In writing of the enemies of America it would be gross negligence to omit the greatest domestic enemy of our Constitution and our Republic—the federal government.
The following letters assigning blame for America's decline appeared in Contract Employment Weekly in 1990. The first names the decline in American engineering as the cause and the reply points the finger at the government and those behind it. I'll refer to the writer of the first as Larry D. and of the second as Rick L.
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Trade, Deficits, and Blame. WHY DOES THE TRUTH REMAIN SUPPRESSED? DIMWITTED ECONOMISTS WHO ALWAYS MISS THEIR MARK!
By far the most consistent whining (not a very winning strategy) about the deteriorating state of affairs pertaining to the sputtering American industrial machine, comes from the incredible array of so-called learned economists, who are looked upon as experts by our sometimes ignorant press corps. These ivy towered academics are continually being quoted by the astute members of the 4th estate as to the standard reasons for the demise of our economy. The standard excuses are:
Japanese trade policies, 2) High interest rates, 3) Budget deficits, 4)? other excuses.
The above are merely symptoms not the cause! Why do these people ALWAYS miss their mark? Are they really stupid? How could this be as they are graduates of the nation's most prestigious colleges?
Did you ever have somebody look through you and talk to somebody behind you, like you didn't exist? How does it feel to be a non-person? These learned economic "experts" talk about everything else. Do they think manufactured goods just fall from the sky like manna from heaven? Hearing panels of economic "experts" try to explain the demise of our economy is like listening to a bunch of tropical birds mimicking human voices, all form no substance, quacking away at a high volume.
The reason they are off so much is that they can't say the E word. What is the E word? It stands for ENGINEER They simply cannot get themselves to admit that an industrial-based economy is 100%, not 90%, not 50%, but I repeat myself again, 100% dependent upon the American working Engineer!!!!
Since the zenith of 1969 (moon landing, top economy in world), the American Working Engineer has been treated terribly at an increasing rate! Low wages, massive importation of foreign engineers at ridiculously low wages, and finally the piece de'resistance, Senator Moynihan's 1706, have made the practice of engineering as lucrative as Uranian mining. We seem to have forgotten that manufactured goods don't grow on trees. They are designed by Engineers, the manufacturing technology is done by Engineers, and the distribution means and software is implemented by Engineers. In the economic pecking order this fact is completely ignored. There is no special interest group or union that can effectively take care of the welfare of technical workers and professionals. Engineers are the only engine of our industries.
The old adage... "you get what you pay for" is the real story behind our economic downfall. The quality of our products has been deteriorating steadily simply because our best brains go in to other fields of endeavor, namely, medicine, law and business. We have seen a steady erosion of American brainpower leave the engineering business for greener pastures. This has had a direct impact on our manufactured products on the average. We simply design and manufacture inferior products because we have inferior people designing them today more than twenty years ago.
Top pay attracts top people period! Exploited people also care less about innovation. Most engineers in this country don't get apenny for their patents unlike Japanese and European practices.
The quality of our engineering education has also fallen significantly in two decades. Greedy academia, eager to fill up campuses, actively recruited masses of foreign engineering students. In most cases at publicly supported state schools where out-of-state native Americans must pay full tuition, but alien students get free state tuition (including tens of thousands of Japanese graduate students who merrily steal taxpayer supported research). Thus in one stroke they get masses of students to support their salaries and perks. At the same time they worked hand in hand with greedy industrialists and government officials crying about fictitious shortages of Engineers in this country (there never has been such a shortage ever!) Thus in one stroke this alliance broke the back of the American working engineer. The department of labor would always let these graduating students stay in the country since they were sponsored by companies claiming they could hire no Americans for the job openings. This was true only in the context that these 'reserved for alien" jobs were usually at about one-third or half the then going rate for an American.
Not to be outdone in avarice, college professors, the chaps who had good salaries, perks and tenure, would turn around and fill the numerous instructor slots with low paid aliens. These instructors (I know from first hand experience) would do the bulk of the mundane teaching, freeing the professors to compete on government research projects staffed by free student labor under the guise of "thesis projects." However this cozy scheme had one major drawback. Most of these alien instructors' verbal English communication skills are so poor that to a typical American student all they could hear in class was garbled rubbish. Now there is no way that rigorous subjects such as advanced mathematics, physics or chemistry can be adequately taught to a large number of students in this manner. Sure there are always geniuses who learn completely by themselves, but for the majority of students this is not enough unless they form self-teaching groups. This could work for, let's say, law students, but most engineers have poor interpersonal skills, so this was out. What to do? Fortunately (unfortunately in a way) to the rescue came computer technology (primarily developed by industry, not academia).
