Nice to see you back!

Thanks for finally endorsing my position: that restricting imports of the shoes that poorer people are able to buy is unethical.

There is much that isn’t the fault of either party currently as much as the mindset of the voters that was created over the last 70 years.

Look at almost all the nation that are rapidly growing their standards of living. They usually had to hit bottom before the people would accept change. In socialism, the promise is always, “things will be better and more fair,” each election. Yet, they aren’t better in the long run and in the gradual trend of the decades, it is down. It is reduces buying power, reduced standards of living, longer waits for healthcare or other problems they face as business and wealth leave once better opportunities in the new world market come along.

Many of the “old socialist” nations that were held up as “examples” are facing huge problems for the same reasons we are. They can’t compete with lower tax nations as we see in the complaints against Ireland by other EU nations who say the low taxes for business is luring them away from the other nations.

How do you get politicians to implement the suggestions you presented if they believe they will lose elections doing so?

Regarding the “fair tax,” I am mainly against rebates as it adds a layer of government bureaucracy that shouldn’t be there. While they say the rebates are to protect the low wage earner, they also say prices will drop 20-30% which would mean final cost wouldn’t be any higher than now with a 30% sales tax which would equal a 23% reduction in price. If that is the case, why is a rebate needed? The answer may be that imports would be 30% higher and so much of what lower wage earners buy is imported.

However, a consumption tax is good in that you get to choose to save and if you do, you aren’t taxed on the money you save unless you later take it out and spend it. It also raises imports 30% while lowering domestic goods manufactured here. The problem will be the transition period until some of that manufacturing comes back here and the resistance from importers and big retail chains than import a lot, I believe. Also, just the publicity of the 30% sales tax will scare many voters who don’t understand economics and the benefits of a consumption tax very well.

Politicians will cow tow to big business because the more they cut taxes on individuals, especially on the lower wage and middle class earners which are the vast majority of tax payers, the more they will need huge profits to tax. We are to the point where shafting the worker to get huge profits gives the politicians the tax revenues they need for social programs for the “needy.” However, they are creating more “needy” with the very same policies so it becomes a catch 22.

But, once the nation hits bottom, I think many things that will help will be popular and possible. What will make us hit bottom? We are pretty sure of some of them but, the problem comes that we don’t know when or how bad it will actually get.

It could be next year or five years or a decade or 2 decades. The longer it is, the worse they are saying it will be. It could be a continued decline of the dollar and hyperinflation. It could be a loss of our standards of living or a depression that lasts years. It could be triggered by foreign nations refusing to loan us any more money for our deficit spending or more business leaving or investment money leaving.

There are so many variables that nobody can predict when or how bad but, as the GAO points out and as the Social Security Administration points out and Chairman Bernanke points out, the U.S. economy and fiscal policy is “unsustainable.”

The revenues needed to fund all of this and more could become available in short order.

I recently read an article about one of the former Soviet-bloc nations (can’t remember which one) that instituted a version of the Fair Tax and the economy became a juggernaut in less than a year.

Now don’t all start hammering me at once. I’m not saying this WILL fix the problem, I’m saying it’s a good idea and one that rates discussion and debate at ALL levels of government.

John Konop for U.S. Senate – It’s time for John Q. Public to keep MORE of his hard earned money!

In short, our infrastructure in is all rated “C” or worse, our budgets are being cut in things like monitoring food, arresting illegals and business that hire them, and many other things in our society.

This is normal for a society that doesn’t have the tax revenues to pay for those things. We are basically bankrupt as a nation since the GAO’s 2007 report says we owe more than we own. Now with some nations cutting back on lending us more money, we could face some serious problems as interest rates rise to reflect that reluctance and our buying power drops due to the declining dollar (it may rally for a while, some believe), and rising costs of food and energy.

The “conservative” view is to have “national standards,” but have most of the enforcement done by the states. However, many states are now facing huge problems with their budgets due to the retirement crunch they face in pension and healthcare promises they are finding they can’t keep or are having serious problems keeping. They too, are cutting back on budgets in other areas so they can fund their promises.

