Quote:
Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
No its not. And the current administration is not helping me. It saves me a few grand a year, but as you well know, a few thousand bucks isn't anything.
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Um, "a few thousand bucks [a year] isn't anything"? QED, Richie Rich. Sure, you ain't in Gatesian territory, but who is?
Quote:
Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
This is a matter of simple economic reality being unchangeable. You're thinking like a 70s liberal.
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And you sound like my Marxist Uncle Bill, talking about the unchanging laws of historical determinism. The laws of economics, like those of history, only work in theory. Reality has a funny way of intruding. Just ask the quants, if you can find any of them still willing to call themselves that.
Quote:
Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
The global marketplace is unforgiving, and no daddy state can fight it for those of us savaged by it. Until the cost of labor abroad meets its domestic cost domestic laborers are fucked. We can do what we can for them with social safety nets, but tariffs are regressive and do much more damage than help.
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You are both missing my point and making it for me. We currently don't "do what we can" for the working class harmed by globalization. And Lou Dobbs, Pat Buchanan, and the AFL-CIO may well convince enough voters that the daddy state *can* do something about it, and they will be right -- the US can opt out of the global market. Will it make things worse overall? Almost certainly. But the currently unemployed textile worker in South Carolina probably won't think so. A job in a struggling economy is better than no job in a booming one. It doesn't matter that cheap goods are readily available at WalMart if you don't have any income.
You can have the last word.
