Who can we blame for job losses?

Well according to this article, it looks like it is pretty much down to the Republicans.  And considering they have blocked any and all societal aid and/or reform, its astounding to me that half the country is going to vote for them to be back in control of Congress in November. 

Boy is it ever going to get ugly.

What "blame"? Jobs are eliminated because the workers doing them are no longer worth what the employer has to pay them.

100 years ago they were eliminating buggy-whip manufacturing jobs. Who was to "blame" for those "job losses"?

Today it's also cheap labor replacing the uncompetitive workers. How can there be "blame" for replacing that which is too costly? How can there be "blame" for improving the production and the service to consumers?

What is the function of these companies anyway -- to provide charity jobs or babysitting slots for uncompetitive job-seekers? No, their role in society is to serve consumers better, and when overpaid workers get in the way of that goal they should be replaced by whoever or whatever will do it at lower cost.

How can there be "blame" for something that is not wrong to do?

And if there is any "blame" for the political party in power, it would only be that they did not take advantage of the extra available labor to reduce salaries to its workers and perhaps get some additional infrastructure work done at lower cost. 

Can someone post what Thom said yesterday about how employers don't actually create jobs instead demand is the creator? He said it well yesterday and I'd like to be able to quote him so I can do the comment justice. 

Trolls,sounds like you would be a "Happy Slave".

That sounds a lot like the military's role.

I don't think their role is to serve consumers better. The privatized health insurance industry is proof enough of that. In actuality, their corporate charter demands that they make a profit. The object of most companies is to earn as much market share as possible. The more share they don't have to share the more monopolistic they become. The more monoplistic they become, the less they have to be concerned about the reactions of the consumer to their shoddy products or services because they have eliminiated the other choices. I can't imagine big oil companies actually being concerned about serving consumers better, if they did, they would still have "service" stations and provide "service."

I think you are also overlooking the connections to higher wages and viability of small and large businesses. Your hypothetical business man wants to increase his returns by decreasing the wages paid, but what is the business man selling? Don't people need more than a subsistance level of income in order to spend this money at the various businesses? What you are advocating and echoing is short-sighted business plan that eventually puts the people who are your target consumers out of work and unable to buy your products. The dog eat dog system you advocate only works for a short while or until the other businessmen follow suit and begin paying their employees scratch wages too. When enough companies do this, the middle class has no buying power and the companies can't sell their products to anyone, least not to their own poor wage employees. When that happens the businesses cease to exist.

 In any case, high or low wages is a red herring. Wages need to be proportional to cost of living in order to have a robust economy.

When you have an ever increasing amount of people out of work, who is supporting the businesses in America?

You see, if there are no jobs, you lose demand, and well if demand decreases, pretty soon these companies just go out of business.

Mel, so right. Funny how the "economists" don't see it this way. They think they can eliminate jobs and still sell their products. If we outsource jobs, then what follows eventually is that we will have to outsource consumers too.

Well Choco, I certainly am no economist.  My "formal" economic studies ended in college after the mind numbing courses of Econ 101 and 102.

But its pretty much common sense, in my opinion, that when you start laying off people, businesses are going to eventually collapse. 

There aren't enough extremely wealthy people in America to sustain business. 

Look at the US auto industry and how its collapsed over the decades, while more and more American jobs were being moved abroad.

Besides, I bet most wealthy people don't even buy American vehicles.  I mean how can they compete with the Germans and the Japanese?

Trolls wrote: "Today it's also cheap labor replacing the uncompetitive workers. How can there be "blame" for replacing that which is too costly? How can there be "blame" for improving the production and the service to consumers?"

poly relies: Ricardo noted over a century ago that nations that ship their labor costs abroad will impoverish themselves. The developed nation's adhered to that advice and prospered..They didn't allow it.  Some make out like bandits by impoverishing their own country of origiin and. doing that.

If you'd like an impoverished nation so transnationals can reap record profits, go for it. The meltdown marches on. Main Street recovery is a bad joke.

Retired Monk - "Ideology is a disease"

Chicago School of economics is selfish and short sighted and can't be viable. It only works for a few for the short term. But then again, maybe that's what the few want.

This dud would definitely be happy being a slave, or at least a communist, getting whatever the party in power deems the worker should get. After all, what we have is a system controlled by business interests for their benefit, and that is an ever increasing profit. What these fools ignore is that the U.S. is a community, not just a collection of individuals, and as a community we can coerce businesses to act in the interest of the community. We have lost that fact.

The problem of jobs is a complex one. For one, we have a constantly growing population and two an economy that needs perpetual growth to function.

However growth is not sustainable and we have reached the end of growth because resources are in decline, especially oil.

Another BIG problem is our trade agreements and you can thank Clinton for GATT, CAFTA, NAFTA and the WTO which had made it impossible for the US to compete with poor, low wage countries unless we become another poor, low wage country ourselves and who wants that?We are well down that road.

To survive, we MUST change the way the economy works and we MUST stop population growth which will be stopped one way or another, nasty way.We cannot keep growing, everytime from now on attempts at economic growth will result in higher fuel and resource costs and a crashing economy.We must raise tariffs, end tax breaks for companies that outsource OUR JOBS to foreign countries and here we need to start making things that LAST not just  crap expected to be soon replaced, we cannot afford such wastefull practices with declining resources.

We need to recind those terrible trade agreements, CAFTA,NAFTA, GATT and WTO have destroyed our manufacturing jobs and thrown millions of Americans out of work.

The old way of a constantly growing economy to match the needs of a constantly growing population cannot and will not continue,we have arrived at the end of growth and must change the way our economy "works" or we will be in a endless decline with much suffering and poverty except for the few uber rich on the top.

Many good points, but we must remember our dilema. Politics and engaging in the voting process is about the only way right now that we can affect positive change. The problem is that the political process has been coopted by the very same entities that ushered in Gatt, Nafta, Cafta, WTO, IMF and so on. Dennis Kucinich said at one presidential primary that if elected the next day he would call Mexico and Canada and tell them we are out of NAFTA, and I assume he meant the other globalistic play-the-peons-off-against-one-another groups with Acronyms for names. One such entity was General Electric. GE owns NBC, NBC and MSNBC are the ones that hosted the next presidential debate in Las Vegas. They are the ones that decided that Dennis Kucinich and his radical ideas should not be allowed on stage. He filed a court injuction with the State of Nevada granting him the right to debate, but somehow NBC got it overturned and purged Kucinich off the stage and out of contention for the presidency. I, to this day, still believe that the majority of Americans still don't understand the significance of having a military contractor and their media step child take complete control of our presidential elections. With that said, I think NBC and MSNBC are by far not the worse mediums in this country and this shows just how screwed up the democratic process has become.