There are plenty of people in and out of government that are willing to tackle these problems but there isn’t the funds available for it. We are now starting to see only the beginning of many issues that will lower our standard of living, just as the GAO said we would for the last three years. We are rapidly running out of ways to fund all the things we want that keep our food supply safe, wages higher than other nations, infrastructure in top shape, healthcare the best, etc.

All of these things are headed down because we are going deeper into debt and more and more of our money is for mandatory spending such as Social Security, Medicare, interest on Debt and discretionary spending on defense, border security, and homeland security.

The citizens rebel when they are taxed more and the businesses and wealth leaves when it is taxed more. So, how do we fund all the things we want when nobody wants to pay for them?

Do you understand the system is based on the manufacturing company having the liability of a re-call? If the manufacturing company has no risk via the WTO China trade deal no amount of government can fix the problem! This is a Clinton, Gore , Bush, Hillary, McCain, Price…….. sell out of Americans!

What to do when everything is ‘Made in China?’

MSNBC-A one-week attempt to avoid products from there meets with little success

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. – Poisoned pet food. Seafood laced with potentially dangerous antibiotics. Toothpaste tainted with an ingredient in antifreeze. Tires missing a key safety component.

U.S. shoppers may be forgiven if they are becoming leery of Chinese-made goods and are trying to fill their shopping carts with products free of ingredients from that country.

The trouble is, that may be almost impossible

Chinese exports have been in the spotlight since the deaths of dogs and cats in North America attributed to tainted Chinese wheat gluten, followed by this week’s recall of Chinese-made radial tires and an alert Thursday by the Food and Drug Administration, warning about contaminated Chinese seafood.

My family hit some stores to see how hard it would it be for the average consumer to avoid the “Made in China” label — even for just a week.

My sons’ well-worn sneakers were starting to resemble sandals, so our family headed to the Empire Mall in Sioux Falls in search of a couple of cheap pairs to get the boys, ages 10 and 12, through the summer.

The quest began in the J.C. Penney shoe department. We soon found out this was going to be no easy task: Adidas, made in China; Sketchers, made in China; Reebok, made in China or Indonesia.

We finally found some New Balance shoes and I recalled reading that the company still makes some running shoes in the United States. The first few said “Made in China,” but we then spotted three adult styles marked “Made in the USA of imported materials.”

That sounded as close as we could get, so I asked my 12-year-old which of the three he liked.

“This one,” he said, pointing to the $75 shoe he’ll likely outgrow in months.

“Let’s keep looking,” I said.

We headed to a couple of other shoe stores — Famous Footwear and Payless — and found several other styles of sneakers mostly made in China and Indonesia.

Famous Footwear had one U.S.-made New Balance sneaker on sale for $40, but my oldest didn’t like the color combination so we moved on. I guess those well-worn sneakers can last another week until this little experiment ends.

Shopping for non China-made groceries at our local Hy-Vee grocery store seemed to be presenting few challenges, but it turned out to be more of a case of blissful ignorance than well-informed consumerism.

Products in nonfood aisles communicated their origins better than their edible counterparts. Labels of Suave shampoo, Dial hand soap, Kleenex tissues, Ziploc bags, Solo cups, Bounty napkins, Tide laundry detergent, SOS pads and Dawn dish detergent all read “Made in USA,” although none of the labels got specific about the ingredients.

Toothpaste was a bit more confusing — a concern considering some brands toothpaste made in China were recently found to contain a chemical called diethylene glycol, which is used to make antifreeze.

AquaFresh said “Made in USA” right on the box, but boxes of Crest and Colgate named only the companies that distributed the product, Procter & Gamble Co. and Colgate-Palmolive Co. respectively.

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Discuss: Your thoughts on product safety

Procter and Gamble on its Web site says the Crest toothpaste found in stores is made in North America, not China. Colgate-Palmolive on its site says Colgate toothpaste is safe regardless of where the company manufactures it.

The labels on most food products we looked at were of little help.

The 2002 Farm Bill passed by Congress mandated country-of-origin labeling for seafood, beef, lamb, pork, fish, fruits, vegetables and peanuts, but the Bush administration has delayed its implementation for everything except seafood until October 2008.