It’s too bad that a lot of Americans get hung up on labels: liberal, conservative, Democratic, Republican, union, management. The economic problems that beset our country today indicate more and more that the meaningful divisions are, as a practical matter, between the producers and the parasites, and, as an ideological matter, between the growth and the no-growth advocates.
The producers are those who work for a living in jobs that turn out useful commodities or services. They are wealth creators. The parasites are those whose pay-check or benefit-check comes from tax money, which means out of the pockets of taxpayer-producers.
The growth advocates design their policies to foster capital investment and expansion in order to produce more jobs, new wealth, additional energy, technological advances, and consumer products.
The no-growth advocates design their policies to redistribute the wealth we already have by high taxes, an expanding bureaucracy, and inflation. They place a higher value on preserving the environment and wildlife than on people, their jobs, and their standard of living.
A couple of decades of this no-growth nonsense have come home to roost in the steel industry. Hit hard by environmental restrictions, increased government regulations and paperwork, affirmative action compliance, and high taxes which have discouraged plant modernization and expansion in the United States but financed new plants in foreign countries, the steel industry can no longer sell at a price competitive with foreign imports. Thousands of steel workers have been laid off and thousands more steel jobs are waiting for the sword of Damocles to fall.
Representative Philip Crane (R., I1.), one of the most articulate members of Congress, has been meeting with steel workers in Youngstown, Ohio (where 4,200 have been laid off), to do something about the problem. He has developed a three-part package designed to create and save jobs for American workers.
1. The Urban Growth Bill of 1978 aims to increase job opportunities and stability in urban areas. It would encourage job creation through capital investment fostered by reduced corporate taxes, tax credits for employee retention, extra tax credits for urban investment, and a one-year write-off of costs of conforming to federal regulations.
2. The Truth in Regulation Bill of 1978 would require that federal regulations be preceded by economic and environmental cost-benefit analyses to ensure that they don’t eliminate jobs or close plants. If the regulation is found to cause unemployment, the proposed regulation would have to be voted on by Congress. As it stands now, federal agencies can issue arbitrary regulations without any regard for how many jobs will be terminated.
3. The Anti-Dumping Enforcement Bill of 1978 is designed to protect American workers against the “dumping” of foreign imports. Dumping means the selling of products below their cost of production. Foreign industries can dump their products in the United States because their plants are subsidized by their own governments or by U.S. foreign aid and loans. This bill will cut in half the timetable on which our government can protect U.S. products and jobs against unfair dumping competition.
American workers don’t want government handouts; they want jobs. They have been betrayed by the politicians who voted for massive domestic and foreign giveaways at the cost of galloping inflation and closed factories.
It’s time for American workers to realize that their economic salvation lies with forward-looking Congressmen such as Philip Crane whose proposed legislation will promote well-paying jobs through lower taxes, capital expansion, and a major cut in federal spending.
