[SHpuntik]

I resist the notion of trying to extinguish the fire by trying to smother it with gasoline mainly. In some cases you're right, and those that actually enjoy the notion of treating their employees like dirt may continue to do so indefinitely, but in others when the economy does turn, businesses, corporations included, will seek to expand their operations, and hire new employees. The ones that don't exploit their employee base as a sole means to accrue profit from limited operational costs of production will introduce new competition in the industry for employees, effectively pushing the supply for jobs back over the demand, and to stay competitive during the "surplus" scenario, like you said corporations would have to be more careful about how they treat their employees.

The job programs government provide have the knack of introducing false signals into the markets, unfortunately those who are dependent on the "shovel ready" variety to seek employment are fairly easily mislead into perceiving these jobs will be available in perpetuity, whether via the emotional response from desperation or simple naivete. Like the bubbles themselves collapsing they always suffer the most from shifts in the economic situation, which happen very naturally in any economy regardless. In the meantime, the true potential job creators, whether through expanded taxation or government-imposed constraints, are significantly hampered in their own capacity to run their businesses, and expand their operations, opening the field of employment. I think we as a nation need to become comfortable with the fact that we can't compete with foreign labor supplies with our current expectations of compensation for the baseline levels of effort for the positions that require the minimum KSA's. We try to game the system by throwing tariffs at the problem the big dog corporations will just shift their operations around and throw up new smoke and mirrors to meet the challenge and sustain their profitability. I don't even begrudge them the decision because that falls under simple pragmatism of wanting to survive in an almost unforgiving market.

There, I think, we're having a problem. It certainly benefits a corporation to move their operations to, say, Mexico - or even a Southern state with anti-union laws - but as a nation it only hurts us. Even internally shifting to Republican states that hate unions isn't necessarily beneficial - as you said, it forces competitors to also find ways to reduce employee costs - which drives wages down, or sends jobs overseas altogether.

Corporate profits are higher than ever, thanks to the "invisible hand", but American industry is dying, wages are stagnating, and unemployment is high. We may be the world's "last superpower", but quite frankly, we are increasingly becoming like a third world country. Our industry is dying, our public infrastructure is rotting, and wealth is being increasingly concentrated. The "1%" will be unaffected by this (Even the worst third world country has a wealthy elite), so there is absolutely no motivation for them to stop this downard spiral.

To be frank, the American government is pretty much irrelevant to the American elite. Even the military and law enforcement are redundant, as the rich can afford their own private security and armies (like in Hurricane Katrina). So they have no motivation to pay higher taxes or contribute more than absolutely necessary to the common good.

I think part of the solution for America is to provide employment opportunities in new areas that may in fact be a little less "physically demanding" although not necessarily as "respectable" as one entitlement-minded individual may desire. I don't buy the "lazy poor" argument - but as far as non-physical professions god, there could easily be jobs for them as well. Any large scale public project would require skill sets from across the board, not just nail pushers and ditch diggers.

Many of the rich got where they are by making a living out of finding work-arounds, and since many have political campaigns on their payroll they know of ways to get the legislation out there to provide convenient loopholes they can use to do it. Unfortunately, one reason the not-so-rich are so relatively poor is they don't have a very solid grasp of the complexities of economics and the secondary causes and effects of financial decisions made by the government towards how they affected short of a possible flow of money towards or away from them. Thus if anyone is going to get screwed, especially over the long-term, it will more likely be those that have such limited comprehension of it. To me, the only way to protect the
rest, the 99% if you will, is to limit any potential to game the system as much as possible and I cannot foresee that happening by providing the same solution that gave us the problem to begin with. Its a common Leftie mantra to say the rich got rich by "cheating" - I don't necessarily buy that. There is a lot of "gaming the system" going around - but in the end - the most common way to get rich is to have some money to begin with, and networking. I'm not rich, I'll probably never be rich, but I do have family connections, and of course VA networking that the average Joe doesn't get - getting wealthy often requires a "head start", be it family or business connections.

You're absolutely right that the vast majority of people have no grasp of economics, I have a vague understanding in a very limited sense, but I'm hardly an economist, If I were to invest in the stock market, I would never be crazy enough to try to build my own portfolio, I don't have the background to make intelligent decisions in that respect. But that's not necessary, as long as there's intelligent policymakers at the top with a beneficial long term strategy, we're okay.

In the military, we wouldn't let individual companies and batalions just do whatever they want, there's an overrall doctrine they need to follow. The same goes for macro-economics. The government doesn't need to dictate individual business strategies, but there does need to be an overrall policy for our economy.