Is America Still the Goldeneh Medineh?
Transcription of interview with Rabbi Yaakov Spivak on October 24, 2011:
Douglas Goldstein, CFPÆ, Financial Planner & Investment Advisor
Rabbi Yaakov Spivak is the dean of Ayshel Avraham Rabbinical Seminary in Monsey, New
York.
He has a nightly radio broadcast in the New York area.
Douglas Goldstein, financial planner & investment advisor, interviewed Rabbi Spivak on Arutz
Sheva Radio.
Douglas Goldstein: In the 1900s, a lot of Jewish and non-Jewish immigrants came to the
U.S. because they saw the Goldeneh Medineh, where the streets were paved with gold.
Some succeeded and some didnít.
Are the opportunities today still the same there?
Rabbi Yaakov Spivak: No, it is not the same.
America is going through a severe economic crisis and the opportunities here are not
what they used to be.
It doesnít mean there wonít be a recovery, there is some hope, but right now it seems
to me what has happened is where America was always a manufacturing base.
Things really started after World War II.
We recovered from the depression because the war brought out manufacturing.
After World War II, we didnít have all of the competition from Europe.
Germany was in a shambles and all the production and competition in Germany, in Europe, in
the Far East and in Japan were gone.
We were the manufacturing kings of the world.
There were jobs.
Mothers did stay at home and raise children.
People bought in the suburbs.
It was an incredibly wonderful time.
We had protective tariffs as well.
What has happened over the last 20 or 30 years was that you have GATT and NAFTA.
These are agreements whereby we used to have protective tariffs that kept foreign competition
from coming into us.
Manufacturers had to manufacture here in America because if there was a manufacturer with slave
labor, there were all kinds of protective tariffs that made using them more expensive.
With GATT and NAFTA, these were dropped.
Therefore manufacturers, with the use of FedEx and UPS and all kinds of air transportation,
could ship their raw materials over there or get them over in a foreign country and
get them back here without the protected tariffs.
Suddenly then, the jobs dropped to nothing because first of all if youíre a manufacturer
and you want to have something produced and you can produce it with slave labor, why pay
American workers?
So Americans went low on jobs and they were hurting, and then what happened was that the
jobs were taken a lot of times by the lax immigration laws.
This one-two punch of NAFTA, GATT and mass immigration, with people working for nothing,
has really crippled America relatively speaking compared to what it was.
Douglas Goldstein: Did the fact that the American borders were opened up for competition, the
tariffs were dropped, and allowed the whole world to compete for the U.S. market hurt
the worker or the opportunities for immigration?
Rabbi Yaakov Spivak: It hurt the American worker, although there is some feeling that
some of the manufacturers and some of the farmers need this cheap immigration labor
thatís coming in.
Thereís an argument against that to be fair, but the fact is that overall, if you look
at it, the American worker lost his job to slave labor overseas with the dropping of
the protective tariffs and he lost some of them to the immigrants that came into this
country, whereas they do help some American businesses.
But overall, I think this has hurt the American workers.
Youíve got people out of work in this country, and also the dropping of the tariffs not only
allows the businesses in the America to bring it back here, but it allowed foreign competitions
to come in here.
People who arenít even manufacturing and were not even based in this country, manufacturers
who are not based here, could bring their products into this country.
I think those are the two major things that have really crippled America.
Douglas Goldstein: But didnít it give a lot of benefit to the consumers with them being
able to buy products cheaper?
A lot of people talk about how, in the old days, American cars were really nothing special
in terms of their quality, but then when a lot of competition came in, today cars are
better.
Rabbi Yaakov Spivak: Absolutely, the cars are better.
But the American worker doesnít have a job despite the cheaper prices.
And when you look around at the price of gas and the price of everything, Iím not so sure
these things are cheaper.
Things are more expensive.
I know that I come from a different generation and we used to hear the older generation say
how things were cheaper.
You go into a store today to buy a knish, and when I was younger, you could buy it for
25 or 50 cents, but now it is $4.50.
Thatís inflation.
So besides from the inflation, if the American worker doesnít have a job, no matter how
cheap a thing is, he cannot afford it.
Douglas Goldstein: If the U.S. is not the current Goldeneh Medineh, where do you think
people should be looking to move for opportunities?
Rabbi Yaakov Spivak: Just like youíre hearing whatís happening here, weíre hearing whatís
happening in Israel.
I canít speak for the economy there because I donít live there unfortunately, but the
fact is that weíre out of a job.
