Quote Originally Posted by bobsticks
The endless list of "results" that we see bandied about in the media are but symptomatic of the fact that we've never really tried "free trade" or "free market capitalism". Let's dispell that myth right now. Our government has progressively allowed our position within the world market to grow by facilitating multinationals to view this country only from the demand-side.

We see this with the increasing debt, we see it with oil speculation, we certainly see it with agriculture...the entire concept of supply-and-demand has been abrogated in favor of oligarchy.
Allowing -- rather, encouraging -- consumer debt has the politicians and the Federal Reserve's method of sustaining the US economy under so much presure from global competion, automation, and, N.B., a strategy of concentrating wealth increasingly in the hands of the rich. The strategy presumes that the rich will repay us by investing in the domestic economy. This approach was/is variously know as "supply side" or "trickle down" economics.

The problem is that hasn't worked and won't worked because the rich haven't and won't invest in the domestic economic while there are so many more profitable options in the developing world -- the US is no longer preceived as compedative in the world economy.