So yes, we have to get rid of those globalistic organizations, but to do that we need to first regain control of our elections.

[/quote]So yes, we have to get rid of those globalistic organizations, but to do that we need to first regain control of our elections.[/quote]

So with the "elections" rigged, how is it possible to do that??

The corporations control the media, they select the "candidates",they control the "voting" machines and they count the "votes", so how is change legally possible?

I don't think things will change in this country until it collapses when oil becomes too scarce to fuel the military and control the population.

We are mere pawns in their war to continue their "empire", I think that's why they seperated the generations, so their elders could not pass their experiences onto the young, to tell them how the military abandoned them when they returned home after one of our endless wars IF they returned home.How they were denied the benifits they were promised and continue to be denied even today.

Parents need to inform their young that the promises of benefits made by the military are not kept and to not Join.Tell them the wars we are engaging in are for the benefit of the corporations, not to defend this country. Tell them the "vote" is a sham and to not bother "voting" for Democrats or Republicons because they are under the same  corporate control with a few exception, we can try to vote for those exceptions but with the "vote" rigged, no progressive will be allowed to "run" or "win" higher office as you noted with Dennis Kucinich, Obama was the corporate choice.

We should be after our elected reps right now to reform the voting process.

1) public financed elections, no corporate sponsorship whatsoever, individual contributions limited to $100, limit campaign season so that the media isn't the only entity that benefits from endless campaigns.

2) put control of elections under public control. No private ownership of voting machines or voting processes. Paper ballots preferred.

3) outlaw professional lobbying, corporate special interest money is corrupting the democratic process of one person one vote. Goverment reps should be representating their constituency not their corporate sponsors

4) Instant runoff voting. Encourage more than the two-party Hegelian Dialectic system. More parties, more candidates debating. Voters have 1st, 2nd, 3rd choices. If your first choice falls out, then your vote transfers to your second choice, etc. The current system forces voters to choose the lesser evil of two corporate-approved candidates.

5) Personally immerse yourself in the voting process locally and strive to ensure that voting is fair.

So for know we need to work with the reps we have in there. We need our reps to introduce these bills and arugue their merits in public.

Taking back control of our money supply is critical to breaking the stranglehold that the Fed, Wall St. and all their satelite think tanks like the CFR and Trilateral Commission and the Pilgrim Society, et al has on the American working class.

The problem is that corporate money has too much influence upon "our" representatives, we cannot compete to gain their attention.Since corporations are now officially "persons" they rule Washington.They will not allow any changes that weaken their power.People need to stop "voting" for Democrats that are just "repubicons" in camo, we need to pay close attention to how they vote and vote them out of office, that means voting for a "third" party  candidate that represents our need better than the so called "democrat" in that office.

Back to the main subject of this blog, JOBS!! Too many of OUR JOBS have been outsourced to slave wage countries, especially to the dictatorship of communist China.This corporate controlled government has even given TAX BREAKS to those corporations who have dumped Americans in favor of slaves overseas!

Until we can trash GATT, CAFTA, NAFTA and the WTO, this will continue.Another problem is we have too many people and resources are in decline.this will make it IMPOSSIBLE to provide enough jobs for all those that need one.

We must END IMMIGRATION, not because they are "brown people" but because we do not need more people. The employers are the only group that wants more immigration, that keep unemployment high and wages low and forces workers to put up with bad working conditions and low wages because there are many others out there who will take that job no matter how bad it is.

In a overpopulated country with declining resouces, it's SUICIDE to keep importing people and it's STUPID to pay people to have more children! we need to END the child deduction after one child, we need to encourage small families not show off examples of irresponsible breeding like the Duggers with their "nineteen children and counting".

We may be entering the worse depression ever because of declining resouces especially OIL, the "American dream" is DEAD, no more rising expectations, no better life for your children.We have allowed ourselves to become utterly dependent upon a temporary, fossil resource and there is NO combination of renewables that will allow our current way of life and our current, excessive population to continue, it's all downhill from now on.The "joy ride" is over.

New #5 Choco

But they're supposed to accomplish this by serving consumers. If they accumulate "profit" any other way it is illegitimate and they should be forced to serve consumers or be abolished.

That proves my point. Monopoly power is illegal and needs to be curtailed for precisely that reason. Competition has to be imposed onto the marketplace in order to force companies to do their proper function of serving consumers.

Maybe the old-fashioned "service" stations were inefficient. The gas stations today are more efficient -- the customers are able to insert the gas nozzle and pump the gas. This less costly method allows companies to sell the gas at a lower price. When there was an optional full-service pump, the customer had to pay more for it.

The service is provided at a cost, and if that cost is too high, the service is done away with, for the customer's benefit. This efficiency is part of the service to consumers.

What is needed is for them to be paid income equal to the value of the work they performed. The worker's contribution is not the money he spends but the work he did to earn the money. He should be paid that much and no more.

Suppose the "worker" contributes negligible value, or none at all, by the work he does, but is still paid a high wage which he then spends. Is this spending then a contribution? No. The spending itself is no contribution at all, and is not what is needed from the worker. The contribution is the work done, and the only purpose of paying the worker is to incentivise him to perform the work, which is the real value served by the worker.

Buying the products is not the purpose of the worker nor the purpose for paying the worker. The purpose is to get the work done. If no one is able to buy the products, then they should not have been produced. Companies should not produce something that people cannot buy.

It's idiotic to say the company's sales revenue comes from the money they pay to their workers, and the more they pay their workers the more money they make because the more their workers can spend on their employers' products.

The function of the job is not to give the worker an income to buy that employer's products. The purpose of that job is get the work done, i.e., the wealth created, for any consumer who will pay for it. And there is no point in producing this product unless there is an existing demand for it. The demand does not come from the company paying its workers to buy the product -- NO! that is babbling idiotic nonsense.

No, the companies have to figure it out and produce something people will buy. If there's insufficient money to buy their stuff, then they must reduce their prices, or change their production so they stop producing stuff consumers won't pay for. If they can't make it in the market, then they go bankrupt and liquidate their assets. Companies that fail to serve consumers should go out of business.

What is needed is to weed out the less efficient producers, not feel sorry for them and seek consumers for their products and throw money around to be spent on the excess products, out of sympathy for the inefficient producers. No, the market does its proper role of rewarding the efficient producers, for the benefit of consumers, and weeding out the uncompetitive.

If there's a prolonged recession, it's because the producers are failing, and if that happens, nothing can be done to improve the economy unless that changes. A return of the good times can happen only if producers rally. Prosperity comes from smart producers doing something right to satisfy demand. Throwing around money for someone to spend does not produce prosperity. It just causes prices to go up or not fall as low. Mere juggling of the prices doesn't produce any wealth.

