Why Liberals Should Embrace Free Markets

[wkmac]

And don't assume the title means that conservatives do embrace a free market either.

The top 1 percent of earners in the United States now control more than 40 percent of the nation's wealth, their income steadily rising at the same time most of the country now takes home less pay than a decade ago, with an all-time high of 46 million Americans now living below the official poverty line.


To many on the right, this trend is the natural consequence of market forces, of freedom and free enterprise rewarding the more productive members of society. Many on the left also hold free markets responsible for the expanding gap between rich and poor and the global economic meltdown that accelerated it, arguing for a more interventionist role by the state to promote stability and arrest the growth in inequality.


But as economist Dean Baker observes in his latest book, The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive, the truth is that those on both sides of the political spectrum who assert that the U.S. economy is based on free markets are fundamentally mistaken. Markets in the U.S. have never been free of state intervention. Rather, that which we call the “free market” has in fact been fixed, consciously designed to redistribute wealth from the working class to the idle rich, from patents that allow pharmaceutical giants to reap monopoly profits to restrictions on labor that neuter the ability of Americans to organize and demand better compensation.

continued at:
'The End of Loser Liberalism' and the myth of the free market

 

[UnconTROLLed]

And don't assume the title means that conservatives do embrace a free market either.



continued at:
'The End of Loser Liberalism' and the myth of the free market

The bottom point there is something I mentioned to TRP a while ago but he wasn't understanding my POV. smash the taft-hartley act and the NLRB/NLRA, as well as minimum wages. That's a good start.

 

[moreluck]

This tells me that he even considers liberal Dems on the mean side!!

Van Jones was quoted as saying......."If we can just be as warm and sharing and kind as the tea Party, which one might suspect is a relatively low bar, we might be able to do something for our country," Jones said Monday

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...es-to-steal-tea-party-strategy/#ixzz1Zp5hpCUz

 

[wkmac]

The bottom point there is something I mentioned to TRP a while ago but he wasn't understanding my POV. smash the taft-hartley act and the NLRB/NLRA, as well as minimum wages. That's a good start.

Agree 100%. Minimum wage IMO works to instill a price floor for aggregate demand in surplus consumer goods while also hurting labor in abandoning the "dark satanic mills" of the industrial corp. state. Instead of independent craftsman, tradesman and entrepreneurs we fall prey to the cartelized state protected economy benefiting big corp. power and become a bunch of "rats in a cage!"

Worse thing unions accepted was gov't regulation that in truth defanged their power for corp. benefit. When unions thanks to labor laws that many of them wrongly embraced reduced unions to pure contract maintenance, the relevance of unions for the average working folk was also thus reduced. Unions need to go back, find their roots and begin to re-assert themselves towards those traditions.

When unions abandoned the mutual aid society ideal, it left itself wide open for decline and it has.

Sleeve, you might enjoy reading Kevin Carson's "Labor Struggle, A Free Market Model"

Labor needs to rediscover it's pre-gov't intervention roots IMO and you'll see union ranks including a lot of white collar folk swell in numbers.

BTW: You'd never see Big Bill Hayward kissing a sitting President's ass for some illusion of political gain for the Wobblies!

 

[UnconTROLLed]

Agree 100%. Minimum wage IMO works to instill a price floor for aggregate demand in surplus consumer goods while also hurting labor in abandoning the "dark satanic mills" of the industrial corp. state. Instead of independent craftsman, tradesman and entrepreneurs we fall prey to the cartelized state protected economy benefiting big corp. power and become a bunch of "rats in a cage!"

Worse thing unions accepted was gov't regulation that in truth defanged their power for corp. benefit. When unions thanks to labor laws that many of them wrongly embraced reduced unions to pure contract maintenance, the relevance of unions for the average working folk was also thus reduced. Unions need to go back, find their roots and begin to re-assert themselves towards those traditions.

When unions abandoned the mutual aid society ideal, it left itself wide open for decline and it has.

Sleeve, you might enjoy reading Kevin Carson's "Labor Struggle, A Free Market Model"

Labor needs to rediscover it's pre-gov't intervention roots IMO and you'll see union ranks including a lot of white collar folk swell in numbers.

BTW: You'd never see Big Bill Hayward kissing a sitting President's ass for some illusion of political gain for the Wobblies!

Yes I have checked out "Labor Struggle" in the past, thanks for linking. And you are right-on about Hayward. lol