<I'd buy the car if I drove it.

I'll bet. Every Marxist I've ever met or heard of agrees with you. If only they were the Fearless Leader, everything under communism would work. "This time for sure, Rocky!" Not true, of course.

And if there wasn't the ability to refine the high-grade fuel the other engines take.

Okay, now we've stretched the analogy out of shape. I don't even get this.

The problem with unrestrained capitalism is this, as seen by Thomas Jefferson and understood by many, many other people. The folks who support the inheritance tax get it.

“Widespread poverty and concentrated wealth cannot long endure side by side in a democracy.” (Jefferson)

If that statement is true, unrestrained capitalism is not compatible with democracy.

Oddly, although this quote shows up in a number of pro-leftist sites, I have been unable to find it in extensive online collections of Jeffersonian quotes. Didn't notice Jefferson giving all his money away either. Well, be that as it may.

The lie that has been told for years by the left is that if a true free market ever came about, it would immediately gravitate to a bunch of rich people at one end and a bunch of poor people at the other.

The truth is, a laizzes-faire free market system works against monopolies and concentration of wealth. In our past history, the way wealth was concentrated and monopolies maintained, was by the wealthy using the power of government to interfere in the economy. I could go over this case-by-case, but if you were to look at any large concentration of coercive power in the private sector, I would bet good money that a government monkey-wrench was involved somewhere. This is either done directly, by legislation that suppresses competition or grants special favors, or by omission, like the refusal to prosecute criminal actions by companies using force on their own to suppress competition.

Given our current mixed economy, where the government has its fingers in almost every private enterprise, maybe taxes are required to even things out. This is disgusting, like routinely drowning puppies instead of just having the family dog spayed.

And why are leftists never concerned about massive concentration of power and wealth in the hands of government? I've never heard one complain about the government having too much money in too few hands.

There are examples. South Africa had a choice. Either start distributing the wealth, or give up democracy. Many African states start out fairly well, the wealth gets concentrated, and it's over.

Africa is a bad example. South Africa had the ultimate in government interference: apartheid, which prevented an entire sector of the population from competing at all, much less on an even scale. Certainly not a true free market, at least for the black population. Most other African nations concentrate wealth into the hands of dictators, which is not quite the same thing as Bill Gates getting rich.

To be healthy a democracy needs a middle class, one with capitalistic shopkeepers, middle-class skilled workers, and the opportunity for everyone to aspire to those areas.

So, how successful do you get to be before you get your head cut off? When the shopkeeper has two stores? Four? And who gets to decide? You?

The Wal-Marts of the world are making the smaller businessman obsolete, a well-financed anti-union propaganda campaign has limited the economic growth of skilled, hands-on workers, and exporting jobs which take education and intellect but do not manipulate material are taking out the middle class.

Wal-Mart is successful because your blessed middle class prefers to shop there. No one is beating up customers who go to Pop's Five and Dime, and no one is throwing Molotov cocktails through Pop's window. I could make a case that Wal-Mart and their legion of lawyers have a much easier time dealing with massive government regulation than Pop and his wife do, which makes it kind of hard for Pop to stay in business, but that's another story.

Unions are fading because they aren't needed as much any more. Not sure about your line on exporting jobs...are you sure you didn't reverse this sentence?

On exporting jobs: there is a real problem here. It used to be when the world was larger, barriers higher, and other nations were sunk in the grinding poverty of agrarianism, that an American blue-collar worker--maybe not even all that literate--could get a good job turning a bolt for 8 hours on an assembly line and make enough money for a decent home, a car, and a family. Middle class. When I was young, kids in high school went on either the college track or the vocational school track. There was no particular stigma attached to the latter, and they went on to earn comfortable livings.

Then the world got smaller, and the hard fact emerged that there were one HELL of a lot of people overseas who were more than capable of turning a bolt, would do it for far less money than an American worker, and would LIKE it, since it would still be a huge step upwards for him from his original job of following an ox around a field from sunrise to sunset.

The blue collar American is not as common as he was. It is no longer easy for a person of limited skills to earn a good living. A college education has become a must for almost all areas of employment.

Yet because of overseas labor, products are much cheaper and more plentiful for the rest of Americans, including the remaining blue collar workers. In addition, workers overseas--who also want houses and cars and families--are finally getting out of agrarian poverty.

No one has a good answer to this situation. My free-market side says this is part of the larger creative destruction of an evolving economy that is expanding worldwide. My conservative side says that the blue-collar guys were the salt of the earth, and an important bulwark against the radicals and other looneys that seem to be taking over the political scene. There is a lot more to think about on this subject.

Building and filling jails and funnelling money from the middle class to the wealthy are two great ways to ensure both widespread poverty and to concentrate wealth. That's a no-brainer, though I'm sure that some folks will deny it, with no more logic than they don't WANT to believe it.

A surprising number of people in jail are there because they are crooks.

I don't recall one blessed nickel of mine that was taken without my consent and given to a wealthy person, unless you count my tax money going to Archer Daniels Midland and the like.

Communistic countries seem to be the backward places which need central control to develop, and then get hijacked by the egos of the central authority. Let's see what happens to China as she evolves.



And, by the way, when one talks about the brutalities, the killing, which seems to accompany emerging economies, please include the story of original residents of the US. They were human, too.



I don't know. Maybe they were just "backward" and needed "central control" to develop.