The US Economy

The United States has one of the world’s largest economy. The GDP is valued at $17.914 trillion dollars! (World Bank)2 So how can one of the world’s largest economies belong to a country that has an increasing gap between rich and poor? Simple, the way it is run! The US government has lost control of and has virtually stopped regulating our economy. We have allowed our jobs to be outsourced in the name of profit. Politicians have allowed big business to run not only our economy, but our government. According to PBS1, only 1% of the population controls most of the wealth in America. The result is a corrupt government that resembles an Oligarchy where the rich get richer and the poor stay poor. This problem needs to be addressed at its source
The US now imports more than we export. So in other words we are not a self-sustaining country like we used to be. We are not investing our money in America instead we are sending it overseas. We have become too dependent on foreign countries and cheap goods, thus making our economy weak. We could soon find our economy being taken over by a foreign interest. Due to the destruction of American factories, I don’t think we would have the infrastructure to mass produce goods like we used to. Ironically if this practice continues it will not only hurt the average American citizen, but the CEO’s of the big companies, who control most of the wealth. With many more jobs overseas the US economy has faltered. Unfortunately this practice is neither controlled nor looked down upon. Instead it is encouraged and seen as innovation in business. In some cases it is even rewarded! For example, the late Steve Jobs, co-founder of apple and neXT, is seen as one of the greatest American businessmen of our time. Many do not realize that Steve Jobs was one of the first CEO’s to outsource American jobs to China. Instead we are given this illusion that he greatly helped the American economy. Even when he was encouraged by President Obama to manufacture iPads in the US he refused, to which he replied “the jobs aren’t coming back”12. Steve Jobs is just one of many businessmen
There are many ways this could be fixed but I believe starting at the source would solve the problem, the source being the depletion of jobs. I believe that government should impose some increased tariffs on goods that are being manufactured overseas. With the tariff companies would have to increase the price on the product thus making the product more expensive and less competitive to American products. I believe companies would be forced to move their factories back to the US, due to outsourcing becoming “unprofitable”. This would bring many jobs back to America and promote a feeling of national pride. A pride that I believed my generation have only experienced through the history books.
To conclude the wealth gap is very dangerous and real issue that America faces. I believe in order to bring America back into another golden age the government must address this problem right away without resorting to communism. If we don’t act the constant lobbying of the 1% could lead to an oligarchy. We the people should demand polices such as NAFTA and EGTTRA to be amended or abolished. Contrary to popular belief these polices do not help being money into the US, instead they are one of the causes to the outsourcing of