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Trade with Japan
In recent months, we have heard the Japanese call the US workers
lazy, greedy and illiterate. Those are fighting words to us, even if
they may be true. The question is what to do about it. My basketball
coach always told me to exploit the weakness of the opposition by
using what (questionable) strengths I had. I think the US should do
exactly that with Japan. The Japanese are world leaders in quality
of goods and decades ahead of us in electronics like High Definition
Television (HDTV). We will never be able to compete with them in
these areas, so we must redefine the competition.
I propose that the FCC mandate a new form of Television called Low
Emission and Definition Television (LEAD-TV). Such TV sets would
have lots of static interference, horrible resolution, be expensive,
break very often, and would be hard and frustrating to watch.
Exactly the type of TV sets that American industry and workers are
already geared to produce! The Japanese, on the other hand, could
not produce such sets without spending billions in retooling; in
fact, they couldn't even produce the necessary low tech tools and
would have to buy them from the US or places like Bulgaria and
Albania. Thus helping the world balance of trade.
But even if the Japanese retooled, in order to meet or deseed the
FCC standards they would have to import tens of thousand of American
workers to show their Japanese counterparts the "how to" of building
shoddy products. The Japanese might even have to hire the entire
upper management of Ford, GM, Yale, and Stanford, to show Japanese
management how to really screw up production. This would solve our
unemployment problem.
(This does not solve all our problems as we still are left with
lawyers. Especially since the supreme court overturned (five to
four), the progressive Ohio law requiring lawyers who have cute
phone numbers (like 1-800-SUE-THEM or 1-JUST-SAY-SUE or
1-800-I-AM-RICH) to be skinned alive, rolled in salt, then impaled
in front of the statehouse. Something to do with something written
somewhere prohibiting "no cruel or unusual punishment." Actually not
the cruel part, as the court felt the punishment is fitting and
totally justified, but the unusual part. If we could only get Japan
to copy our legal system, our trade problems would cease.)
But the biggest advantage of LEAD-TV would not be the jobs it
created; it would be the effect on our children. Schools would
require that students watch at least 4 hours of LEAD-TV every day.
Since kids never do what they are told, and LEAD-TV is so bad, I
know my kids would even risk a spanking to sneak upstairs, hide in a
closet and read a good book. Yelling at them, of course, would only
heighten their resolve to read. In a decade, our kids could be the
most literate in the world!
Now don't you think that our kids deserve the best of the worst we
can give them! Help me in supporting LEAD-TV for the US, write the
FCC or you're congressman now, or if your a typical American and
can't right, just call 1-800-NUKE EM 2.
PS: For those of you who think JUST-SAY-SUE isn't a valid area code,
the ABA sued the phone company in 1991 because there weren't enough
cute phone numbers and, of course, won. Now any lawyer can use
anything for their area code. Billions of dollars of phone equipment
had to be junked and we the consumers had to pay for that; but, hey,
don't you agree that our lawyers are worth every penny...
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