OTTUMWA —
It seems to me that neither political party has a realization of what caused the recession and why we are so slow coming out of it.
After World War II, soldiers came home, got married and found jobs.
Employment was high and unions were forcing companies to share their profits with employees. A large middle class developed. We were able to buy RVs, take vacations, send our children to college and had a standard of living the envy of the world. There were some ups and downs, but for the most part the middle class prospered.
That was until corporations became too large and greedy. They started buying each other out to eliminate competition, and then outsourcing became popular. It was discovered that goods could be made by other countries cheaper with fewer regulations and lower taxes. They then bring the goods back to the United States and sell it to the American consumer at a larger profit. This developed into international corporations. The outsourcing started as a trickle, and it has become a flood. Soon they were buying out entire factories and moving the production to other countries.
As this progressed, many communities lost main employers for their area. Without a job, you can’t make mortgage payments, so the housing market collapses.
Obama thinks American ingenuity and ambition will pull things back together, but as our smartest technicians design televisions, telephones and iPods, they send everything to China to be built.
Romney thinks giving more tax breaks to corporations and the wealthy will do it. They have more money now than what they know what to do with. All they would do would be build more factories in China, India or wherever. Certainly not in the United States.
Somehow we need to get our manufacturing back. Maybe an American consumer boycott of foreign-made goods? But where can you find an American TV or iPod? And what about whole factories shipped to Mexico? Somehow we need to entice management people, corporations and Wall Street to bring manufacturing back to this country. As I see it, nothing short of an organized boycott of foreign-made goods will do. People need to refuse to buy foreign-made products and demand American-made things.
Our political leaders and political hopefuls need to work on this area if we are ever going to have a healthy economy again.
Loren Hagedon
Ottumwa
Letters to the Editor
June 23, 2012
Recession tied to lack of U.S. manufacturing
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