27 February 2011

Getting Back to Work

I was reading a blog posting by David Leonhardt about putting people back to work.

He made the point that the government is not really trying... I agree. I also think that placing some controls on the economic markets would be a great help.

There is a lot that the government, federal and state can do to help people get back to work. One of the major lessons of the post-World War II era was that education can give us a huge wave to ride. The GI Bill educated an entire generation. That generation, the so-called Greatest Generation, built the America of the 1950's and 60's. Education was the one of the largest contributors to the improvement of our economy.

There is no real effort to stop the Bank of England calls the "doom loop." Like a house that gets shaken by enough earthquakes, eventually it will fall and not get back up. What we need is some logical regulation of Wall Street. The Great Crash of 1929 was caused by Wall Street speculators and led to a real loss of wealth. The current rise in gas prices, that might cripple our recovery, is caused by speculators panicking. We need to stop the rampant speculation on necessities. Let Wall Street bet on Nascar or football. They need to stop betting on derivatives of  derivatives of imaginary markets.

Ayn Rand believed that free markets, truly free markets, would help make everyone richer. She didn't count on Bernie Madoff that same way the Bolsheviks didn't count on Stalin.

Our economy is on the upswing, things are getting better. Now is the time to stop the rabid gambling and thoughtless capitalism that got us into the situation that we are in now. A little logically placed controls run by someone other than the people who created these false markets might stop this destructive cycle.

Read more here: Economix

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