The Dumbing Down of America.

What is all this campaign rhetoric about outsourcing? 

To listen to the campaign rhetoric you would think this is the most egregious, anti American practice out there.  Listening to either camp, you would guess that the other is the evil mastermind, trying to destroy America through the export of jobs.  We all know that isn’t so, so why all the focus on this issue?

We have been hearing of late that the economy is not a winning issue in this election, that given the change of the social demographic, the state of the economy is just not enough to push the election over the top.  Why is that? Are things so much better than in 2008 and 2010?  Are people’s lives, their perspective of the potential for success so much improved? Has hope been restored?

I contend that, if indeed the economy is not a “winning issue” it is for the exact opposite reason. Hope has been lost. If the economy is not a winning issue, it is because the majority has been convinced that where we are, is the new norm.  That the rise in government dependence is the new economy. That success, individual effort, and enjoying the freedom achieved from the fruits of one’s own labor is now just a fantasy.  In short, that we are no longer America, the exceptional country, the “Land of Opportunity” that individuals have come from all parts of the earth to be a part of for the last 2 centuries. 

Listening to our President, we never were that country.  His rhetoric is that the principals that built this nation, the America that has stood as a witness to human ability, individual achievement, and entrepreneurship, have never worked.  I am sure from his perspective, it hasn’t but that is almost another discussion all together.  I say almost, because there is a common element to his perspective and to the citizenry that share his perspective.  Something has indeed changed in America, it threatens our very way of life and it is directly related to why we are in this quandary about outsourcing, why the economy is not a winning issue, and why hope is, in many corners, lost.

America was built on a foundation that was unique in the world.  It was formed with the idea that the individual had inherent worth and ability, potential that was untapped, that inherent in man was God given ability to achieve and excel l without the necessity of an overlord of government to rule him.  The principal of America was that men had the right to pursue happiness on their own terms in so far as it did not harm another’s freedom to do the same.  We believe that all men were created equal, that at our birth, man is inherently talented and he should have the opportunity to exercise his will to reach his potential.  This was the basis of the formation of our country.

So what has changed?  Why, now after 200+ years of amazing expansion, yes with some tough times along the way, are we reduced to a people who now increasingly desire to rely on government assistance, to accept what they have not earned without reservation, and in increasing numbers with desire and expectation?

I contend it is about education.  Depending on your view it may be the success or failure of our educational system, including the responsibility of parents at home, but it is about education.  For many years there has been an attempt to shift education from focus on individual success and liberty, to equality among the citizenry.  There has been an initiative to mitigate the value of individual achievement, for the idea of equality. In effect there has been a concerted effort to rewrite the principals of freedom and personal liberty that our country was founded on to shape our country more into the model of servitude that has been the basis of other governments around the world.

I hope at this point you are starting to get a sick, even angry feeling, whether it is toward me or those who have perpetuated this shift, it doesn’t matter.  The fact of the matter is that as a citizenry, we have been dumbed down so that a few can have power, we have been taught to conform, to give up freedom for perceived security, give up opportunity for comfort (even at a subsistence level), to forgo liberty in the name of equality.  It is a common social structure around the world, one that Communists, Socialists, Marxist, Leninists, even tyrannical dictatorships all hold in common as a way to control the citizenry.  They do it under different philosophical dogma but they all share the principal that the masses are only worthwhile when they are in the service of the authority.  It is what our founders fled from and sought to avoid in the foundation of our system of government.

Yet here we are, nearing a tipping point, some say we are already past.  We fight about menial issues while ignoring the fact that we are doing exactly what those who have moved us to this point would have us do.

Is it coincidence that as a developed nation, our citizenry understands less about their country’s actual history than any developed nation, that the principles of free enterprise, and capitalistic economics are demonized if taught at all? That we are prodded to despise those who have wealth and to regard them as selfish, thieves, and uncaring rather than celebrating their achievement and aspiring to attain the same?  Is it coincidence that no longer is a high school education is not regarded as adequate for entry into the workforce yet a college diploma also doesn’t ensure that an individual will even understand the basics of our capitalist economy?  Is it a coincidence that we are more and more led to believe that conformity is desired, that political correctness is better than questioning, that everything is a right regardless of whether it is a deviant behavior,  legal, moral, or constructive for our society?  Is it a coincidence that dependence is regarded as the most appropriate stimulus in the “new economy”?  But I digress.

