rates and possibly other more enticing incentives and in the end produce lower cost goods.

So lets say that in Lou Dobbs' perfect world that all of the big corporations move back into the United States and all of the Illegal Immigrants move back to their country of origin and all of the jobs that these companies and people represent are now filled with American workers. What would the United States look like?

And so now we start the real thought process. What would the US look like in this situation? To be honest I don't know. If we were successful in keeping all of the technology behind these products in the US then we might have become the sole source for most Electronic Products but the prices would be much higher. So who would by them?

Can you imagine the average teenager with a cell phone that costs $2500.00. Not my teenager. Or perhaps a 10 MPG 400 Horse Power gas guzzling automobile for $140,000.00. Outrageous you say? Perhaps... and then again perhaps not.

If other countries could entice corporations to build plants in their countries then we would lose sole ownership of their technologies and they would enter into the world market against us and probably produce the same products for a lower cost of goods because of the lower labor rates.

Country to country relations are probably improved in an atmosphere of free trade so their would always be some forces pushing us in the direction of some free trade agreements. For example, consider the need of oil. One country has a lot of oil and a lot of poor people. We sell you oil and you give us free trade. Seems like they got us over a barrel...literally.

Our southern border being open like it has been for so many years would still be a problem. People who live near the border would probably still want to take advantage of the foreigner who is willing to do almost anything for almost nothing. The standard of living differential was so high and the physical distance is so low that the motivation to travel northward is very compelling. We've needed a strong border security for the last century. Who would have tolerated the taxes for paying for the border security especially if you couldn't buy the electronic surveillance equipment from China. You can blame it on the politicians but we the people have played our role as well.

If we didn't have a "Guest Worker Program" which by the way really means a program designed to take advantage of poor people, make them work extremely hard, in extremely bad conditions, for an extremely low wage, with no health care, no dental, no retirement and no vacations and then dump them out on to the street when the harvest is over. If we didn't have such a program then where would farmers and the agribusiness in the US be. I'm not sure...I don't know. We can't live without food so I guess we might have to subsidize the farmers so that they could pay higher wages or we'd have to be willing to accept much much higher cost of food goods.

I don't know the answer to many of these questions Lou and I'd like you to ponder these questions and consider the answers and inform the masses with the collective wisdom of Lou Dobbs and his viewers.

Where would my factory job be if I produced such a high priced item that I could only sell it in the United States. I guess there would be a tariff on imports of this item so that my international counterparts couldn't sell directly to my United States of America customers. Or perhaps my job would have been taken over by a robotic machine that does the job faster, better and cheaper.

It's hard to say what the US would look like in a perfect Lou Dobbs world. But then that isn't really a problem for us. The problem is where do we go from here.

Personally, I'd like to see us kick out all of the politicians and replace them all at one time. Go into chapter eleven on the United States of America Federal Debt and start a new country. Lets call it the United States of Americans. Tell all of federal debtors to go to take a hike and start afresh. No more presidents with the same last name. No more citizens that can't speak English (BTW that includes my grandmother). Students that can't behave themselves in school stay home with their parents(BTW that would have included me). Incarcerated people become guest workers. The path to citizenship is through the guest worker program unless you already have some kind of knowledge that we want...like how to get us out of the mess that were in. All of the land in the United States of Americans is subdivided equally and each citizen in the United States of Americans is given their fair share. People grow their own crops and hunt their own meat. People that can't survive die. My guess is that in another hundred years well be right back in the same mess that we're in now.


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CONTRIBUTOR INFORMATION

James Esteban

Lakewood , CO

James Esteban has posted 24 stories and 10 comments since joining on 10/26/2007. James Esteban 's average story rating is 3.24.
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