Without changing the subject, the reason for the anti-Wall Street demonstration at the
Brooklyn Bridge, and some other rhetoric I am told, was that Wall Street, just like Zionism,
is a euphemism for Judaism, and an anti-Zionist can be an anti-Semite.
Wall Street bankers, according to some, when they were screaming against the Wall Street
bankers, this is a euphemism for Jewish businesses.
Where else are we going to go?
Itís a short list, a very short list.
There was no list before World War II.
There was no list in 1938.
Now, weíve got one name on the list now.
Hopefully, these things are going to blow over.
Hopefully, there are some signs but right now and I know what the problems in Israel.
I know there are some problems that economically with the apartments, but thereís a portion
of the Israeli economy thatís booming.
I look around my office and everything in high tech - Intel, cell phones and computers
- so much stuff is being produced over there.
The Jews, when you give them a chance and you donít get in their way, and you donít
block them from professions, they do a pretty good job.
Douglas Goldstein: The U.S. economy today seems to be so driven by consumerism and yet
that is very likely what caused a huge part of the downfall, ast people are borrowing
money just to buy things to deal with their materialistic feelings today.
Is that a direction thatís just going to keep getting worse or people are getting more
realistic?
Rabbi Yaakov Spivak: The power of the media as you well know is so strong.
The media overturned the Soviet Union.
How did the media get to the state that it was?
How did the Soviet Union fall?
What armies couldnít do, the sending of the VHS videotapes from West Berlin to East Berlin
did, showing that even though they built a wall, it couldnít stop the video tapes showing
how the life of the west was so much better.
This got to the Soviet Union too, and in seventy years, the Soviet experiment failed.
I remember the president of Amway said he went to the Soviet Union and he went down
and he put his hands in the red soil of the Ukraine, and he said it was richer than the
soil in mid-west America.
The Soviets had to buy American wheat because of the fact that the system didnít work.
Even though the Soviets tried to block out Radio Free Europe and block out everything,
they couldnít block out the video tapes, and the power of the media literally destroyed
the Soviet Union.
Thatís how strong it was.
ìMr.
Gorbachev, tear down this wall,î Reagan said.
But it wasnít Reagan that tore down the wall.
It was the media that showed the people.
Now this same issue is with the power of the media.
When you have people that donít have money and are poor and you bombard them
with needing to have this cell phone, youíve got to have this iPod, and anybody watching
a football game or any athletic event in this country is bombarded with all of this materialism,
it just makes the people who donít have the money for these things want them and to use
the credit card in their hand.
Theyíve got to have all these things because that same media that could do it for the good
can also influence people to do crazy things.
Iíve got to have that iPod, Iíve got to have that fancy car, and people think, ìIf
I canít get it straight, Iíll get it by stealing.î
Thatís the power of the media.
Theyíre both ways.
The mystics say that good and evil are two sides of the same coin, and what we can use
for good can be used for evil.
Just like the person could be great on high spiritual level, and his greatness has the
capacity for good and the capacity for evil,so it is with media.
Thatís why even the Chofetz Chaim so focused on the subject of evil talk because he knew
the power of information, the power of talk.
When you sit a young kid down who lives in a situation where he doesnít have a lot of
money, but he has some and you bombard him four, five or six hours a day with all this
materialism, heís got to have this and heís got to have that, thatís part of the problem.
In a free society and a society of freedom of the press and free speech, which is important,
but this is the downside.
Douglas Goldstein: How can people follow you or listen to your radio show online?
Rabbi Yaakov Spivak: If they want to hear the radio show online, they can go to www.jewishradionetwork.net.
Theyíll be able to go on there and see the radio and television tabs, just click it on
and they can hear us.
Douglas Goldstein, CFPÆ, is the director of Profile Investment Services and the host
of the Goldstein on Gelt radio show (Monday nights at 7:00 PM on www.israelnationalradio.com.
He is a licensed financial professional both in the U.S. and Israel.
Securities offered through Portfolio Resources Group, Inc., Member FINRA, SIPC, MSRB, NFA,
SIFMA.
Accounts carried by National Financial Services LLC.
Member NYSE/SIPC, a Fidelity Investments company.
His book Building Wealth in Israel is available in bookstores, on the web, or can be ordered
at: www.profile-financial.com (02) 624-2788 or (03) 524-0942.
Disclaimer: This document is a transcription and/or an educational article.
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