I pulled out some old clothes the other day to see if I could fit into them again. I found something very rare inside -- a Union label.

I have always been frugal with my clothing dollars, so I know the clothes were within a certain price range. Pretty much the same price range I see today for clothes made in China or India or some other country without child labor laws.
My American made clothing did not become so expensive that I had to start buying foreign made goods. Gradually, Item by item made in the USA started to be substituted by items made elsewhere. Now, it is hard to find anything made here. If we aren't manufacturing anything any longer, how can we afford to buy anything?

So the next time I hear the argument that food/clothing/shoes/electronics/houses/cars are affordable because of foreign labor I don't choose to believe that line because they were affordable before outsourcing and before our factories moved offshore and before illegal immigration was so prevalent that it became an issue. It isn't that the cost of these items is coming down, it is that the rich are getting richer off of wider profit margins. Yes, they are getting richer and the middle class is getting poorer. It is time to bring back tariffs on imported goods.

Think about it. Reinstating tariffs would make companies move back into the US and put Americans to work. Having a "Hire Americans first" policy would strengthen our economy and reduce the influx of cheap labor from other nations. If our government provided the health insurance and took that burden off businesses, our companies could compete better in the global market.

Our country is large enough and has such a diverse climate, we should be able to grow all of our food domestically. After the recent pet food poisoning, the importance of this should be more than clear.
Our population, collectively, should be able to provide all the labor we need to be self sufficient. If we don't have a workforce that is properly trained to fill the jobs available, it is because higher education is becoming too expensive for the average family and needs to be subsidized. It isn't fair that an American should be in debt for as much as $100k in student loans and have to compete for the same jobs with an Indian who was educated in India for free. Starting out with that imbalance, which one do you think will have the better lifestyle?

When we have lifted our impoverished out of poverty, then we can make a bigger difference on the rest of the world. We have a responsibility to our descendants of the American enslaved to raise their status -- their economic status, their educational status, their responsibility status to that of the average US citizen. We owe the same debt to the Native American. These are debts we can not ignore as we divvy out "citizenship" to those who only want to earn money here to take back to their home countries.

Lately, the Zogby polls have been asking do you consider yourself to be a citizen of: A) Your community, B) Your country, or C) The world? I don't know how to answer that question because the answer to all of them is Yes. We have to start somewhere and for me that would be closer to home. I will hire the kid next door to cut my grass before I will hire the kid across town. I will buy the Girl Scout cookies from the girl next door and the girl across town. I will contribute to the local Red Cross as well as the International Red Cross. But before I can do any of this, I need that job that just went over to China or India or to the PO Box in the Bahamas.