Have you ever had to choose between paying an electric bill or having enough food for the week? Have you been forced to drive your 12-year-old beater of a car one more year? Have you ever been faced with moving to another state for work when your employer shuts its doors?
Hundreds of stump speeches include verbiage about plans to adopt “fair” tax policy, to encourage “business-friendly environments” for new job creation and to increase access to additional educational opportunities for adults to enhance their job skills. These stump speeches turned out to be nothing more than empty promises, and now a large segment of Americans are feeling betrayed and abandoned.
As the costs of living have increased, the value of our homes (the largest investment most make) has plummeted; wages have stagnated in the lower and middle classes; and workers have had to reinvent themselves every few years to just keep a job.
As “free trade” has been winning policy in the halls of Congress, America’s competing nations don’t have the heavy-handed EPA, OSHA, IRS, ACA (or any other mandatory government program) that become bureaucratic hurdles to employers eager to contend in the global market. America’s trade agreements create an unlevel playing field that penalizes American companies while allowing the importation of goods manufactured in countries that do not have burdensome regulations. This idiocy explains the rise of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.
America is the target of radical terrorists and identified as the “Great Satan,” with more than 50 recorded acts of terror or terror-related events inside the U.S. since February 2008, and hundreds of other plans disrupted by law enforcement. America’s immigration and guest worker system is completely out of control with laws ignored and, until recently, federally approved sanctuary cities harboring individuals here illegally.