Slouching Towards Third-World Status

Obama has been emphasizing "competitiveness" ahead of his Tuesday State of the Union address. But what does "competitiveness," particularly with respect to China, really mean? It means less. Less for you, less for your family, and less for the workers of this country. Paul Krugman of the New York Times explains:

A corporate leader who increases profits by slashing his work force is thought to be successful. Well, that’s more or less what has happened in America recently: employment is way down, but profits are hitting new records. Who, exactly, considers this economic success?

Still, you might say that talk of competitiveness helps Mr. Obama quiet claims that he’s anti-business. That’s fine, as long as he realizes that the interests of nominally “American” corporations and the interests of the nation, which were never the same, are now less aligned than ever before.

(Emphasis mine.) Generally speaking, "competitiveness" means workers in the states accepting lower wages--and with them, a lower standard of living. unfortunately, Jeffrey Immelt, chief executive of General Electric, has just been tapped by Obama to head up the newly-minted President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. But Immelt's specialty while at GE was sending American jobs overseas, principally to China.

Look - the economy is not in trouble because we have been too tough on business. Far from it. In fact, if we had been tougher on the financial sector from 2000-2006, we wouldn't have had irresponsible lending, creation of dangerous, economically-explosive financial derivatives, and the economic collapse of 2008. If we had better import regulations and a more forward-looking scheme of taxing imports, the disparity between the dollar and yuan wouldn't be acting like a 30% tax on American goods going to China, and a 30% subsidy by China for Chinese goods shipped here. We would have been able to save American jobs, millions of them, if not tens of millions of them.

China has an industrial policy; we don't. As a direct result, since their belated embrace of capitalism, they're beating the economic pants off of us. They are winning the only war that counts. And many in Congress and the Administration don't even realize we are in a war.

"American" companies are not economic saviors to be coddled and kowtowed to; they are potential economic enemies with interests not aligned with the country's. They need to be brought to heel, hard, and fast.