American Society Gets What It Pays For

Re “High-Paid Jobs Latest U.S. Export,” April 2: The reasons that Americans are into cheap goods fall under two categories: They don’t have enough income to keep afloat and to buy better goods, or they haven’t learned that real quality goods last longer and work better.

We are in a throwaway society; rather than fix something, we go out and buy a cheap replacement (“cheap” meaning low-cost and sub-quality). People here do not make wages that would cover the cost of better, American-made products because those industries have sold out and opted to locate in countries where the workers are also up against a wall economically.

Foreign workers don’t get paid enough to afford the very things they make, either. The only real way Americans could get an even break is to place high tariffs on anything imported--and keep those who have sold out and left from coming back in for a period of years.

Workers are not the problem; it’s the corporate greed and companies’ cutthroat management.

Besides tariffs, other countries such as those in Central America and Asia would do well to require that any company opening up shop there purchase housing for the workers, educate them, send their kids to college and initiate other socially elevating projects as a condition of being a manufacturer.

Only by elevating culture through education of the masses in new technology can a global economy really work for the global market.

Anything less is a total rip-off, and any so-called “American” company that sells out and goes offshore should be banished and blackballed for killing another portion of the American economy here at home.

Charles Michael

North Las Vegas

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After reading about the export of more and more American jobs to overseas locations, I imagine that U.S. workers must feel like this is just another form of terrorism. In the end, won’t it gut the American worker base and devalue the dollar? Should profit come ahead of loyalty and patriotism?

Erin Scarlett

Cathedral City