Thus came to pass the primacy of "computer science" on most engineering campuses. This was followed by the degree in "engineering technology" (to get around the embarrassment of not receiving academic accreditation). Thus the schools could rely upon software programs to supply interactive computer prompts, rather than on actually teaching! Gone by the wayside were fundamental subjects that required rigorous analytical skills. In their place was a proliferation of programming languages and wire wrapping courses. Thus the phenomena of student as computer hacker. Gone was a massive loss of problem solving and communication skills plus major core subjects such as power engineering and analog electrical theory (and, yes, unfortunately, courses in English literature). Don't get me wrong, I firmly believe in computer technology having been in the field for over twenty-five years. But I could never practice it without a rigorous fundamental engineering education. This made it easy to design hardware or write software without any special training (which is absolutely necessary for most "engineering technology graduates"). The use of specific computers and languages or semiconductor devices is not the primary job of a college or university. Any well-trained engineer can pick these skills up quickly when on the job. However, that's the emphasis at too many schools today.
Thus, except for a handful of elite schools peopled by students with excellent high school or prep school educations, the average engineer employed by industry today is INFERIOR to his or her counterpart of 20 years ago! Now please note the term I used... "average." This statement is statistically true since there has been a fourfold increase in the number of practicing engineers than there was 20 years ago. Unfortunately probably more than half these engineers have graduated with inferior educations. As long as these individuals were willing to work significantly cheaper than Americans, our greedy industrialists were happy to hire them over Americans. Just like the old economist adage of cheap money driving good money out of the marketplace, so has the effect in driving many of our best brains out of what's become a low paying occupation relative to the others. This short-sighted policy was codified by the passage of 1706 of the TRA of 1986 by Senator Moynihan. Thus the blatant discrimination against engineers in our tax code as pertaining to working as an independent businessman.
To fill this gap many industrial firms rely heavily on computer aided engineering software. This software conceptually designed 20-30 years ago to run on the old mainframe IBM and Control Data computers, with an operating system and compiler developed by the telephone company 25 years ago has been ported over to the new table top workstation microcomputers. Excellent as this stuff is, it can in no way compensate for analytical thought processes and engineering fundamentals. There is no way that a superior tool with an inferior engineer can design a superior product. The resultant product will be inferior. However the reverse is always true. A superior engineer with an inferior tool can always produce a superior product...it just takes longer.
So please, learned bean counters, economists and government policy makers, take note and face the truth. — Larry D., B.I.E. 1956, M.S.E.E. 1968, Working Engineer (sometimes), San Diego, California
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This letter is long overdue. My excuse is that I have been floating on the air of self-importance since Larry D's letter on July 25 and it's taken me this long to get down to reality.
As an engineer, it would certainly be gratifying to think I was as important as Mr. D says, but I can't. The reason I can't accept his theory on the cause of America's demise is that I have been fighting the cause, with varying vigor, for the last twenty years. Personal experience, extensive reading and contact I've had with very knowledgeable people make me conclude that Mr. D has missed the mark, both in his assessment of the effect of the engineer's decline on America's economy and of the cause (motive?) of the economists' inaccurate assessments.
We hear a lot about the trade deficit and the deplorable state of American manufacturing, but as Mr. D points out, the real causes of America's decline are rarely mentioned—never by the "recognized expert" economists. Actually, the American economy isn't declining. As anyone who went through the last twenty years or so with their eyes open should be able to see — it's being systematically dismantled. The reasons are many — and they are one.
From the end of WWII to around 1971 or 1972 our industry had maintained a favorable trade balance, yet our balance of payments was consistently unfavorable. The difference was U.S. Government handouts and expenditures all over the world. Say what you will about the brilliance of Japanese management, it would have been in vain if the Japanese government had embarked on a program to bleed their economy dry, and that is exactly what has happened here. Through the twin jugular incisions of "Foreign Aid" and Militarism, our government has been bleeding capital, the life-blood of any modern economy, from our land.
At the same time, our government began destroying the independent middle class with crippling regulation, crushing taxation, and the all-consuming three-headed monster, inflation. Regulation weakened and demoralized the middle class. The three heads of inflation—government deficit spending, the Federal Reserve, and the Fractional Reserve Banking System—began swallowing its wealth (and the wealth of most Americans) and, together with taxation, began transferring it to the financiers and big corporations that finance the national debt. Many small businessmen, especially manufacturers, couldn't afford to comply with the regulations; others began thinking, "If I can't run it myself and I can't enjoy the fruits of my own labor, what's the point in owning a business." One by one independent manufacturers folded or were absorbed by the giant corporations. The courage, drive, individualistic spirit, and innovation of these entrepreneurs was lost to America. The spiritless collective mentality of the corporate 'manager" replaced it. To compound the loss, most of the giant corporations are multi-national and they frequently transfer production to other countries where they have a cheap labor supply and no need for government regulation to destroy competition: there is none.
