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We are already seeing the calls for eliminating the very few retirement plans left -- education and government -- which will go the way of GM pensions and former steel workers' retirement plan.
The answer, amazingly, is very simple: Restore protective fees on unfair foreign manufacturing, a sort of "misery tax" that recoups the money saved by oppressing foreign workers.
Thus, there would be no advantage in sweat-shops, no hidden misery in the goods imported legitimately.
Continuing on our current path of making ourselves completely useless puts us in the same position as Spain, fabulously enriched with gold from the new world. Spanish nobility paid English and Dutch brokers to do their work and manufacturing, because they felt too high-fallutin' to actually do any work -- and they lost their empire as well as their wealth.
It was handed over to the English and Dutch "factories", who used slave labor, ironically, in places like Malaysia, India and Indonesia.
Look around, and ask yourself: what do we actually CONSTRUCT these days? What do we use for money to BUY all that cheap Wal-Crap? If no one makes anything, we're just living on reputation and on the past, putting on a "false front" that our wealth is still here.
The Spanish Grandees used to do that, too, with elegant clothes in the front, but rags in back, just to try to keep up appearances.
The reality eluded them. Will we be so stupid, or will we recover before we end up completely ruined?
