Reviving the U.S. Economy

    Our country has developed a lot in the past few decades, so has the deficit from the imports and exports. Americans seem to be addicted to the foreign goods. People can’t get enough of the Chinese goods. Unemployment rates are all time high due to overseas job transfers. The housing industry is declining due to higher interest rates. And the government is busy playing its political games, instead of helping to change the ineffective policies.
    I find it really disturbing that the government responds almost instantly to the higher gas prices and drills the gas domestically, but it fails to keep in check our foreign goods dependency. If we can drill for oil both on and off shores, why can’t we bring back job to our lands? People can’t spend money if they can’t make it. Therefore, returning these jobs from overseas would result in our economic growth.
    Economic disparity has been building for a long time in this country. Wall Street’s behavior was one reason, and the other reason is the big corporations that are expanding their businesses overseas. In doing so, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. This results in expensive vacations for the corporate employees and almost no vacation for the middle-class people due to unemployment.
    Higher interest rates and the mortgage rates of housing industries are also an issue. The banks receive their cuts before the buyer has a chance to reduce his principle. Let’s say the buyer makes a payment of $40,000, only $10,000 goes towards the actual principle. Therefore, people lose their homes easily because of these unjust rates. 

    The ways we can fix these problems is by government involvement. By forcing the corporate America to produce goods domestically, we can promote both the jobs and independencies.

Failed Economic Policies

    In his article, Saving the Rich, Losing the Economy, posted in CounterPunch, Paul Craig Roberts makes some excellent points regarding our economic downturn. 
    Roberts tries to reach out to the general public by providing three main reasons for this occurrence. First, he blames the policymakers by stating that their support of offshore jobs are decreasing the middle class jobs within our nation. Second, policymakers allowed financial deregulation that unleashed negative effects on debt and unemployment. Third, policymakers are cutting back spending and running the printing press in order to keep the banks from failing. 
    Roberts clearly explains how transferring jobs abroad is hurting middle class citizens in our country and how the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. By transferring jobs, Corporations benefit from low wages that are offered in countries like China and India. The profit they receive helps those corporations grow even more. Whereas, the middle class workers lose their jobs to foreign workers. Statistician John Williams estimates the unemployment rate when long-term discouraged workers are included. This rate is over 22 percent. The author effectively conveys his view on this matter.  
    U.S. allows in each year one million legal immigrants, an unknown number of illegal immigrants, and a large number of foreign workers on H-1B and L-1 work visas. In other words, policymakers are encouraging economic disparity. Whereas, Republicans simply call people lazy and are cutting back unemployment benefits and expect these lazy people to go back to work. The author disagrees with this statement and believes these sort of policy are highly ineffective and cause further harm to the country.
    The temporary relieves and other policies effect our economy greatly. Lowering interest rates doesn't do any good, since no one wants to buy housing. Cutting back spending also cause issue within the country. Printing more money cause inflation, also effecting the unemployment rate. The author gave a lot of information to back up his claim.  
    I completely agree with Roberts' logic. We need to look at these issue before we sunk our nation. We need to make smarter decisions and get this country up and running ahead of others. Overall, he does a great job at explaining his points.
    P.S. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. His latest book is How the Economy Was Lost (CounterPunch / AK Press).