What does all of this have to do with outsourcing?  If you have any understanding of business in a free economy, you understand that profit is only achieved as a business is able to be competitive and bring a product to market of equal or better quality, at a price equal to or less than your competitor.  You also understand that it is not the desire of any businessman to see his business slow in such a way that he must lay people off.  That is called contraction and is opposite of the goal of business seeking profit.  Growth is always the desired path in providing positive returns.  So why would anyone outsource?  Logically it should not be cheaper to do business at a distance; transportation alone should mitigate labor disparity.  But the sad fact is that it does not.   The same forces that have shifted our focus in education, also strive to “protect our health, save our planet, feed the world, save the spotted owl and every other insane and idiotic, special interest cause.  Don’t get me wrong, everyone wants to clean water, safe food, a preservation of and good stewardship of our earth, but we are a country of legal and regulatory road blocks that not only hamper our ability to do business competitively, it costs us as consumers at every corner.  Where ever you look now there are regulations meant to raise tax revenues, protect us from ourselves, and provide for mitigation of past injustices.  We are still the manufacturing force of the world, but every day it becomes more difficult, this year alone over 100,000 regulations touching on every aspect of our free enterprise system has been enacted.  Few are repealed, the new are just layered on and the bureaucracy of red tape continues to slow our progress.  Whether it is product production method regulation, labor safety requirements, employee benefits, use taxes, product liability funds, regulatory compliance issues, accountancy regulations, you name it, it has to be incorporated in to the cost of bringing product to market. We have become the highest taxed, most regulated economy on earth. 

If you are a business leader faced with the requirement of providing return on the risk investment of your shareholders (who ever they are: for public companies the shareholders may include people who have pensions, 401k accounts, money market accounts, and any savings account that provides interest, in short almost everyone whether a direct shareholder or as beneficiary as a result of having an account with an institution who holds your money and makes investments to provide you interest) you are, by duty, bound to find a way to return profit to your shareholders.  If you do not, you are not worth your salary.

The issue with outsourcing is not whether it is evil or not, it is, why is it necessary? What causes business to act in a manner that seems counter intuitive?  This would not be a difficult question to answer if even in our secondary education we taught basic principles of capitalism as we did 3 decades ago.  It would not be such a mystery to the average laborer, even to today’s college graduate if we taught a minimally acceptable level of fiscally responsible economic principle theory that is the basis of what has been the greatest wealth and prosperity generator for over two centuries.  It is not difficult to understand that regulation, restrictive use laws, taxation, and collective union bargaining without regard for the competitive climate of our global economy, when out of balance with the rest of the world, has pushed our business leaders to search beyond our borders for efficiency in bringing products to market.   

It is now so bad that even those who claim to despise the thought (as in our president) cannot avoid it.  Two thirds of all of our stimulus funds (your and my tax dollars) went to the benefit of foreign entities, whether by design or by nature of the beast, I will leave you to decide.  But the fact of the matter is, business expansion (which is job creation in this nation) under the capitalistic economy we enjoy is dependent on the regulatory and taxation environment that it is burdened with.  It is out of control!  You have no idea how much of the price you pay of every product is inflated by the overburden of our government.

Yes outsourcing occurs, but like so many of the drugs we have been dumbed into taking, discussing outsourcing is only like treating a symptom.  If you want to fix the disease you have to the source.  You have to attack the problem within.  It is time to stop masking symptoms (or making them the main focus of dialog in the presidential campaign), let’s get into the real issues.  Do we want to be the people we were meant to be as Americans?  Do we want freedom or dependence?  You can’t have it both ways.   Do we want a prosperous economy, a land of opportunity, or a subsistence economy of dependant citizens?  Do we want to be controllers of our own destiny or are we destining to fail and be servitude to the authority of the moment? 

Our founders intended for us to be the authority, the government was only meant to protect our freedom, why have we given up so much with hope for so little in return?