Originally Posted by
Ben
It isn't Obama. It isn't Bush. It's the system; it's the structure; it's the policies. As Adam Smith said: the principal architects of policy are the "merchants and manufacturers," (today: corporations) and they make certain that their own interests are, in his words, "most peculiarly attended to," no matter what the effect on others, including the people of England who, he argued, suffered from their policies.
It's what Adam Smith talked about... oh 200 years ago.
So, part of the profound problem is the free movement of capital and the free import of goods. Which, again, as Adam Smith said, would harm England.
Now if these policies aren't reversed, well, you won't have a recovery.
As Paul Craig Roberts said, the former assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration, if you continue to offshore jobs (in other words: free capital movement) you'll offshore your economy, too. And your tax base. It'll be a gradual hollowing out of the country, as it were.
Free capital movement (and Adam Smith argued the core of free trade was the FREE circulation of LABOR) will permit companies to take advantage of cheap Chinese labor. How much? Well, a buck fifty an hour. Can Americans compete with that? No. And, too, with virtually no environmental and health and safety standards. I mean, you can continue to reduce taxes [a gift to the super-rich] but it won't make any difference. The inordinate Chinese labor pool and its cheapness will attract American companies. Because of policies that allow, once again, free capital movement. If that doesn't change, well, nothing changes.