With all due respect SG, your thinking is scary.
Whats a free market?
No such thing really. Not anymore. A free and unregulated market is one of the things that has lead the US to the problems it faces today. Unregulated companies finding loopholes(often times buying lawmakers and laws to create them), unregulated companies take American jobs over seas. Just two of the problems.
We do not have nor do we need what a lot of people think of as "free markets". Its a great buzz word tho, and sounds nice rolling off of the tongue.
What we have is a global market.
Its a market where labour is cheaper in so many other nations that munufactering has moved a significant portion of its workforce elswhere. Services are the sameway(I laugh everytime I see the credit card TV add with the guy that says "Hello, my name is Peggy, you have problem?"). Many different sectors of our economy are effected.
The result is simple - lost American jobs.
The Republicans are a biz side party ensuring profits for and watching out for the well being of Biz. The thinking is sound, if biz is left alone, they will gorw, and when it grows it needs to hire people - that means more jobs. In the past, esp during periods of growth that was a great way of doing things. Healthy biz did mean biz hiring people and a expanding work force. But today, in our global economy, Walmart growth and increase in sales means more workers in China, Packistan, Mexico and etc.
I think what we are experiencing is just a global redistribution of wealth. While the US falls, China booms. The wealth and power that the western nations(including the US) have enjoyed is increasingly being shared with "developing" nations. Or more percisly the leadership of those nations. Just because a product is made in Banglidesh, doesn't mean that the work force there is becoming rich. It just means that the conditions there are so poor that the work force is willing to work for very little cost to said companies, thats why they moved their operations there in the first place.
SG1974, just really give the idea of free markets some thought. It can no longer be difined as what we learned in text books in school. Modern day free market is not something to be proud of, imo. Manipulating politicians, stepping on the workforce, dodging paying taxes.
Maybe some of the dems go to far, but someone somewhere needs to look out for the people. Isn't that why the people vote to put them there in the first place? I am sick and tired of hearing about pacs donating to 2012 canidates. Already. Its likes why vote to begin with? Like with Rommney, his people have made and desolved several companys all donating the max limit to his campaign. The companys appear, then donate, then desolve. Is that right? I can't aford to donate a million usd to my fav canidate in order to get his/her attention.
Its just corrruption.
And more then anything greedy corruption is what lead to much of this mess to begin with.
It might scare some, but it would have been nice if at sometime someone said "hey, you wanna be a US company, sell products to US consumers, then your going to make said product right here", or you can't sell it here.
I am for a bit of isolationism, myself. Screw the rest of the world. Stop foriegn aid(humanitarian aid is different), how many billions did we need to give Pakistain? Russia doesn't need aid either. Spend those USD here, where they are needed. Tax the crap out of imports. Go read up on Walmart, see what they did to Huffy, to Levi, and more. No way a pair of jeans should cost 10usd. Sorry they just don't. Not when an American made pair costs 25usd. So Walmart puts their imported pair on the shelf made with near slave labour, even child labour and stupid shopers(or poor shopers with little choice) buy the pair of jeans for 10usd and the pair of American made jeans sit there. Eventualy the Americans that made said jeans lose their jobs.
It happens all over the scale of the US economy, from steal imports to clothing to toys to electronics. My xbox is manufacterd in China, for example.
Some of you guys are right our society is indeed consumer driving. But workers w/o jobs can't be comsumers.
I think almost everything boils down to that simple fact. Jobs.
Our nation does import a great deal from around the world, and I am not against fair trade. But we don't have fair trade at this point.
Does anyone wonder what happens when the "working classes"/Middle classes are truely replaced with forgien work forces? Who is going to buy those cheaply made goods?
In China little girls are working in factories manufacturing dolls that they can't even afford to buy. Free markets and fair trade indeed.
Now I am no economist, never claimed to be one. I know there are people that are far more informed and far smarter then I.
But it seems to me that a few very basic facts are true. Corruption is bad. Greed leads to corruption. Gov is the only one that can regulate and control out of control greedy corperations from causing harm while questing for more shareholder profits. Its ok for a biz to just operate, it doesn't need to provide record growth year after year. People w/o jobs can't afford to buy anything. Health care is a human right, not a priviledge afforded to only the wealthy. Acessible and affordable higher education benifits everyone. Americans no longer have control over their own nation. Political grid lock is not what the founding fathers had in mind when they institued a system of check and balances. Grid lock is bad. The US middle class is shrinking. Someone reading this will think I am full crap and will post about it. Someone reading this will agree with most of it, but prolly won't post anything due to fear of someone else posting hate back.
Last fact, neither you nor I can really do a damn thing to change anything.
