Your comments, Mr. Hammond, are concisely on point as always.

As it is better to sail with the wind than against it, the continual evolution of the domestic economy must sail with the global economy. What’s past is past. Success depends on long term planning, anticipating, and adapting to economic changes that cannot be controlled. Regrettably such action is not a strength of election to election governance.

The future balance between domestic manufacturing production and intellectual production remains to be seen. The service sector will likely be challenged by foreign franchises arriving domestically mimicking the extensions of the ‘McDonalds’ franchises. Domestically we can only select certain markets in which to participate and strive for excellence Interestingly, older, larger companies struggle to grow by increasing exports: emerging companies may grow by exporting first and then increase domestic sales. Whatever it will be will be determined by global market forces and our selected sectors.

Certain actions serve only to suppress pain, to procrastinate, to delay adaptation, leaving one behind the power curve instead of ahead. If there is a helpful role for subsidies, tariffs, and such, it is to mitigate sudden adverse market changes to allow time to adapt, and, to temporarily protect embryonic businesses to allow limited time to grow to sustainability. The temporary nature makes it easy to shift government actions adaptively from situation to situation and avoid an ever increasing level of structural long term spending. It also serves notice that no domestic business shall depend on taxpayer aid for long. Using mid and long term government control actions hold the economy captive in the past and is destructive, in my opinion.

The big issue is getting government on all levels to stop pretending that government is a cost-effective solution to whatever the problem of the moment is; and that it is in-fact, by nature, parasitic to our economy. Most thinking (and caring) Americans now fully realize that continued deficit spending is simply not sustainable In order to save our sovereignty, government and services need to be drastically reduced. There is an inherent goodness in our citizens, and private concerns can provide for the truly needy far more efficiently than can a large government bureaucracy. I’m not talking about reducing deficit spending; I’m talking about absolutely NO deficit spending.

Our elected representatives also need to reflect back on what built our national wealth in the first place: individuals and small, US owned, businesses. These entities are the only things that should be considered as being “Too Big to Fail.” Legislating for the success of major “contributors” at the expense of average taxpayers is unacceptable and reeks of corruption.

The one thing nobody is talking about is the self-destructive “fair” trade policies which the members of our US Congress, in both parties, have shackled us with so tightly. History has already proven that the only way out of our present situation will be through our manufacturing base. We must take back our right to set our own tariffs. Policies need to be established to strongly encourage the production and purchasing of US goods and services.

And finally, we need to ensure that accurate US history is being taught to our children, with a strong emphasis on how and why our nation was formed. Any mention of any form of socialism, without a full explanation of the 100,000,000 peacetime deaths that resulted within the lands that adopted it, is extremely unfair to our precious future generations.

Our elected representatives also need to reflect back on what built our national wealth in the first place: individuals and small, US owned, businesses. These entities are the only things that should be considered as being “Too Big to Fail.” Legislating for the success of major “contributors” at the expense of average taxpayers is unacceptable and reeks of corruption.

The one thing nobody is talking about is the self-destructive “fair” trade policies which the members of our US Congress, in both parties, have shackled us with so tightly. History has already proven that the only way out of our present situation will be through our manufacturing base. We must take back our right to set our own tariffs. Policies need to be established to strongly encourage the production and purchasing of US goods and services.

And finally, we need to ensure that accurate US history is being taught to our children, with a strong emphasis on how and why our nation was formed. Any mention of any form of socialism, without a full explanation of the 100,000,000 peacetime deaths that resulted within the lands that adopted it, is extremely unfair to our precious future generations.