Recently Paul Krugman quoted JM Keynes, as to the great failings
of our economic system being failure to provide full employment
and an arbitrary an inequitable distribution of income and wealth.
Now that won't impress the right wingers, but they should listen
to their patron saint, Adam Smith. While looking up something
else I ran across a quote from Adam Smith, in which he said the
workers should have a fair share of the wealth they produce, a
principle Henry Ford adopted and it made him rich.
What also impressed me was, Smith took the creation of wealth
back to basic principles, to the fact that all wealth is created
by the workman. From there he expanded to the "rent seekers" who
got control of land or materials, and thus extracted a major
portion of wealth from those who do the actual work.
Even more, his world was one that is Utopia for the
libertarian/right wing. Workers and owners both tried to
establish their own unions, called cartels or conspiracies in
restraint of trade today. In his day such management unions were
legal, but labor unions were not. The end result was, workmen
struggled to even survive, and owners enjoyed wealth.
Adam Smith also explained violence by labor in the struggle as a
result of desperation, all to often the result of union busting
and impoverishment of workers.
Smith also said something I never realized, that in his time
England was a much more wealthy country than the US, but workers
in the US were much better off, and the US was growing very fast
compared to England. His explanations made it plain, the great
gains being made in America were due to the fact that workers
were much better off. Of course that is tied to the fact that
Adam Smith understood that the workers were the real source of
all wealth.
That also explains why small business is the engine of economic
success, and employment, in this country. Small Business
develops when workers manage to accumulate enough wealth to
provide their own land and materials to produce wealth. The
lower the level of wealth accumulation the more the economy
grows and wealth is created.
In his time he reported that China was a very wealthy nation,
but quite stagnant. The country was rich, but the people were
poor. That is what is happening in China today, the GDP will
soon exceed that of the US, but China will still be a poor
country. The mass of the people are and will be poor, and those
accumulating wealth are a small portion. This is a recipe for
economic disaster.
If you ever look at the GDP, and per capita GDP of Saudi Arabia,
you will discover that Saudi Arabia is not a rich country, it's
barely mediocre, or even at the high end of third world. The
ruling class are floating in oil wealth, but the people are not.
That is a recipe for violence and revolution, which is very
likely why Saudi Arabia preaches fear of Iran and other
countries, fear of other religions, and a fundamentalist form of
Islam that preaches war on unbelievers, whether Muslim, Jew or
Christian.
Diverting a restless population with external enemies,
popularized in "1984", is actually an ancient technique used by
failing dictatorships.
Hmmm... which seems to be what is going on in this country now,
come to think of it.
The US overtook the richest countries in the world duing the
time when the income and wealth of the working class grew, and
the gap between the rich and middle class narrowed. Today this
country is going downhill as the middle class sinks and the rich
take it all. Continued long enough and the US will become a
third world country.
What's worse it, that won't even hurt the 1%, and especially not
the .1%. Not until they discover class warfare is not raising
their taxes, but standing them against the wall. As some members
of the "Patriotic Millionaires" have already pointed out.
BOB KLAHN
bob.klahn@bex.net http://home.toltbbs.com/bobklahn
... Hire an expert so you can go wrong with confidence!
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