Reply #41: It is even broader than you say.

[frogcycle]

It is not just that we need to "save jobs"


The so-called "economy" is a figment of human imagination. It is a house of cards - a ponzi scheme.

ALL of "finance" is a world of make-believe where humans assign "value" to pieces of paper or entries in a computer.

At the most basic, the only thing of "value" is food. That's why primitive civilizations were hunter-gatherers. What the heck did they hunt and gather?

At a little more advanced, people started building permanent shelters, then using fuel to provide warmth and cook food.

So the raw materials for housing and energy sources are pretty basic things with near-intrinsic "value" if there is to be much more of a society than, say, gorillas and chimps have.

Once those social groups form and start to reach out to each other, means of transport of raw materials, finished goods, and people start to gain "value". When one group had more of something than another did, they figured out they could swap stuff, and they needed to move it.

For a long time camels and donkeys were the primary means. Somewhere along the line "money" was invented to facilitate exchanging "value."

Obviously, we've gotten a lot more complicated than that. But the building blocks are still the same. You make something someone else wants and trade it for something you want.

If the United States manufacturing base finishes collapsing, the United States will collapse. Period. All the United States will have that anybody else wants is corn and soybeans. The "financial markets" are just the money - just the wampum. Values fluctuate wildly because they have no real meaning. We cannot sustain 300 million people on the income from agriculture. Period. The only way we could retain any preeminence in the world would be through that age-old method that the Neocons tried to invoke. We all know how far attempting to conquer seven countries in the Mideast got us.

It is that fundamental, folks.

Sure, a bunch of greedy, shortsighted bastards fucked up not only the American auto industry, but the steel industry, the electronics industry, the clothing industry, you name it. We export raw materials like iron ore, coal, pulpwood, hardwood, etc. and import finished goods. We send THEM our wampum in exchange for their labor.

But USA, Inc. cannot afford to cut off its nose to spite its face. The industries that the greedy bastards fucked up are OURS. We THE People! We need to kick out the greedy bastards and FIX THEM.