Almost everything we buy comes from outside the county. Everytime you shop at Walmart, Bullock’s, the dollar stores, Foxworth Galbraith, Sun Valley, Sierra Auto, O’Reilly’s, Autozone, or Davis Fleck money flows out of the county; every time you pay your Sierra Electric bill or buy gas your dollars go abroad. The art works are produced here, and Bullock’s sells some locally grown vegetables and fruits. At Baquera’s you can buy locally grown chili, and in Hillsboro there’s a Saturday market. But mostly we send our dollars out of county. An unfair system has created this imbalance. This is an enormous trade deficit that we should address.
It’s time for us to tax the imports. That will bring needed money for both the county and the T or C Commissioners. Our inability to pay at the registers for all that imported stuff will force the producers to negotiate with us. Using that leverage, we can negotiate with Dodge to build a pickup factory here, and that will increase jobs in the county. If we force Walmart to charge $10 for a tee-shirt or $50 for a pair of jeans, it may hurt us in the short term, but in the long run, Walmart will have to buy our Sierra County clothes to sell to us.
In time, things will be so much cheaper, if we produce our own stuff. There won’t be the added trucking fees, and labor costs will be much lower. After all, our wage scale is so much lower than outside the county. Half of the households in Sierra County live on less than $38,000 a year; while nationally households are earning $81,000 a year, median. So, clearly, wages in the new manufacturing we create by taxing imports and raising prices will be low enough to make the products cheap.
We could be great again and even provide CBD gummies free. Write your Commissioners and tell them to tax imports: jobs for all, cheaper products, lower inflation, and better health through CBD gummies. MSCGA.
Excuse me while I make the county poorer. I must go to Walmart to replace the underwear I just wet because I was laughing so hard. Well done, Max
Gee, why didn’t our County Commissioners think of that? A chuckle is always nice, thanks for that.
Good one, Max! 😬
We’re fortunate that more than half of the voters in the county that voted for Trump aren’t likely to read this because I think they would think you were completely serious and possibly applaud you for the article.
Well if someone like me posts to Facebook out of 5 groups I’m sure some or all will read the citizen posts that i added to 5 groups i belong to.
Excellent.
Interesting parody, however, somewhat mean spirited. Sierra County is where people go to die, not where people even think of going for a better way of life which is obvious to the young people who leave as soon as they can manage to do so. Those firmly entrenched here like to keep it that way so don’t rock the boat!
It was our corporate leaders who decided to profit from having our goods made by the working poor of poor countries. Now Republicans are blaming them for our loss of industry. I like tariffs but Trump is doing it all wrong. It take years to build factories here. Trump wants to replace a progressive income tax with a regressive tariff tax. Study history! We almost had a revolution when we taxed that way.
Mr. Bjorgan, I totally agree that we should remember that we created outsourcing ourselves. We should also remember that we exploited poor foreign workers precisely because they work for less money than we do. That means to me that if we bring manufacturing back to the states all the goods would cost more to produce (because the standard of living here is so much higher). The only way that can work is to fatally kill the present economy so that the standard of living falls.
To bring back manufacturing, as you say, takes years, if it can be done at all, and the fact that unemployment is low in the US indicates that industries can’t just expand, cuz the workforce isn’t there (unless we use immigrant labor or slave labor). The whole idea of re-introducing manufacturing is nutty because there never was a drop in US manufacturing, which has continued to grow steadily after outsourcing. That is a fact: the growth was, in fact, quite steady and steep until recently. So, it seems there was no reason for any of this except to fool voters with “jobs, jobs, jobs.”
I do disagree with you about our progressive tax system. That was the intention of the income tax. But over the years it has changed as a result of small changes. Our taxing system is decidedly regressive now. To see this clearly, please, read this article: https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/taxation-against-oligarchy.