An Amazon Warehouse in New York has voted to be in a union. Why when they aren’t asking for more money or many benefits would they rock the boat? The prime reason seemed to be the desire to be treated as a human and not some disposable piece of meat. A lot of this disregard seems to have occurred about the same time as personnel departments became human resources. We all know how Americans treat resources. We use them up and throw them away.

            Warehouse jobs are changing because they need thousands of people to do all the merchandize handling. Robotics can do some of the work but not as fast as humans so people are much needed. In today’s world many humans are still needed so a smart company should start thinking of their employees as an asset to be cared for and respected.

I think all of us who think President Trump is the worse, most corrupt, narcissistic President we have ever had should join those who thinks he walks on water (He knows where the rocks are.) to support their campaign for on-shoring. Trump and his butt-kissing minions have said they want to bring back manufacturing to America. Few of our medicines and other medical supplies are made here. Their current push is for medicine and medical supplies to be on-shored. The pandemic brought to the forefront how much is made in China, Europe, and India.

Republicans have pushed globalization for their business supporters. Long ago the idea became rampant as one manufacturer after another was forced to move more and more of their work to other cheaper countries. They trained people and shipped over American technology in hopes of producing far cheaper products and selling some of those products there. It was called the Wal-Mart effect because Wal-Mart pushed manufacturers to lower prices or lose shelf space. One manufacturer said he lost the Wal-Mart contract by less than a half cent per item on a product costing a few dollars.

This is a real dilemma for many Republicans and some Democrats who have supported off-shoring as a way to keep prices down and to get money from businesses and their lobbyists. As millions of Americans lost their jobs, we couldn’t wait to buy those cheaper products. Since our purchases are over 70% of our GDP, I doubt we will buy as much considerably higher priced American made products causing the GDP to drop. Remember, on-shoring was called protectionism and it was a chief cause of the Depression.

As of March 1, the Dow Stock index has fallen over 12% from its high a few weeks ago. Why? Currently we do not have massive numbers of people infected but we do have thousands every day flying into our airports and then out to the cities, towns and hinterland that have come from or through an infected area. Maybe they sat next to an infected person who didn’t yet show signs of infection. Mortality is 2.5 to 3%.

The President has no credibility so when he talks about the likelihood of Americans being spared from contamination nobody believes him. Appointing Vice-President Pence to oversee the pandemic is not going to reassure anyone. The administration says we have 30 million masks in storage for a population of 230 million. Morris Hospital as one mask for each employee, and more are on back order. The world is desperately short of masks with 3-M Company trying to make more as fast as it can. Most manufacturers are outside our borders.

Trump is right about one thing, it will burn itself out in a few to several months. In the meantime this is what could happen. One of my friends is planning a vacation with her family to Michigan in April. If Michigan is an infected state she won’t go. It means she won’t be spending money on lodging, food, gasoline, and other things which hurts Marriot, McDonalds, Exxon, and other businesses a little bit. It also hurts their suppliers, and the people working for them.

The car manufacturers would shut down to limit the spread among their employees. That would mean all their suppliers around the world couldn’t send their products so they would shut down. Imagine all the other businesses that might be affected. Yes, it probably will just last a few months but it might cut the country’s GDP growth down to less than 1% or maybe into negative growth., That’s why fear is cutting your IRA in half.

The most critical and important plank in my “Chance for Sanity” party is our current national deficit of nearly a trillion dollars this year and twenty-two trillion debt. Before any of the other critical changes can be addressed our Country’s finances must be put in order or at least started. Fixing this disaster will need to be spread over all Americans. Cutting taxes may get people to vote for a person but it is on a track that ends at an abyss without a bridge across. My financial plank gives us the bridge.

An old adage says when you are in a hole stop digging it deeper. Every year we are digging it deeper. We must stop digging it deeper and start filling it in before we can address the other critical problems. Solutions for some of the other problems will require additional funding which would not be so disagreeable if the debt had not been allowed to accumulate in an effort to satisfy tycoons.

Reagan had cut taxes and the debt ballooned so he raised them. George H. W. Bush raised taxes
to reduce deficits and debt. Clinton raised taxes and almost eliminated debt. His budget had a $236 billion surplus to finish paying down the debt and fund Social Security when George W. Bush took office. When he left we had a $1.4 billion budget deficit. Obama couldn’t raise taxes because of the Great Recession recovery. Trump cut taxes and increased the deficit from $500 billion to almost $1 trillion and a debt now of over $22 trillion.

As much as I would like to start making payments to reduce the national debt, we first need to eliminate the trillion dollar deficit. Doing that will require increasing the income taxes from $2.9 trillion by at least 40% more to $4.1 trillion. The best way to raise that amount is to raise the top rate to 50% and adjust other rates higher while eliminating most deductions and exemptions. Another way is to bring the estate tax back to two million dollars. Reducing the deficit has to be the first priority. In 2018, we paid almost $290 billion in interest on the debt. Our 2018 deficit was 5.5% of our gross domestic product which was far greater than any of the other top 30 developed countries.

Most of our debt is owned by other countries, and much of that is owned by countries which might use it to extort us for concessions.

Additional taxes will be required to pay down the debt. It will take many decades to get us back to where our debt was before the Bush tax cuts. Other solutions to our many critical issues will require additional taxes.