A Long Friday after Thanksgiving Rant

Today, the Friday after Thanksgiving, has become as much as a focal point for the Thanksgiving season as Thanksgiving Day itself. To hear the media tell it, the fate of humankind hinges on how many shoppers flood the stores and exchange their hard earned cash for plasma TVs and Wii games.

Added content – this story about a Wal-Mart employee being trampled to death appeared a few hours after this post was published.

This is absurd. No economy based on consumption can last for long. If we’ve learned anything in 2008, it is that consumer spending is no foundation on which to build a powerful and reliable economic engine.

So now we have two choices. We can either focus on production, which we should do, or wealth transfer, which I fear we will do.

Reallocating the economic pie might make might result in a nice comfort food feeling, but it won’t do a blessed thing to help us bake more pies. Distasteful as it may sound, wealthy individuals and highly profitable companies create wealth – wealth in the form of jobs, higher salaries, and more generous benefits. There is no robbing Peter to pay Paul. Penalizing economic producers with higher taxes does not share wealth more equally, it causes wealth to move elsewhere. To the extent we support failing producers and penalize profitable ones, we will see companies move to greener pastures overseas, taking jobs and earnings reinvestment with them.

Tax Rates

Low corporate taxes should be our strategy, not a tactic. We should do everything possible to encourage companies of all sizes (and from all countries) to invest and grow in the U.S. Temporary tax cuts may change corporate behavior temporarily, but how much good does that really do?

Spending vs. Saving

We should stop regarding the practice of saving money as the 8th deadly sin. With mombo-billion dollar consumer stimulus packages and exhortations to buy, buy, buy wafting out of Washington, a U.S. citizen could get the impression that spending is one’s patriotic duty. But there’s a lot to be said for saving money. Preparing for one’s financial future and protecting future generations from debt overload have all sorts of practical and moral value.

Energy Production

The most obvious area where we can shift our focus to production is energy. Producing our own energy makes all the sense in the world from an economic and national security standpoint. What interest is served by importing it? I am concerned about the environment, but the resistance to domestic energy production puzzles me. If the health of the planet in its totality is our concern, I feel more comfortable producing energy here, where we can apply the best and safest technology in the world to energy extraction, processing, and transport. If the objective is to eliminate the use of fossil fuels altogether by putting a stranglehold on the supply, I say such a goal is unattainable and downright dangerous to pursue. On the other hand, domestic energy production, consumption, and export create jobs and would result in lower and more stable energy costs, giving us more money to spend on those plasma TV’s and Wii games. In this scenario, it would make perfect sense for the government to subsidize alternative energy development – market forces alone would not be sufficient to drive it, and yet it is not something an economy can throw together at the last minute.

Minimum Wage

Repeal the minimum wage law. Yes, you heard me. Make it as easy as possible for manufacturers to produce. Now before you start calling me a heartless bastard, please allow me to say I believe a free market for wages is the best way (not the perfect way) to ensure the best wages for the most people. I would take it even a step further and suggest we should be thinking in terms of a maximum wage. I’m being somewhat facetious here, but the underlying mindset to this concept is not all bad. As a society, we have demanded our right to a fair wage. No problem. But as a society, we should also demand our right to a productive economy. Will producers take advantage of a minimum wage-less work force? Some will try, but they will fail. The U.S. is different from the U.S. of Upton Sinclair and The Jungle. Human rights abuses, horrific or otherwise, are not so easily hidden today. Manufacturers operate in the light of day, not in the gloom of slaughterhouses hidden behind fences and guarded by armed thugs. Today, a company gets punished for putting out a YouTube video that puts maternal back pain in a bad light. Imagine the outcry if McNeil Consumer Healthcare began shackling mothers to the assembly line and beating them with whips to meet production quotas. Much has been made of the Internet, how it has raised the level of social consciousness and made information accessible to all. Now would be a good time to put it to the test.

Americans are the most productive people on earth. Think of how much better we could to if we stayed out of our own way. Please don’t get me wrong. I’m not advocating an attempt to put an end to holiday shopping. All I’m saying is, let’s focus on production and the consumption will take care of itself.

What do you think? Can we survive, let alone prosper, without ratcheting up our ability to produce?


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