United States no longer a self-sufficient country

I cannot understand why our political leaders do not realize that we can no longer sustain our current standard of living with our current free-trade globalization policies.

We are virtually dependent on other countries to furnish us with everything we need, have bought or plan to buy, with the possible exception of food and houses.

Our exports have diminished to a record low, and our imports have risen to an unbelievable record. Our trade deficit is somewhere between $5 trillion and $10 trillion.

It is unbelievable to me that anyone would think that printing and circulating more money can help the economy.

Regardless of how it is circulated -- as a bailout, an economic stimulus, infrastructure -- it is still going out of the country. Nothing will help our economy until we start producing in the United States.

There are three possibilities for regaining our domestic productivity.

If we continue on the road we are on, printing more money and depending on cheap labor outside the country, eventually when enough jobs are lost and unemployment becomes so severe our workers will be forced to work for minimum wage, gradually some manufacturing will be able to return and be competitive. As a result, our standard of living will drop drastically.

The second and possibly the best solution would be to put tariffs on specific products (automobiles, appliances, television sets and many more) that could be easily manufactured in the United States. We could also give tax breaks on products manufactured in U.S. and exported to other countries.

Needless to say, tariffs and getting jobs back in the United States will result in higher costs, but we can live with that. Workers will have jobs at decent wages, money to spend and health care. The other problem with tariffs is that it will play havoc with our relations with all those countries that have enjoyed supplying us and collecting U.S. dollars. Since we have over a trillion-dollar national debt, China and Japan might get mad enough to cash in their Treasury notes, which would necessitate printing another trillion dollars and further devalue the dollar.

The third and worst road to economic recovery is (as the Republicans frequently point out) more big government through nationalization. If we continue to bail out banks, mortgage companies, automakers and insurance companies and either take interest in the company or put government restrictions on them, that is certainly leading toward big government. Then if we supply enough money for energy, infrastructure, education and health care, that is getting the government involved even more and in some cases getting away from free enterprise.

Ironically, most of these devalued dollars will still end up in other countries. And when we quit printing them, our economy will falter again.

We need health-care reform and a lot of the other proposed expenditures, but not until we find a way to pay for them.

My main concern is that we are not addressing increasing domestic productivity, which is our basic economic problem and should be our No. 1 priority.

Jack H. Knowlan Sr. is a Jackson resident.