The inefficient ones, yes. Let them fold and make room for someone more competitive.

No, what is needed is for efficient work to be done, which happens if the producers are rewarded for their efficiency in meeting the demand of consumers, meaning workers are paid for their merit, their better performance, not for having a high cost of living, not because of their whining that they need the money.

polycarp2 

Wrong. The developed nations shipped out their labor costs more than the undeveloped nations did. Taking advantage of foreign cheap labor is characteristic of the richer nations, and it causes them to become richer still.

No nation was ever impoverished by taking advantage of cheap foreign labor. On the contrary, they made themselves richer, plus also the poor country supplying the cheap labor became wealthier from it.

#12

sheilach2

No, growth is not a problem. It will take care of itself. The only problem is the government interfering in the economy to "stimulate" growth artificially. Growth is OK if it happens as a result of natural market forces, driven by supply and demand and not by economic dogmatists who try to impose their theories onto us.

If the economy shrinks during some periods, that's not a problem. We don't need to go on a crusade to force the economy to grow. We should not make a religion out of growth.

The increased trade has benefited all Americans, raising our standard of living. And the increased competition forces American producers to improve their performance or risk collapsing. It's a win-win all around. The only problem with the trade agreements is that they don't go far enough toward more global trade and reducing the barriers. We are all richer from the cheap foreign labor.

Yes, by turning the market loose and not imposing artificial dogmas onto it and dictating choices to buyers and sellers, such as controlling the prices of goods and labor. By ending bailouts and "economic stimulus" deficits and other unproven schemes to manipulate or "goose" the economy.

Forget it. It will take care of itself.

and reduce the living standard. Reducing trade never made a country better off, but only worse.

There's no "tax break" to companies for outsourcing any jobs -- that's pablum puke.

What there is are normal deductions for costs of business, including for relocation costs, which are legitimate costs, whether the move is from one town to another, or to another state, or to another country. Business may deduct all business expenses from their taxable income, as long as we are going to tax them on their profits, which equal revenue minus costs.

The companies are not babysitting centers for job-seekers. Their role is to serve consumers, not provide babysitting slots ("jobs") to the uncompetitive. As long as their profit-making is done by serving consumers, it is proper for them to relocate uncompetitive operations to where they can be done at lower cost, because this enables them to serve consumers better, e.g., through lower prices.

Let the consumers make these choices. If a resource declines, then its price will increase, and it won't be bought as much. This is self-correcting. We don't need babbling economic dogmatists interfering with these consumer choices.

Ideally we should replace them with real free trade, by eliminating all tariffs, for the benefit of consumers. We need a simple one-page free trade agreement in which we open our market completely and remove all remaining trade barriers and invite other countries to do the same.

Only uncompetitive unneeded jobs were eliminated. Just as when workers were replaced by robots and machines and computers. Millions of workers lose their uncompetitive jobs, but the economy is better off, because of the cost savings.

Stop having nightmares over growth. There will never be a total end to "growth" -- just let it happen, and in cases where there might be too much of it the normal course of supply and demand will impose the appropriate limits. 

Yes, by getting the government and the babbling economist gurus out of it and letting the buyers and sellers run the economy, driven only by supply & demand.

There will be the least suffering and poverty if we let the competitive free market operate and reward the more efficient producers.

sheilach2

Dirty little secret: Outsourcing is good for the economy. A President Bush economics advisor once stated this in a speech and he was condemned for it by both Republicans and Democrats in Congress, and he was forced to retract the comment. I.e., this is a truth that the public cannot bear to hear.

Both Americans and Chinese benefit (though Chinese consumers are hurt by China's protectionist measures). The cheap labor benefits American consumers just as they benefit by workers being replaced by robots or computers to save on labor cost. The lost jobs are a small price to pay for the benefit to 300 million U.S. consumers.

Just normal deduction of business expenses, which is a standard part of income tax. You cannot tax income (profit) without subtracting business costs from the revenue to determine the taxable income. All companies are entitled to deduct their relocation costs from their taxable income.

The truth is that there is more work to be done than we have enough people to do it all. But our old-fashioned fantasy of everyone having a high-paying factory job with lavish pension and other benefits is a pipedream which we have to outgrow. 

Trying to prolong these archaic dogmas about jobs will only put off the inevitable adjustments we need to make and just prolong the period of despair and of wasting human potential. Scooping them up into factories where we don't need them is the very worst thing we can do and will lead to the worst possible outcome.

Yes, we need the cheap labor, or in some cases the skilled labor in jobs that Americans are paid twice as much for. Again, the benefit from the lower-cost foreign labor is similar to that from robots and machines and computers that are installed to replace humans and save on labor costs. We all benefit from this.

The immigrant-bashers and China-bashers and others who hate cheap labor can never explain why this cheap labor is bad for the economy and yet robots are good for the economy. The economic benefits are the same. Companies replace high-paid workers with someone or something that does the same job at lower cost, and all society benefits from this.

No, not everyone is stupid. Millions of U.S. consumers know that they benefit from the cost savings due to the cheap labor, just as they benefit from robots and computers replacing workers. While millions others seem not able to figure it out. Perhaps xenophobia has something to do with their twisted minds.

And production high and prices lower and the standard of living higher. Millions of Americans are smart enough to realize that their lifestyle is higher due to the inexpensive labor and resulting increased production.

The added competition is best for all of us. Increased competition always benefits consumers. It benefited America 100 years ago when there were the same complaints and the same immigrant-bashing from crybabies who didn't like the added competition in the labor market.

The rate of immigration today is less than it was 100 years ago when all the same fears existed. And it's questionable that there are "declining resources" in the practical sense. And, as resources do decline, their price goes up and alternatives have to be sought for, so it's a self-correcting problem not needing any intervention or policy change.

Boy Mr. Troll you sure don't make any sense. 

You may be nice, but you aren't very bright.

Mel, why the ad hominem attack?  Why not defeat the troll with your rationale?

It was not an ad hominem attack, I was being rather direct in my assertion.  Its pointless to debate people who come here to derail threads with their nonsense.  I am all for intelligent discourse with people who hold opposing views, but when someone just posts fallacies, its a waste of my time to counter it.

Okay, then can you be specific which parts were fallacious, as I tend to agree with much of what he says.  In my mind it seems rather unfair to say "you aren't very bright" and then not back that up with any rationale.  Do you disagree that cheaper wages lead to cheaper price for consumers? 

So where does the demand for the product come from if not the employed consumer?  If there is no demand for products than why do we need any companies?

