Reply #2

1) Free trade has to be drastically slowed down.

2) Democratic forces have to be strengthened through massive education.

3) The rich, especially those who have made their fortunes selling by producing cheap in poor countries and selling dear in formerly developed countries have to be taxed to keep things going until we get back on an even keel.

Call it what you will, but the austerity that imposes poverty on the middle class will put education, health care, perhaps eventually even heat, electricity and our urban sewage systems at risk.

If you look at history, you realize that deterioration can go very quickly when a society goes through really big economic changes. Often the economic changes set off national or ethnic rivalries that lead to war.

We have to take control of this situation and work together to insure a peaceful change -- a peaceful slowing of free trade and cultural efforts that help us work through this time without wars and violence. If history is a guide . . . .

Don't even bother with history. What happens to a family when it has no income and it can't afford to pay the rent or buy enough food and then a family member becomes ill? The family either pulls together or is pulled apart. That's what. As a nation, as a society, we have to make this choice.

If, when a family is in a crisis, one parent sits at the head of the table and eats while the other members look on, hungry, things do not go well.