Actually it isn't. Manufacturing declined 11% world wide but manufacturing output increased over the last decades here and abroad. Our problems are caused by government policies taxes regulations etc.and technological change, not by the fact that we have to compete in a global economy. if we really want to accelerate our decline give Congress and the White House even more power to protect their friends and punish their enemies. If there were ever a worse time to even think about protectionism, I can't think of it.

Diversity of viewpoints and nationality is useful in most non technical courses. Color is obviously irrelevant. While I always agree with Williams he shouldn't use Japan as an example. Their higher education is a joke and high school isn't much better. The kids who will take the exams that determine their future, all study after school and weekends at private schools and with tutors. What the Japanese don't have is under performing minorities, ghetto schools and.new immigrants who don't speak English. When the Japanese compare themselves with us they look just at natural born citizens of European stock.

There is nothing new in any of this. The third world was overproducing college graduates for decades, that is why they called it brain drain and blamed it on us,. Now as we adopt the policies that kept those countries backward, we face the same. If the economy were free and kids had to pay for their own education up front, they would figure out what to study. Probably two thirds of the population should learn useful trades and forget college because it's a waste of money. Not because they aren't smart enough to get a degree, but because they won't learn anything useful and they could be working and learning all those years.instead of piling up debt. if they want to learn some of the softer matters taught in liberal arts departments, they could always just read.

I think it's all Kabuki. The border includes every airport, port, coast, and land up north. To secure these things requires a way to enforce laws already on the books, a system for employers to determine legality, removal of welfare in all forms from legal and illegal aliens. This will secure the 'border is secure', fail to do either and it's all phony. Moreover new laws aren't needed to make it easier for legal immigrants to come here and easier for us to give or deny visas to whomever we want. The only new law we need is to restore the Braceros program. Aliens who are here because they overstayed their visas can apply for adjustment of status under existing law. Those who just slipped across the border will have to slip back and get in line. No laws are needed.

Tell that to the Germans and Italians and Soviet Citizens in the early 20th century, Christians under Rome, Cubans under Castro, Cambodians under well there aren't many of those left, and so on. The government is always,and everywhere the enemy, it's just that some of it is needed and must be kept in its constitutional box where there is one that matters.,

But who pays the tax? consumers and investors.. Managers don't, indeed their salaries are deductible and if their bonuses are paid with options they can pay the lower capital gains tax. The corporate tax is pure distortion. It has no redeeming value. Were it not for the corporate tax, revenues would be higher as profits would be somebody's income, and profits and incomes would be higher...

Your're excellent quip is probably lost on most, and all progressives.

not even close. Read Sowell, "Black Rednecks and White Liberals". Good data and analysis about this issue.

With a couple thousand Star Parkers and a million fewer Rhinos we could get this place turned around.

GM et al