Probably because it would be lost on the troll. Mr. Troll used an ad hominem attack on me. He concluded my reasoning was idiotic, and proceeded to counter with his short-sighted insanity. It's frustrating to try to debate with someone so closed minded. People who can't see the relationship between higher wages and a robust economy are delusional, selfish and short-sighted. Michael Moore did a TV Nation segment on the Maquiladora. He interviewed a Maytag spokesman (not sure on the brand) for some appliance manufacture that moved it's plant to Mexico. Moore was taken on the tour of the plant by a Mexican plant superintendent. Moore showed the hovels and tin shacks the people working in the Maytag plant lived in. Moore asked the man if anybody working in the plant could afford a Maytag washer. The man shook his head and said NO.

From Wikipedia:

A maquiladora (Spanish pronunciation: [makilaˈðoɾa]) or maquila (IPA: [maˈkila]) is a concept often referred to an operation that involves manufacturing in a country that is not the client's and as such has an interesting duty or tariff treatment. It normally requires a factory, that may import materials and equipment on a duty-free and tariff-free basis for assembly or manufacturing and then "re-exports" the assembled or manufactured product, sometimes back to the originating country. A maquila is also referred to as a "twin plant", or "in-bond" industry. The principal examples of this sort of operation occur in Latin America, but also occurs in other countries in the world, that have adequate legislation. Currently about 1.3 million Mexicans are employed in maquiladoras.

So when a company like Maytag moves off shore with no penalties in order to increase their profits they immediately prosper because people back home in the USA are still working in other plants and are still making above subsistance wages and so can afford Maytag washers even though the people who make them in Mexico can't. But then another company moves to Mexico and those folks and the folks who worked at the Maytag plant that were laid off can't buy the washers. And so it goes, one after the other of the the businessmen seek maximum profit margins by outsourcing, cutting wages, reducing environemental regulations, whatever it takes to maximize profits. The selfish part is that they still expect US Citizens to remain ardent consumers and expect other businesses to be paying above subsistant wages so that they can buy their product made with cheap labor. It's sociopathological behavior. It's feudal and futile.

One more time, to not see the realtionship between above subsistant wages and a healthy economy is IDIOTIC. One would conclude from Troll's essay that everything is working just fine and we have a very healthy economy right now. I'm sure Halliburton, Bechtel, Rand, General Dynamics, Exxon and others think so, but millions and millions of others would disagree.

According to Troll, these are just lazy asses that deserve what they get, a boot to the curb.

The final act of this scenario is that the Maytag (insert appropriate corporation here) factory owner realizes that people aren't buying his product any longer and concludes he must be charging too much for his washing macines. So what to do, he goes back to the factories in Mexico and reduces the wages further. It's all business. But still the public in the USA isn't buying. Hmm, somethinhg wrong with this business plan, just can't put a finger on it. Idiot.

Meljomur:

It might come from an employed consumer, or from an unemployed consumer, or from a self-employed consumer, or from a non-employed retiree, or from a dependent not yet working.

Wherever a particular consumer acquired the means to pay, it is not an employer's concern or duty to provide incomes to people in order to make consumers out of them. The only reason to hire that worker is to get the work done, not to provide incomes to people so they can buy products.

Suppose the company has NO EMPLOYEES AT ALL and yet creates a large quantity of product for the market. Is there something inherently wrong with that? What? The role of the business in society is not to hire people or provide incomes to anyone but to serve the consumers, wherever they come from and however they may have acquired their spending money.

It is perfectly legitimate for a business to operate without using employees. In the practical world it is rare, and it is difficult to envision a business that does not pay anyone, like employees or independent contractors or someone in order to operate. But some businesses may come close.

What about a company that is extremely labor-intensive and uses the labor of the business-owner almost exclusively. Perhaps an artist or someone with an unusual talent that he alone has. And somehow he can produce the item for sale in large quantities. Maybe he's extremely fast, so he might go through a large quantity of output in a short time and doesn't hire any help.

Now in reality, companies do hire help, and a small one-person operation almost surely needs some equipment and services from somewhere. But within the large variety of businesses there are obviously some that require much more outside help than others.

So is there something wrong or illegitimate about that kind of company that functions with a minimum of outside help, such as supplies and services from other companies or workers? What is illegitimate about such a business? It will have lower costs and therefore less to report on its tax forms, perhaps have no employees and only minor expenses, but is it doing something wrong because it has these fewer expenses? Should such a business be penalized by the government because it doesn't "support" the economy by spending more money? Why should it be penalized?

Its role is not to support the economy or other businesses or provide income to workers. The role of the business is to serve consumers with a product or service they want, and preferably it should do this at the lowest possible cost, just as everything should be done at lower cost.

Artificially higher cost is not a virtue but really a vice and is not to be encouraged among producers or consumers. It is really good if a business can reduce some of its costs and its use of resources and energy and other people's labor.

So it is irrelevant where the demand for the product or service comes from. The function of the business is to find a demand and serve that demand in the LEAST costly way, with no obligation whatever to somehow create any extra demand itself. If it does generate some extra demand or "put people to work" that is only INCIDENTAL to its proper purpose -- it is purely optional and not mandatory or fundamental to its role in society as a producer.

We would not need any companies if there were no demand. That is obvious and agrees with my point that the role of companies is to serve demand but not to create demand or provide incomes to people.

You have things backwards. The industrial nations imported raw materials and converted them into value added products. England shut down any domestic production in India that competed with British manufacturers. Before England took over India, India had a higher GDP than Britain!

When the British Pound became the fiat  international currency, Britain began outsourcing labor costs (after WWI).  British production dropped, wages plunged, unemployment rose,  tax revenues fell, and the country preceeded the world into the Great Depression by nearly two years.

The amount of money a nation produces isn't wealth. The stuff the money is based upon, the goods it produces, is wealth. Money represents "stuff" and isn't "stuff".

Everyone in Zimbabwe is a billionaire. Lots of money, and no "stuff" is being produced to back it up. The majority of the "billionaires" are destitute and do well to buy a loaf of bread.

Our fixation on fancily engraved paper is a national epidemic. Money has been totally disconnected from actual economic functioning. Welcome to the on-going meltdown.

I wouldn't call the nation deepest in debt to be richer. Standard accounting. It's insolvent.

Retired Monk - "Ideology is a disease"

Polycarp2:

There may be some truth in that, but if so this did not really benefit Britain's economy. It might have protected some British jobs, but overall it made the cost of production higher and thus resulted in higher prices to British consumers.

It was the expanded trade and the raw materials that made Britain wealthier, not any protectionist measures to shut down competition.

