Prescott Valley, AZ Correspondent-The solutions to bolstering a stagnant economy and returning Americans to work lie in the reestablishment of a number of institutions and policy approaches that will strengthen the economy and return Americans to work.

With the number of businesses, companies, corporations and organizations leaving America in record numbers and corporate tax rates remaining at high levels, the demand for lower waged workers, and lower priced products and services have driven significant numbers of companies and jobs overseas. In addition, jobs have disappeared or have been significantly diminished to the point that entire industrialized sectors of the American economy have been driven out of existence.

Donald Trump has advocated a number of solutions to return America to growth from within rather than the wholesale outsourcing of manufacturing, product development, abandonment of natural resource production, and job loss and displacement.   He has made proposals that will help return jobs to the United States and stimulate job creation from within.

Returning and renewing  manufacturing to their rightful places within America as well as  increasing steel, clean coal, oil,  natural gas and other resource production are practical solutions that need to be implemented in order to create and expand upon jobs that have been abandoned, lost or seriously cut back in the last seven years.

Outsourcing of jobs or insourcing of foreign nationals within large corporations and businesses has become epidemic and in order to counteract these practices, American companies must be given incentives to retain American workers that they have abandoned for lower paying workers from other countries. Donald Trump has campaigned on protecting Americans from outsourcing and insourcing and has promised that he will bring back lost jobs by getting companies (such as Apple) to reestablish their presence in the United  States.

Other proposals include withdrawing the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Partnership, which has allowed displacement of manufacturing workers and promoted income inequality.  Trump also proposes appointing trade negotiators to fight for the rights of American workers.  Through the Commerce Department, he will watch for trade agreement violations by foreign countries that harm American workers, and direct orders will be given under both American and international law to end abuses towards American workers.  In addition, Trump would renegotiate the terms of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in order to obtain better opportunities for American workers. If renegotiations are not agreed to, then America will be withdrawn from the agreement.

China and its abuses concerning job theft, currency manipulation and other illegal activities will be addressed as well. China will have to answer for its unfair subsidy actions as well as the theft of trade secrets. Trade disputes, tariff applications and other means of action will be utilized to set China straight on its exploitation of trade that affects America and American workers.

With any or all of these proposals in place, the American economy should be stimulated and jobs returned to Americans. Simply reestablishing and reintroducing manufacturing, countering outsourcing, stimulating natural resource production,  along with renegotiating trade agreements and countering foreign violations should allow for growth of jobs in these sectors, which will further stimulate businesses to create jobs that are directly related to these industries.

Encouraging American corporations and businesses to remain within the United States or to return to the country are necessary and common sense solutions to putting Americans back to work, and if those companies are faced with lower corporate taxes and incentives to return to operations within America, jobs should materialize to counter those that have been lost altogether, have gone outside of the country or have been outsourced or insourced from abroad.

Gastonia, NC Correspondent-I think the best thing we can do to improve the American economy is get the government out of the middle of it.  There should be no more “too big to fail” but also no more excessive regulation on both the banking and industrial sectors.  Where the noose should be tightened, however, is on companies that try to hide their profits overseas, send jobs overseas and try to capitalize on American markets or in other ways abuse our free trade system at the expense of American jobs.

We need to get manufacturing back in this country.  American workers were once the most admired in the world, and American industry was imitated worldwide. The attitude that manufacturing jobs are somehow beneath today’s youth, and that every kid needs to get a college degree to earn a living wage, needs to be dispelled.  There is honor in building the things that make our life possible, and we need to remember that.

I’m not a huge fan of “trickle-down” economics, because they leave too much in the hands of business titans who have proven in spades that they do not have any interest in spending their vast reserves of cash.  However, rather than confiscatory tax policies, I’d like to see tax incentives for investment in manufacturing and job creation.

Owatonna, MN Correspondent- First of all, the solution that will not work is to allow the government to “create jobs” and “grow the economy.” Entrepreneurs, inventors, thinkers, and even dreamers are the only entities capable of creating jobs. The keys to a healthy economy are profit motive and the efficient allocation of capital. Since the government does not exist to generate profits and is not designed to do so, it should not be a participant in deciding where, how, and to whom our limited natural and human resources are allocated.

Economic risk-takers such as entrepreneurs and venture capitalists are the best-qualified people to allocate resources since their profitability depends on developing the right idea at the right time and using resources most efficiently to produce a profitable product. Profits generate more capital, which becomes available for further improvements in design and efficiency and creates more and newer jobs to create those new products.

Laws that restrict or penalize entrepreneurs or small, innovative companies so that bloated corporations can enjoy monopolies or other advantages should be repealed. Related to this, the government should end all subsidies and favorable tax treatment to all corporations and businesses. This will eliminate favoritism gained by lobbyists or special interest groups who seek to promote their own agendas at the expense of smaller businesses or individual businesspeople.

Minimum wage laws should also be repealed. This may seem counterproductive, but when any employer is forced to pay more for the performance of a job than the employee produces for that company, the business will lose money and eventually go bankrupt. This may put out of work more employees than just the under-skilled, overpaid employee. It is far better to have a worker making a less-than-average wage than not hiring that worker in the first place because the cost is too high. New workers can only improve skills, increase productivity, and seek higher wages if they are employed. Unemployed workers are more likely to have a negative monetary effect on the economy.

Longer term, the abolition of the Federal Reserve Bank and other central banks will get government out of the position of managing or controlling the economy. The net effect of their meddling over the past century has been a steady erosion of currency through inflation, which only benefits those who create the inflation at the expense of those who see the negative impact of inflation on their purchasing power, namely the average worker.