Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks on Super Tuesday primary election night at the White and Gold Ballroom at The Mar-A-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla.. Trump has said that America is in decline and if elected he would make it great again. (Andrew Harnik, Associated Press)
Re: Is Donald Trump right that America is in decline?, March 6 Perspective article.
America is in decline, and while it accelerated during the late 1990s with the euphoria of the tech bubble, the 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, low interest rates introduced by the Federal Reserve, and the lead-in to 9/11, it actually began decades earlier.
Noah Smith s fixes for this decline are nonsensical. He says we need more high-skilled immigrants. How is it that the richest country on Earth and the world s greatest superpower can t educate H-1B-level citizens? He says more immigrants will ease the Social Security problem and greater population will increase GDP and mitigate the size disadvantage with China. Absurd. Each young immigrant in time brings in three or four non-working dependents, including parents and grandparents.
While sending our citizen youth off to college, we allow millions of immigrants to take the trades and factory jobs that were once the mainstay of our middle class.
America is in decline. These fixes will only accelerate that decline.
Duane Hyland, Golden
This letter was published in the March 13 edition.