But also this is somewhat distorted, because there was not a lot of Indian manufacturing to compete with Britain at this time (unlike today) and so there wasn't really much there to "shut down" and so any such behavior by the British had minimal impact.

This is rubbish. There were no GDP statistics being kept back in those days, nothing even close.

But it is clear from history that Western Europe was the most advanced in industry and technology from about 1700 onward, and England became the most advanced after 1800. India clearly benefited economically from the British, despite all the injustices and negativities of the colonialism.

And developed countries have improved their economies by trading with the 3rd-world and hiring cheap labor in those countries.

If you want to go back to before 1600 or so, you could claim China rivaled Europe, maybe some parts of the Arab world, etc., maybe India or other places -- it's very difficult to compare the living standards or industrial production of different regions or countries that far back.

What we know for sure is that the colonial countries as well as the ones colonized all benefited from the increased trade starting with the industrial revolution and forward. Perhaps in the earlier period of colonizing, when much of the exploration and "discovery" was just to find gold to send back to Europe, you could argue that the colonizing did more harm than good to everyone and was a net negative.

It was the increasing trade and increasing industrial production that produced the great advances in all the countries, and in the case of India, made it possible for that nation to support a much larger population. And of course the employment of "cheap labor" was part of the increasing industrial production that benefited both the colonizers and the colonized.

Some of the above is probably correct. In any case, it does not refute my main point that the function of business in society is not to create demand or provide jobs or incomes to people but rather to satisfy existing demand, and so it is nonsensical to expect businesses to hire extra workers or pay their workers higher wages in order to create demand for their products.

Your reasoning is exactly why our economy is failing. Business people with your myopic philosophy are short-sighted and don't understand and don't care about the relationship between wages and spending. Your business will fail if people don't have the ability to spend money on your products, it really is that simple. This is exactly why trickle down economics doesn't work. Look around Troll, the economy is failing because our business people don't understand the relationship between wages and spending. They expect people to spend but they don't think they have any right to a living wage. Lee Iacocca and Henry Ford probably know more about the subject than today's trickle down businessmen.

http://members.cox.net/jpetitbon/ford-skinner-pavlov.htm

One more time Troll:

Quote:Before England took over India, India had a higher GDP than Britain!

Troll wrote: This is rubbish. There were no GDP statistics being kept back in those days, nothing even close

poly replies While GDP figures weren't utilized, productive output was. GDP is based on productive output. In garment making alone, India exceeded all of Europe..India was reduced to providing the raw materials for Britain.

Note that national wages are consistent with domestic production for domestic use. The higher cost equals a higher wage. If costs drop from cheap imports, and wages drop, where is the gain?. It's short-term. And some make out like the bandits they are.

The U.S. economy has been outsourced...destroyed in favor of private gain for a few.. Enjoy the collapse. About all you can do at this point is watch the economy unravel. Wherever these insane policies are given full reign, an economy collapses.

Welcome to the re-play of Argentina. Same policies. Same results unfolding.

The policies, the outcome. 12 parts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rH6_i8zuffs

Add to that a monetary structure that's unraveling at the same time.

Retired Monk - "Ideology is a disease"

.

#31

Choco

No, my business will fail if I don't do a good job of serving the market demand, and for no other reason. I must lower my prices or learn how to produce more efficiently if I want to save my business. 

Nothing is gained by just throwing a lot of money at consumers so they can come to spend it on my product. All that will do is drive up prices accordingly and everything will be the same as before. How does the economy improve if all the prices and wages and other values are driven up to twice as high or 3 or 4 times? No, it is not a lack of money for people to spend, it is a lack of efficient production (or shortage of it) for consumers to spend their money on that causes the bad times.

The bad times may occur in spurts connected to isolated disturbances here or there, but the overall underlying cause of it is the inefficient production or service on the part of sellers, not a lack of spending money for consumers.

The reason trickle-down doesn't work is that it promises the uncompetitive that they will get what they want if we just subsidize the rich first and let the wealth trickle down to them, and this is false. Those who produce are the ones who will profit, not those who just wait 'til the goodies trickle down to them. It was wrong to preach trickle-down. Instead it is competing and doing work to serve the market that results in workers and others improving their position.

Those who want more must be told to improve themselves and perform better and figure out how to produce value for buyers, instead of being told to wait for something to come down to them.

No, it's not for that reason. What they don't understand is that they must improve their production so they can either offer consumers something better or offer the same thing at a lower price. There's nothing wrong with consumers tightening their belt and becoming more disciplined. 

Today consumers are avoiding debt and are more finicky about what to spend their money on. THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT and today's producers must get with the program and figure out how to serve the new more finicky consumers. That's the new economy.

If U.S. production does not improve to catch up with the high consumption, then the U.S. standard of living (at least in terms of the consumption level) will decrease. Maybe the quality of life can be measured in terms other than the level of raw consumption, and life can still improve for Americans in ways other than the spending and consumption level.

What we know for sure is that just throwing around money for people to spend to prop up their artificial consumption level is no solution to improving the U.S. economy, or any economy. Not today or ever. The idea that scattering around dollars for people to spend will make the economy boom and make us all rich is phony snake-oil economics which never made any sense, despite the Keynesians and other charlatans.

What they have a right to is whatever wage level is necessary to get them to do the work and which brings the employer enough return to pay this price in return for the value being produced and resulting profit. There is no connection between what the employer pays his workers and what customers spend on his product.

Again, what if a company has NO EMPLOYEES AT ALL, which does happen in some cases -- or at least in some cases a company has very low costs for workers or services from others. SO WHAT? Does that mean the company can make no profit or can have no customers? Why? That's idiotic. Of course there is no logical connect between the buyers spending money on the company's product and the workers being paid by the company.

The company must pay the workers (assuming it has any) whatever is necessary to get them to do the needed work. BUT THAT'S ALL. It's silly to suggest that anymore than this is needed in order for the company to be profitable. And it just might improve its production by LAYING OFF those workers and replacing them with robots, which it should do if that saves on costs.

Both of them were shrewd salespeople and promoters. In both cases, especially Ford, it was mainly a publicity stunt, which was successful in gaining sympathy toward the company and getting consumers to buy more of their cars. 

Except for this, there is no reason to believe Ford's increase of the wages was a benefit to the company, and it definitely did not benefit the economy generally to pay the workers more than the market value of their work.

No, it proved no such thing. It was the competition and lowering the price tag (or keeping the price low) and economies of scale that made cars more accessible. The autoworkers were only a small fraction of the economy -- the whole sentimentality of overpaying the workers was just symbolic and sensationalist, not anything of substance in promoting the auto industry generally.

