Productivity is the only key to Prosperity

This is in response to a Jesse Jackson Op-Ed in the Chicago Sun Times


http://www.suntimes.com/news/jackson/2655308,CST-EDT-jesse31.article

Jesse, it’s comforting to see that your incomprehension of reality extends beyond race. Labor brought as much to the prosperity of America as you have brought to understanding between the races: thuggery, extortion, and destruction: nothing more.

Henry Ford, not the labor unions, created the Middle Class. He accomplished that by eliminating waste in the manufacturing process. He was able to eliminate so much waste that he was able to empower workers to be so productive that he could double their wage; cut the work week from 60 hours to 40 hours; all while improving the quality of his products and cutting the selling price in half (or less). That was accomplished by one factor and one factor only: relentless pursuit of productivity solely by eliminating waste in every form.

The labor unions have done nothing but destroy productivity. Their ability to do so was empowered solely by the manufacturing capacity monopoly that America enjoyed between 1946 and 1970 as a result of global manufacturing capacity being destroyed during WWII. Without competition, unions could make any idiotic, destructive, non-productive demand of their choosing (and happily did so). The only drawback was that Americans had to pay more for everything, but they had no alternative.

By 1970 there was sufficient foreign manufacturing capacity that they could start competing for American consumers. The labor unions and government created modern Detroit, Akron, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Flint, et al by sucking the life-blood out of American business. Productivity is the key to prosperity and no amount of liberal drivel will alter that.

Idiotic union work rules that destroyed productivity; coupled with idiotic government mandates and social engineering follies multiplied non-value added costs that make it impossible for American manufacturers to compete using American labor in American cities. Every new mandate; every new cost; every new restriction; every new entitlement chipped away at domestic employment until we are where we are today.

The financial collapse was solely the doing of liberals in Congress and the White House; not conservatives; though they contributed by not un-doing the destructive practices being implemented. The Barney Franks and Chris Dodds forced banks to lend to people totally unable or unwilling to repay their loans. The Fed (liberals all) made credit so cheap and so readily available that it created one bubble after the next as speculators drove prices far beyond intrinsic value: be it tech stocks or real estate. This was exacerbated by Fannie and Freddie that transferred all risk from the private sector to the backs of the taxpayers. The coup de grace was nationalization of AIG that took all liability and stuffed it on the taxpayer.

The BP catastrophe was caused by the failure of the federal government to assure that regulations in place since March of 2000 were implemented. Had they been implemented, the well failure would not have occurred; and had there been a blow-out, on site containment and recovery equipment required by the same regulations would have mitigated the damage so it would never have reached the shore. Keep in mind that the federal government netted $2.3 Billion from the lease that included the Deepwater Horizon site: that should have paid for at least some supervision and oversight. Keep in mind too that president Obama noted in 2008 that the MMS was rotten, yet Billions of dollars and two years later, he still had done NOTHING to correct the problems that he admitted were there. The Gulf disaster is solely the fault of the federal government’s failure to enforce regulations long established. Also note that the cleanup could have been started 3 MONTHS earlier than it did had the president not stupidly refused to make an exception to the Jones Act to permit highly capable and supremely experienced foreign men and equipment from 30 different countries to participate in the clean up: all to “protect” a handful of union jobs.

To add insult to injury, the president then arbitrarily slapped a moratorium on all deep water drilling (which was forced on the industry by making shallow water sites arbitrarily off limits) in the Gulf: driving the rigs and the jobs to foreign destinations. The icing: the president lied about the recommendations of his “expert panel” who unanimously counseled against a deep water drilling moratorium: More government interference destroying jobs.

How many real, productive jobs have been created by PUSH, the UAW, SEIU and AFSCME? The answer is “not a single one”. These organizations exist solely to suck the lifeblood out of employers (and employees) by doing everything in their power to destroy productivity. That in turn destroys jobs as is indisputably proven by the extinction of fruitful jobs over the past 40 years.

If those 570,000 registered voters would get their heads out of their butts and their hands out of other people’s pockets and instead use their God-given abilities to create real jobs based on providing top quality products and services in the most waste-free productive manner possible, there would be reason to hope for a better tomorrow. As long as they continue to be manipulated and lied-to by PUSH, UAW, SEIU, AFSCME and Congress et al they will continue to sink lower into the abyss.

America wasn’t built by government make-work projects or union featherbedders; it wasn’t built as a welfare state; nor was it built by rainbow coalitions of social malcontents. It was built by individuals ecstatically overcome by the opportunity to accomplish their dreams and to reap any rewards there-from; driven by the reality that if they failed to produce a useful product or service they would be back where they started: with nothing.

Our Founders were wise about human nature and that is why they created a federal government with very little responsibility; less authority; and prohibited to directly tax Citizens for the revenue to run a limited government.

The first, and necessary, step to restore America is to restore Constitutional governance. Anything less is counter-productive, and only productivity earns prosperity.

Fundament Restoration is what is required.

The critical issues to the Tea Party Movement are not Republican or Democrat: they are economic and Constitutional. America is in a mess because the federal government, over the past 70 years, under both political parties, has engaged in policies, programs, and entitlements that they have no Constitutional (ie Legal) authority to implement.


Gov. Christie is fortunate that he is dealing with problems with fairly straight-forward and achievable solutions (though admittedly solutions that all of his predecessors have lacked the courage to implement).

The Congress on the other hand has been stealing from the American people and their forced "contributions" to Social Security and Medicare for generations. In addition, Congress has been using these vehicles to promise expansive benefits far exceeding receipts (notwithstanding that the sleazy Congress stole them anyway).

As Boomers reach "retirement age", after "contributing" to mandatory government insurance programs for 50 years or more, they are finding the cupboard bare. Long nothing more than a Ponzi scheme, SS and Medicare are now forced to pay the piper and there are no resources to do that with. Where Christie is faced with $Billion problems, the federal government is facing $100 Trillion in problems.

Making matters worse, we are saddled with a president and his administration who have never held nor created a real job in their lives. Without any real-world experience they are mesmerized with idiotic wealth re-distribution schemes learned from ivory-tower outhouse philosophers that have failed every time they've been attempted since the beginning of time.

There are indeed hard choices that must be made, and expanding entitlements knowing that there is no imaginable way to pay for them simply makes an impossible problem even worse: So clearly so that any rational person should be questioning the ulterior motives of this administration.

We don't need "fundamental transformation" we need fundamental Restoration of Constitutional governance.