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The "Free Market" Scam

Submitted by Ken Watts on Thu, 08/23/2007 - 13:33

imageDavid Sirota, at the Working for Change Blog:

Just consider the bait-and-switch quality to all this. We are told that when there is a short supply of a good or service that is in demand, the market dictates that the price for that good or service rises (as just one example, we hear this justification all the time when it comes to the supply of oil and the price of gas). This results in higher profits for the corporations producing the good or service. But we are simultaneously told that if there is a short supply of labor that is in demand, the market should not raise the price (aka. wages) for that labor (which would, of course, lessen the wealth disparity in America). No, instead we are told that we should rig the labor market by flooding it with a supply of workers who will exist under a legal framework that makes them more easily exploitable than other workers (ie. they can't form unions to demand better wages/working conditions without fearing their employer will deport them).

This is the governing ethos of economic/globalization policymaking in Washington. Couple it with tax policies that target most of their rewards to the handful of Gordon Gekkos who run Wall Street, and what you have is a pretty open, pretty vicious economic war being waged on America's middle class.

Check out the entire article here.

This is a fundamental issue, which I've addressed before (and so have others, with more authority).  It should be very near the top of any list of political concerns in this country.