Tiny tiny fraction of the the whole economy. It was only the lower cost per unit, the economies of scale, that made the cars more accessible and promoted the industry. But yes, Ford probably did profit, as one company, because of its successful publicity stunt of increasing the wages and advertising this widely and running newspaper ads to encourage people to buy their cars as a way to support the workers and their families -- yes, this was good promotionalism for which the company probably reaped a net gain.

Troll, me and Poly tend to disagree on a lot of things here but I think he's probably got a more solid understanding of the real basics of an economy than anyone else here too.

Money is not wealth, I think that's the point you're missing. Fiat 'Money' is absolutely invaluable if there is nothing to purchase, correct? If you were stranded on an island with a billion dollars in a crate, it wouldn't help you at all. You'd still have to hunt for food, cook it yourself, provide your own shelter, make your own clothing...

..money is simply a universally accepted method of exchange, so people don't have to carry around fish and bread to trade for a pair of shoes or a place to sleep. Money REPRESENTS wealth, but has no real value in and of itself.

Outsourcing labor on large scales eventually impoverishes the nation doing the outsourcing because that nation no longer produces nearly as much as it needs to. They pay foreigners to make the goods for them, without realizing that the money they pay the foreigners is now no longer money that they can spend on these goods themselves. Eventually they either have to borrow these funds back to buy the goods the foreigners produce, or print up new money and debase their own currency, which drives up the price of the overseas labor as well as the cost of the goods to the consumers in the homeland.

Meljomur - I think you may be making the assumption that stimulating demand is what grows economies. That is something I have to disagree with. I can rattle off a list a mile long of things that I'd love to have right now - that's not going to help the economy at all though. Saying that stimulating demand by encouraging spending grows an economy, is like saying that more food will naturally grow if we encourage people to get fat. Spending doesn't grow an economy - spending happens because an economy grows.

polycarp2

Let's assume all the above is accurate -- there's no point in quibbling over these factoids.

None of this in any way proves that India had higher GDP than England. How much machinery were they producing, how many carriages and farm tools and furniture, and what was the quality?  

Let's assume India produced much more clothing. The truth is that the new weaving technology now made it much more efficient for that work to be outsourced to England at that time. There is such a thing as CHANGE. The old dies and new technologies take over.

It is probably correct to say that England would have done better to export its new technologies to India and have the work done there (and in other colonies) at lower labor cost rather than in England. And in fact, a few generations later that is exactly what happened, and today the situation is reversed and India (and other 3rd-world countries) are doing that labor, to everyone's benefit, while England and other developed countries do very little of the textile and garment production.

None of this changes the fact that the companies pay the workers, not so they will have money to spend, but in order to get the work done. And nothing is gained by paying workers more only in order to put spending money in their pockets. This snake-oil economics does not lead to any improvement in the economy.

And let's assume that for a time England protected its weaving industry (to save domestic jobs) in order to put money into the pockets of red-blooded Englishpersons for them to spend and "stimulate" England's economy. Even so, there's no reason to believe England was made better off by this protectionist snake-oil economic policy, and it was in everyone's interest (i.e., the consumers) to end this practice and outsource those jobs to the colonies. The extra spending money put into the pockets of English workers did not benefit the economy as a whole but only those particular workers at the expense of the rest of the country.

There may be correlations in some or many cases, but nothing about this argues for any theory that wages should be made higher in order to promote domestic spending so the company will survive better.

Keeping both down should be the goal. The wage is one of the costs. There is no logic here that argues for paying the workers a higher wage. Just pay them enough to get the work done and no more.

It is the same gain as happens when workers are replaced by robots, which might also lead to lower wages, because of the extra job-seekers thrown into the labor market.

The bottom-line principle, if we are backed into a corner, is simply that there is never an excuse for putting people to work where they are not needed. It is bone-headed idiocy to suggest that we must keep people "working" in some factory or wherever, even though we don't really need them there, but somehow it's the only way to keep them out of mischief.

What else are you saying but this?

Let's agree with the premise that "wages drop" because of the cheap imports or the new robots that replaced workers. So now what? Create artificial makework factories so we have some place to put the excess workers? find babysitting slots for them?

This is something to philosophize about (not abstractly) and to make sense out of. What if this pattern persists and there develops a larger and larger number of the unemployable, if that is the result?

There are many ways to deal with this question. But we must start out by rejecting all phony suggestions about putting them into makework "factories" or artificial babysitting centers masquerading as worksites. And that is precisely what it would be to just "bring back the factories" and shut out the cheap imports.

As opposed to what? long-term makework centers? "factories" which pretend to be producing something but are really just babysitting centers to keep the riff-raff out of mischief?

It makes no sense to put people to "work" in factories where we don't need them. However you cut and slice it, this can never be the right course. It assumes primarily that the workers in question have no real value and so the only way to remove them as a threat to society is to put them into the makework "factory" -- we should not start out with this premise about human worthlessness.

What "bandits"? (those sneaky Jewish bankers perhaps?) Those who are truly competitive in the economy and produce real value equal to or greater than their income? Profit-makers? Everyone who gains a profit is a "bandit"?

If there are ill-gotten gains anywhere, then let's single out the culprits and expose them, maybe prosecute them if they are criminals. Don't call people "bandits" without identifying them and proving that their gains are ill-gotten. Lots of good producers "make out" because they earned it by competing and serving the market demand. 

No, the vast majority of Americans, 300 million consumers, benefit from outsourcing. Companies are not "bandits" just because they found a way to reduce their costs and serve consumers more efficiently.

Nothing is outsourced unless it was too costly. That part of the U.S. economy which is cost-efficient, the good part, is not outsourced. And in the rare cases where outsourcing was really a mistake, the company in question was punished by the market for its mistake, through loss of profit, fewer sales, etc.

There are many causes of the economic bad times. And perhaps this will continue on indefinitely. 

Part of the cause is an arrogant overconsumption and running up of debt by U.S. consumers and our government at all levels. And you could go on listing all the possible causes.

What is NOT the cause is the discipline of the market which rewards efficiency and penalizes those who are uncompetitive or deficient in their performance. It is higher performance and excellence which we are losing -- it's not that someone took away our entitlements or paid us only 20 times what Indonesians are paid instead of the 40 times we demanded. No, it's not because our babysitters didn't pander enough to us that our economy is going downhill -- it's more likely because they pandered too much. 

What "insane" policies? Yes, paying workers more than their real market value, giving out "entitlements" that were not earned, hiring Americans out of sympathy for them or only because they have a meaningless credential from some instutition rather than because of their merit, giving out generous pension benefits and grossly expensive medical coverage -- yes, these are "insane" practices that will have to end and be replaced by something more disciplined.

