The Non-existence Free Market

One thing I find ironic about the media and particularly the business news is the belief that we have a free market economy. Its both a myth and an outright lie that they happen to believe in. As exemplified in the airline bailout after 9/11. If you take the public costs for corporate operations in the United States, the total is approx. 3 trillion dollars a year. While total profit was only about 1 trillion per year, (1995 dollars). That's a net loss of 2 trillion dollars per year. So why isn't Corporate America bankrupt, we a stuck with the bill. The costs are mainly invisible, but if you look then you can see the tangible costs in your communities and paychecks. Everything from Wal*Marts moving in next door and lowering property values, to the costs involved in outsourcing jobs by losing salaries and benefits of employees. The figures at this website are from 1995, I'm sure the costs are much greater today.

(Source: http://www.stakeholderalliance.org/corpcost.html)

As long as the energy cartel is allowed to collude, to set prices, and to write it's own regulatory laws. Ditto the airlines, the insurance companies, and big business in general. We have nothing that resembles a free market in this country. Well, unless you count the farmers market on Saturdays.

I chuckle at the rhetoric of the right that the soviet central planning system was failed because it was not "free"... ha! American central planning and corporate welfare have always been a sham.... even the internet... all the cost of innovation was carried by the taxpayer, and, as in the soviet corrupt privatization, certain oligarchs are given monopolies of public innovations and have made a mint.

The NASA subsidy to aerospace is a sham
THe military subsidy to all things techie is also a sham
The energy subsidy to petrol is a sham
The car-roads subsidy is massive and a sham
The public media airwaves gift to corporatism is a sham..

Finding an american industry not run by tax subsidies is quite a challenge. Its only a free market for the buyers, but the production is driven by central planning.