Finally, as the Federal Government grew into an all powerful centralized National Government through gradual usurpation of the rights and powers of the States, local governments, and the people themselves, the citizen inevitably shrank. The individualistic (dirty word), innovative spirit of the average American was replaced by the collectivist, regimented spirit? of the bureaucrat. The plans for their own economic well-being that were made by tens of millions of free Americans were replaced by the plans of tens of thousands of self-aggrandizing government "planners". Thus, the most thoroughly planned and prosperous economy in history, one that had had input from millions of planners (the people) degenerated into the "planned" chaos created by politically appointed "experts".
There are other contributing factors, but they are all part of the same cause I've been writing about. As I said earlier, "the causes are many, and they are one." They can be summed up in one word, the word the establishment economists won't say. It is the G word — Government. Even the decline in the quality of college education has been caused in part by the desire to increase head count to increase government subsidy.
The big question is, why is all this happening? Why don't the "bean counters", economists and government policy makers "take note and face the truth?" Is it stupidity, poor judgment, or are we all being driven by events beyond our control? I have my own ideas, but before I relate them, I want to warn you. I'm one of those "kooks" that believe in the "Conspiracy Theory of History" (as opposed to the "fools" who believe in the "Accidental Theory"). Anyone who has difficulty planning what they're going to do this weekend and feels uncomfortable with the idea that there may be people who plan decades ahead, even for things that will not come to pass in their own lifetimes, had better skip the rest of this letter.
As to our being driven by events, I believe that hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and earthquakes are typical of events beyond man's control (but with weather control, underground nuclear testing, etc., I'm not too sure about this anymore). On the other hand, booms and busts, inflation and deflation, war and peace, although they are beyond the control of most men, they themselves are driven by men. Why? For personal gain, of course!
If you analyze history instead of just accepting it as a series of dates and unrelated events that drove the human race along, I think you'll find a characteristic generally common to all times and places; those who dominate the wealth of an area and time usually dominate the politics and vice-versa. That's not really a difficult concept to grasp. I think most people will agree that politics and economics are inextricably intertwined and, like matter and energy, each can be converted into the other. Not so obvious is that, as a rule, those who are able attempt to pull power to the level of their economic interests. Sociological studies in the U.S. show that when a business is local, the businessman is active in local affairs. When it is operating over a wider area, perhaps in several cities within a state, the businessman stays out of local affairs because the locals would deem his activity interference. However, it's reasonable to assume that he has still not lost interest in those local issues that affect his business. Since he doesn't want to appear to be interfering in local affairs, but still wants to protect and advance his economic interests, his best move is to draw those government functions that affect his business to the state level where he is now influential.
That tendency of economic dominants to pull government power with them to their new level of economic interests is evident in America. As the geographic scope of business has expanded, power has shifted in great proportion from the local and state governments to the Federal Government (see Strohm, CEW-818/90, "But state laws conform to federal laws"). It is the continuance of that trend into the international sphere that provides the motive for the systematic destruction of the American economy.
Today, Mega-Corp and Daddy Big Bucks no longer see themselves as Americans. They are, and they see themselves as, internationalists. They call themselves and their henchmen, "The New World Order". It is in their interests to promote world government to further and protect their global economic interests, and they don't give a damn what the cost is to the rest of us — and the cost is high. After WWII no country on earth could touch our standard of living and its potential was almost limitless. There was no way the American people could have been persuaded to give up all they had for a world government. It became necessary to take it away bit by bit. That's the reason for what has been and is happening to America. If you think times are bad now, just wait until 2000, the year these guys plan to have "Service" America completed. Engineers know what a service economy means. It means we'll be at the arrivals gate of the international airport fighting each other for the right to shine the rich tourist's shoes or to sell him our "sister" (she very nice girl — big fun).
If you don't believe our de-industrialization is planned, get a copy of long time 'think tank" member Vincent P. Rock's, "A Strategy for Interdependence", Scribner's, 1964. Also, try to get a copy of, The Declaration of Interdependence", another "think tank" developed document. You'll believe!
For those not aware, "think tanks" are gaggles of intellectual whores who have sold their minds to the highest bidders. They are charged with developing and implementing plans for the 'One World' scam and couching them in idealistic terms for the appeasement of the victims. This brings us to the question, "Why don't the economists see this and expose it?" Some have, but they are not "recognized experts" and aren't likely to be. It's also unlikely they or their schools will get grants from government or the big foundations to continue their work, and you won't see them quoted often by the media. For funding, credibility, and publicity, you must be "recognized." To become "recognized" an economist must prostitute himself to the moguls of the New World Order. Like the witchdoctor of old, he must mesmerize the people with tricks, incoherent chants, and smoke—lots of smoke. He must convince them that he and he alone possesses esoteric wisdom that permits him to speak to the great god, Economindexus. Above all, HE MUST NEVER TELL THE TRUTH! – Rick L. Ind./Mfg. Engr. [aka PhreedomPhan]
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