Tell me why free markets make us more secure and why Dems

are not discussing this. I don't think they do. Shipping our industrial infrastructure and capacity overseas does not make us more secure. It is not in another nation's interests to maintain our economy. Rather, once they have developed fully the capacity to produce, they only need us as consumers and can cut us off any time in a power play, should they so choose. Am I being too simplistic in my thinking?

No matter how much infrastructure we hand off to other countries, few if any of them can afford to snub the purchasing power of the United States -- we are a consumption machine, the largest market by far for everything from raw resources to final-built, high-end technology.

That said, completely unfettered free markets do us little good from a labor standpoint. Without assuring that countries we deal with impose the same labor laws and benefits (i.e. fair market vs. free market), we will eventually wind up with a serious drain on jobs, one that is already moving along in the manufacturing sector and, to a lesser degree, in many areas of the service industries.

one guiding principal To sustain and increase itself. The 'Free Market' forces wages and living standards down to benefit the top 1/2 of 1%. The Dems are not talking about this because the DLC is guiding them to be Rethuglican lite. The only answer to the race to the bottom demanded by capital and unlimited free markets it to tax
wait for it
...
Capital not Labor.

of Capital.

Capital aint money, and it aint natural wealth.

Real Capital is the product of labor, and shouldn't be taxed either (or it shouldn't be taxed much more than labor is taxed directly).

IOW: As a worker, I produce capital or wealth, sometimes both. Taxing either one of them reduces the amount of demand for my labor, and hence, my wages.

Conversely, land, (including oil, coal, air, and the electromagnetic spectrum) is not the product of labor, and 90% of it's value is owned by 5% of the population. So AFAIC, you can tax the hell out of it.

enterprises not necessarily the workers. The problem with the current Free Market is that it allows and rewards Parasitic Corporations to go to the lowest wage environments and export the capacity to the highest possible sales environment. Currently the problem is the surplus created by efficiencies created. No body wants to pay for the downsizing. The US is the market of last resort to eat up all the over capacity. In the process we are exporting our jobs to low wage and slave wage markets. The only possible outcome is the Bankruptcy of the US middle class and the whole world returns to the Dark Ages.

not too simplistic at all... we dems NEED to simplify if we hope to communicate our points to the harried joe voter. RR made him work longer, so he has no time to read long articles on each of the ten thousand facets of pol economy.

we experts have two jobs

1. find truth
2. distill that into five words that best summarize it for non experts.

most of us think we only have to do no. 1. Limbaugh knows better, and is winning big time. He has eaten our lunch, and now is mopping up the floor with us. He shortens his ideas to brief phrases. We dont.

billionaires.

Just like Mexico today.

Where is it written that a nation has to have a middle class?

Oi, "Where is it written?" {neat phrase}

All the engineers and so on {factory managers, docs, professors} can be paid ten percent more than the starvation wages of the millions of poor, and they will still strive to be A+ engineers.

Producing what they do today. Working hard. Generating that GDP needed to produce billionaires.

That flat society is the final end result of free markets --- Mexico.

Mexico -- dirty and dangerous. And very poor. But producing a lot.

given me the perfect opportunity:

"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." ~ James Kenneth Galbraith

so true

PS your JK galbraith is an advisor to my favorite site.. see sig right below these here words

Jobs for All

I've just made a happy discovery as far as JK Galbraith goes - and just started reading affluent society - I can't wait to get into it. I'm hoping he gives me ammo for battling the Free Marketeers that i'm constantly running across.

vanishing globally?

will it disappear everywhere?
Seems so.

goes any pretense of Democracy. The world will be 'Led' by such luminaries as aWoL. God Help US.