

Scott Lax Blog

Reviving the American Economy the Old Fashioned Way

Given that our corrupted economy - courtesy off banks, Wall Street, and manufacturers that have outsourced most of our jobs, agribusiness, and the politicians that enabled this plunder of farm and factory alike - is in shambles, I still think there is hope.

You probably already read blogs about local farming and organic food, and that's a good thing, but not always possible. We can all try to buy local food; if we can't, we can't. Local food is terrific, but canned orange juice and Dinty Moore's Beef Stew aren't the reason our country is screwed up. That's just elitist nonsense. If you can't afford food, now that's a real problem.

I'm talking about lots of products... real American made products. Toys that are simple and made of wood or cloth and made by Americans; good clothes that last, made in America; and so much more. I'll post some of those products on occasion, because I believe, as a former industrial salesman (though a liberal that believes in sustainable, environmentally sound food and manufacturing) that "Made in America" is the one thing that can save us from a Depression - one that is inevitable if we unemployment continues apace.

I like Chinese people. I like Mexican people. I like French people, and generally prefer their wine, though not exclusively. I like people from all over the world, and there are products that we need to import, from Central American bananas to Italian suits (and French wine). But if we don't do more to reclaim our industrial and agricultural foundations, we'll actually become that Third World country that The Huffington Post writes about. We need to make things, including energy producers (like wind farms), and alternative transportation (like trains, those things that move the masses around the world, which we can't seem to get right.) We need to sell things -from cutting tools to clothes to local farm-raised food to toys -that are made by artisans, craftspeople, farmers, vintners, brewers and manufacturers that are in the USA. People need jobs, and for there to be jobs, companies have to make things. That's how we solve unemployment. Read More