There's lots of insanity one could cite for further examples. But it is not market discipline and free-trade competition and global trade that is causing the bad times. Rather, these are what is preventing the total collapse of the economy that hasn't yet happened.

If we erroneously try to erase the benefits of global trade, by slapping on punitive tariffs to force them to "bring back the factories" in which to put the useless American workers, then we will see the economic collapse speed up.

Why not throw in Mongolia and Timbuktu and Zimbabwe? how about Czarist Russia and Weimar Germany? Everywhere in the world where anything ever went wrong -- the collapse of ROME. We're just replaying all of them, right? It's Sodom and Gemorrah again. The fall of Babylon! Atlantis!

Look what happened to the DINOSAURS! It could happen to us too!

Yes, it's the Bilderburgers! the Masons! the Jewish bankers! We gotta stop 'em before it's too late!

YOU'RE NEXT! (famous quote from the original "Invasion of the Bodysnatchers")

Whatever, let the US fall (who needs a middle class).  Personally, I don't really care ( I noticed on my recent visit its becoming more and more of a tragic and depressing place).

I live in England, and if I recall that makes me smarter than you...

#35

Cheesebone

Not necessarily. The nation still produces all that it should or all that it needs to produce, and pays other nations to produce the stuff that can be done at lower cost. There is no logical limit to how much outsourcing should be done, as long as all producers are paid and buyers are not running up debt out of control. And when the latter happens, it's not the fault of any trade practices or of outsourcing companies, but the fault of the careless spending practices of the debtors.

You're worried about who can spend the money that left the country, or what finally happens to that money? The money belongs to whoever it's paid to, either to spend or invest or let pile up. It doesn't matter what finally happens to this money, even though it is in foreign hands.

No, they could borrow money from other sources, or they could pay for the goods with current cash, or they could forego buying the goods. Don't create a fictitious corner out of which they cannot escape. 

Why? Where are you getting these necessary bad choices they have to make? Nothing leads to these inevitable bad choices. 

OK, let us suppose that the outsourcing nation, the U.S., experiences a drain of its dollars which is disruptive to the U.S. economy. And so the Fed does something to increase the money supply. This is not a net debasing of the currency, not if the cause of it is a SHORTAGE of dollars circulating in the U.S.

There's nothing wrong with pumping up the money supply in such an unusual situation, to make up for the decrease in the dollars in circulation. If that's all you mean, then so what? In that case we need such a "debasing" of the currency. The only problem with "debasing" is that there is INFLATION which means too much dollars, not too little.

This is the only sense in which there could be a "debasing" of the currency, i.e., inflating or increasing of the dollars. But that would happen only if there is some kind of real shortage of dollars, or DEflation that happened and has to be counteracted.

So? That's going to happen inevitably. It's just a normal reaction to the drain of dollars, which reaction is necessary to bring the trade back into balance. If the trade finally balances out, and we buy fewer imports and sell more exports as a result, what is the harm in that? That is precisely the normal market responding as it should.

There is nothing in any of this to suggest that companies must hire more workers than they need or pay them any more than minimally necessary to get the work done, in order to put spending money into their pockets.

There is no reason to say that companies should "create" any extra "jobs" just to provide spending money to consumers to buy their products or any such snake-oil Keynesian rubbish. Or that companies cause harm by outsourcing their operations in order to save on labor cost.

Certainly one way to reduce the outsourcing is to reduce the wage level in the U.S. so companies would have less incentive to outsource the jobs. But as long as the wage levels are too high, it is the proper response for the companies to seek any option for getting the work done at lower cost. It's the same as replacing those workers with robots.

Excellent statement. Frame it and put it on Thom Hartmann's wall and make him read it 100 times a day. (Plus Berny Sanders and Nancy Pelosi and the whole Left-Wing Keynesian gang)

You need to understand that, as a lender, you only lend money to people who can afford to pay it back. Otherwise you're left out on your ass with the bad end of the deal.

You say that the US can simply "borrow money from others" - but what happens when the "others" simply decide that it's a BAD IDEA to lend the US money because they either aren't going to get paid back, or they will get paid back in a heavily devalued currency?

If my financials looked like the US's and I walked into a bank asking for a loan, they'd catapult me out the door like I'd just walked naked into a Catholic church with a picture of Jesus shooting heroin tattoed to my ass.

Basically, when people stop lending us money, they will demand that what we owe gets paid back. This means that the USA has 2 options - default on the loan, say "No, we can't pay you back" and basically this will completely shut the valve on imports from our creditors. Or - print up what we owe, and pay them back in dollars that have become ridiculously devauled after pumping another 15 trillion USD into world circulation. At this point, the dollar will be so wothless that creditors won't want our dollars and they will find countries with more valuable currencies to export their goods to.

The really fun part happens when these countries start doing everything they can to get these worthless dollars out of their posession. Because nobody else will want them either, they will use what they have to buy up US assets and US exports and the USD circulating throughout the world will eventually return home, resulting in an enormous increase of money supply within the US and a simultaneous decrease of imported goods to the US, forcing things like energy and comoddity prices to skyrocket while availability of goods becomes scarce.

The US will be FORCED to rebuild a productive economy in the midst of the most outreaching currency collapse in the history of the planet, and these times will be absolutely painful for a large, large majority of Americans. The Great Depression is going to need to be renamed.

If government simply got out of the way, lowered all these taxes and wiped out the regulations that chased all of these businesses overseas in the first place, we could start CHOOSING to rebuild our economy and the correction won't be nearly as painful in the long term. Short term, yes, we'll see a huge change in lifestyle but we can repair the damage within a few years. With these current Keynesian methods, we're simply going to create a decades-long train wreck.  

Cheesebone, you were doing OK until you got to the get government out of the way nonsolution.  It is not government regulations that is "chasing" corporations away.  They have been writing the regulations and undermining the enforcement.  America under the Bush Crime Family and Lord Bill's inter-regnum was Corporate Heaven.  It was fiduciary responsibility and nothing about social or political responsibility.  

And that is why Trolls become boring and annoying instead of being a nice alternative view.  We have been through the dogma many times, and the idea that businesses are only responsible for making money is a bad myth.  Unfortunately it is an institutionalized and established myth, not just a bad idea.  

Lots of people have been catechized into the religion of fiduciary responsibility and the nonsense about businesses having no moral or social responsibilities beyond "charity."  The establishment of Corporate Capitalism as the boss of the State has been accomplished within this dogma of what is good for business being good for the USA.  But no longer good for Main St. or even for American corporations making things in America.  Another fraud by Robber Barons.

The business dogmatism does not see "the economy" as an interactive mutuality.  It sees it as a "business opportunity."  The rule that one should not go into business to "make money" but to do something or make something of value is old Main St. wisdom.  Create the wealth and the symbols of wealth will follow.  Go for the symbol and the substance suffers.

