We Did It to Ourselves

"After 34 years with LTV
Steel, I was forced to retire because of a disability.
Two years later, LTV filed bankruptcy. I lost a third of
my pension, and my family lost their health care. Every
day of my life, I sit at the kitchen table across from
the woman who devoted 36 years of her life to my family,
and I can`t afford to pay for her health care. What`s
wrong with America, and what will you do to change it?"

It was the most compelling moment of the
Democratic debate at Soldier Field. The speaker was
retired steelworker Steve Skvara. He stood on crutches,
voice breaking, as he spoke. [Video]

There are

millions of Steve Skvaras out there, and what they
do not know, in their anger and frustration, is that
their government did this to them. They are the victims
of an ideology that gripped both parties and is
destroying the middle-class country they grew up in.

Before World War II, the United State
sheltered, nurtured and aided U.S. industry—until, by
1928, we produced 40 percent of the world`s
manufactures. The companies we created, U.S. Steel and
Jones and Laughlin, GM, Chrysler and Ford, Boeing,
McDonnell and Lockheed, IBM and GE, were marvels of the
modern age.

We were the most self-sufficient nation
in history, and American industrial workers the
best-paid on earth. The companies they worked for had
begun to guarantee lifetime job security, generous
pensions for retirees and health insurance for all
workers.

Came then the free-trade fanatics with
their Faustian bargain. If we just throw open our
borders to imports from Europe, Japan, Asia and China,
we can buy all our goods cheaper, and we will all be
richer. For free trade is a free lunch.

What was wrong with this theory?

Every ton of steel produced by LTV,
every Chevy built by GM carried in its price tag the
cost of the Social Security, Medicare, and federal and
state taxes the company and its employees paid, plus the
cost of the company`s compliance with civil rights,
health and safety, and environmental laws the U.S.
government had enacted and, most important for Steve
Skvara, the

"legacy costs" of the pensions and health
insurance the companies had agreed to provide.

Every time any company, foreign or
domestic, bought a ton of U.S.-made steel, every time
anyone bought a U.S.-built Ford or Chevy, maybe 50
percent of that sticker price went for Social Security,
Medicare, defense, cops, teachers, parks—and into the
pot from which Steve Skvara`s pension and health
insurance premiums were being drawn.

The Fortune 500 were the greatest
welfare states in history. They were the geese that laid
the golden eggs for America`s middle class. And the

free-traders killed them, because their ideology
told them what`s best for consumers here and now is best
for America.

So foreigners dumped their steel, and we
gobbled it up. And their steel mills survived, and ours
went under. And they flooded our market with
Volkswagens, Hondas and Toyotas, and one by one took
down our auto companies, so that the U.S. auto industry,
which had 98 percent of the U.S. market in the 1950s,
have less than 50 percent today.

Mexico now exports more cars to the
United States than we export to the world.

Chrysler is on the ropes. Ford lost a record $12
billion last year.

GM is losing market share. Toyota is No. 1 in the
world because Tokyo set out to make itself No. 1.
Anybody think the Japanese care two hoots about

Adam Smith or

David Ricardo?

As one after another of the big
companies go down, they head into

bankruptcy court and ask for relief from creditors.
What are the largest of the liabilities they shed?
"Legacy costs"—the cost of the pension and health
insurance of Steve Skvara and his wife.

As we all buy up those TVs and radios
and motorcycles and cars and clothes made in Japan and
made in China, we kill factories all over America and
push America`s companies into chapter 11.

"But isn`t that the free market?"
comes the
retort. Should we have to pay more for the goods we buy?

Answer: No and no. Europeans and Asians
are skinning us alive. We impose corporate taxes that
average 40 percent, state and federal. Europe imposes
corporate taxes averaging 24 percent. Advantage Europe.

Europe imposes an average Value Added
Tax of 19 percent on all they produce.

But they rebate that VAT tax on exports
to the United States and stick a 19 percent VAT
equivalent on all imports from America. Without calling
it a tariff and a subsidy, it is a tariff and a subsidy.

For decades our trade wimps have put up
with this.

What needs to be done is simple. Impose
a 20 percent entry fee on all imported goods and
services, and use the $500 billion to cut taxes on U.S.
producers. Steve Skvara is a casualty of

globalism, but maybe we can save the next generation
from the same fate.

COPYRIGHT

CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Patrick J. Buchanan needs


no introduction to VDARE.COM
readers; his book

State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and
Conquest of America,

can be ordered from
Amazon.com.