US Economy Declines (Even While it Fuels Chinese Economic Boom)
by Rabbi David Eidensohn
"U.S. Economy Slowed Sharply at End of 2005." The January 28, 2006 New York Time's story follows by two days the Detroit News article that GM lost 4.8 billion dollars in the fourth quarter. The NYT on January 24, 2006 wrote aboutt Ford closing down 14 factories and firing 30,000 workers. Contrast this decline with China's incredible 25 straight years of 10 percent increase in the economy each year!
The Time's article notes that "a surging import bill put a drag on overall growth." In other words, Americans are buying foreign goods, and by so doing, are destroying American business and its economy.
In 2004, says the article, economic growth in America was 4.2 percent, while this year, it is down to 3.5 percent. When we realize that inflation is 3.2 percent, we see that the American economy barely keeps pace with inflation. This is the country that poured billions into Chinese business so that China is now threatening our own economic well being.
Someone in the apparel and textile line told me that America no longer has textile factories. They closed because they could not compete with China and its slave labor wages. China at first offered American firms very good terms for buying Chinese textiles, until Americans could no longer compete and closed down. Now that China has a monopoly on textiles, it jacked up the price, sometimes forcing a buyer to accept a huge shipment or nothing.
They told me that the American government slaps so many bills on business, so many restrictions, that it very hard to resist the temptation to leave America and go to some foreign country where workers are treated like mud, and manufacturers make huge profits.
One factor of the economic slowdown was the price of oil, as stated in the article. Incredibly, nobody quoted in the three page article suggested that we try to wean ourselves off of oil. We note the failures of America, the success of the Chinese, and turn to the sports page. Next.
Next will be an America that must bow to a country that plans for its future, and will never repeat the mistake America made of letting temporary profits and foreign interests damage one's own economy.