I think this has happened in spades in our operative economic theology of supply side, but also in the dogma of growth.  The idea that greater productivity makes everyone richer only makes sense if everything is shared instead of kept by the "owners."  And the problem is that the rich don't spend their money very well in terms of the health of the economic system.  The goal of the economy is not to create the most money possible, it is to create real value; and what makes it real value is how it serves our human needs and social needs.

All businesses are chartered or licensed by the State.  This is because society needs to keep Commerce from dominating through the power of money.  I regard the privatization of the Commons as the enclosure of the Commons and the theft of our collective assets.  Being charged to rent what we own is an outrage and has nothing to do with economic freedom or a free market.  

Economies are like gardens that need tending.  Or, think of the body composed of many parts and money as the blood circulating to keep them all healthy and working.  The State has a primary interest in having an economy that serves peace and justice unless it is captured by imperial forces.  Then, the State can either be totalitarian or subservient to Imperial Commerce, but it is not allowed to hold the power of money to social responsibility.  

I don't care if India was richer before England took over.  The myth that the empire benefitted from the West is part of our distorted view of history.  What made the West become dominant was the discovery of coal, not the level of humanity and culture in England.  The belief that the Industrial Revolution conferred philosopher-king status on its grandees ignores what ignorant and provincial characters these guys tended to be.

It is a lot like the power wielded by the Koch Bros. ilk today.  Really bad ideas from trust fund brats with tons of money to screw the process.  It is what happens when money flows to thugs and responsibility is stripped down to making money.

This is exactly why there is such a backlash right now against the rich. People don't hate the rich just for buying big ugly pretentious things, that's just annoying. They hate the rich because the rich corrupt the political process and infest it and manipulate anything and everything they can with little regard to the negative affects on society as a whole.

Troll wrote: "The only problem with "debasing" is that there is INFLATION which means too much dollars, not too little.

This is the only sense in which there could be a "debasing" of the currency, i.e., inflating or increasing of the dollars. But that would happen only if there is some kind of real shortage of dollars, or DEflation that happened and has to be counteracted."

poly replies: Actually, we're in a period of domestic deflation. The Main Street money supply shrunk 6% last year, and has shrunk an additional 9% in just the first quarter of this year. It's called an economic meltdown.

Internationally, there is a glut of dollars.

A successful economy is nothing more than the production and distribution of required goods. How a society determnes how to do that is socially determined. If you want to wrap that into a system that is structurally failing, I suppose you can do that.

As more and more of the nation's money supply is sucked into finance, the billion dollar bonuses will turn into mult-billion dollar bonuses and be turned into financial paper. Get how it the system works. An ultimate outcome is no money supply at all. Nothing can be bought/sold.  If my 12-year old grand neice can get it, anyone can.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVkFb26u9g8

:Bonnie, at one time "consumers" were referred to as the "many" and the super rich the "few". Currently, the many are going broke.

Retired Monk - "Ideology is a disease"

Correct. Which is why we need to get the government out of it to begin with. All the money in the world would have ZERO effect on corrupt politicians because they won't have the power to change things in favor of the rich in the first place.

Regulations absolutely do chase businesses out of this country, anyone who honestly believes otherwise is simply ignoring a truth. The real issue is that they punish businesses that have done NOTHING WRONG by forcing them to comply with rules that are intended to "protect the consumer" because of poor or immoral decisions made by other business owners in the past. It's like alcohol prohibition - the government decided that alcohol was dangerous and they decided to punish the responsible consumers because of the potential effects when abused by the minority of it's consumers. We all know how that turned out.

This has a number of effects; by primarily making it more expensive for the business owner in the first place, it inherently creates a lack of incentive to hire new employees because of constant rises in the business expenses. When connected with no change in productive output, this means it now costs more for the business owner to provide the exact same good or service as before. Either the owner takes a pay cut and prices stay flat, the owner cuts wages and prices stay flat, or the owner raises prices and maintains current income for himself and the employees. Either way this has a negative effect on the business model as a whole. Punish people WHEN they make bad decisions, not before they do.

As productivity increases, producers will be forced to bid higher and higher for workers.  Increases in productivity result in higher wages.

Make sense?

Production of U.S. workers has nearly doubled since the 1980's. His wages as purchasing power have remained stagnant and in some cases declined.. He's the most productive worker in the world, and has the least total compensation of any worker in the industrialized First World Nations.

Labor shortages make wages go up....not productivity. Labor surpluses make wages go down, as now.

Retired Monk - "Ideology is a disease"

No problem Bonnie, you just add emphasis.  And your comment about being a citizen instead of a consumer is right on.  The problem with "economic man" and "economic reality" as the frame for social thinking is that money and the economy are the creations of society, not its masters.  Raj Patel quotes Oscar Wilde in the title of THE VALUE OF NOTHING, the tag line to "the price of everything."  It is the definition of the cynic who knows the price of everything...

I give Cheesbone credit for blowing the whistle on Mr. Troll's nonsense.  But Cheesebone loses it at the "keep government out of the way" and "regulations drive businesses out."  In America for the past several decades, business regulations have been written by those regulated rather than by the public's interest for the most part.  This is why we subsidize their profit-making activities even though we lose the jobs and don't get any taxes back.  In the New Gilded Age, our Robber Barons continue the tradition of the American treasury as their Piggy Bank.

The idea that there will be an economy without a government or a society first is deluded.  An economy means a system, not just Libertarian chaos where landlords and warlords work with loan sharks and highwaymen to extract their tolls and fees.  Where there is a social infrastructure, there is also an economic infrastructure for prosperity and security.  There is a common interest in interdependence, even in families.  Comparative advantage works in our individual exchange of skills and interests.

Government is only how citizens establish how the economy is to be designed and run.  Failure to engage in design and engineering is not economic freedom, it is chaos.  Failure to deal with the power of money politically will be fatal.  Money is power even if it is only a claim on future wealth instead of value itself.  The sports analogies are very good for our understanding of the rules in an economy.  

"Ownership" is also a question that transcends the economic system.  Patel points out that the enclosures of the lands upon which peasants lived, farmed and hunted put a price on what they were granted as title to home and ground.  What had been "free" now had a price.  When things got tough, the mortgage could be leveraged and the home and farm sold or forfeited.  As "ownership," having title to the farm was a step down and out.

Economies are human social creations and cannot be allowed to go to seed in the belief that they will do better naturally than they will with our direction.  Without the game, your money is not worth anything.  Nor is your claim to any possession or home.  Economies belong to societies, and so do we.