So-called "free trade" and "free market"

[SHRED]

As import tariffs were torn down it became much cheaper to build products overseas and ship them here. Tariffs protect domestic businesses and jobs. Unfortunately the corporate string-pullers in our society have convinced the majority that "protectionism" is a dirty word and meanwhile also blaming organized labor (unions) for job flight overseas.
Another cruel hoax that the multi-national wealthy elite few have played on the masses.


Published on Friday, March 12, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
Democracy - Not "The Free Market" - Will Save America's Middle Class
by Thom Hartmann
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0312-08.htm

Alexander Hamilton
Thom Hartmann
http://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/2008/12/alexander-hamilton

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[FormerDittoHead]

1. God I wish Thom Hartmann's words would be UNDERSTOOD by so many more...

>"The "middle class" is the creation of government intervention in the marketplace, and won't exist without it"

I only wish those complaining about gov't being bad, or that it shouldn't play a part in guiding the economy would GET this point.

So many people thing that the "free market" brought about the middle class (or that the middle class has always existed) and that gov't is the problem, WHEN THE REVERSE IS THE TRUTH.

[HereSince1628]

2. a trillion for Star Wars, nothing for the really weapon of the enemy--the pegged yuan

As always, the Pentagon had us spending hundreds of billions per year to protect from things that turned out not to be the real threat.

And just for the record, what the hell was Star Wars supposed to protect? The industries that we've now cleverly relocated outside the target area?????

It surely wasn't the well being of the American worker unless those workers were Asian slaves trapped on American 'protectorates' in the mid-Pacific.

[OHdem10]

3. Free Market Fundamentalism is destroying the Middle Class which

is destroying democracy in USA. No Middle Class=No Democracy.