It is taking a while to digest all that is going on in this country right now. Slowly, I would say, the picture is beginning to clear up a bit. Transitioning from a mostly agricultural economy to one based on manufacturing was a difficult but economically prosperous endeavor for the last 60 or 70 years. Still, looking around our country in the midst of an economic crisis, I see plenty of evidence of a comparatively rich society. None in history has accomplished what we have and I would suggest it was, at its heart, due to our Constitutional freedoms. Having said that, our current predicament, (jeepers, I took 3 shots at that spelling and missed all three times), would seem to be a result of our freedom to be greedy. Let me explain a bit. What if there is a challenge to our company's position from another company offering a similar product at a lower cost thereby impacting our company's bottom line. We are fine with a tariff, or new regulation which will put our company, and our personal fortunes, back in front. In other words, we are ok with the million people who buy our widget paying more for it as long as I don't lose my job. Never mind the inherent unfairness of the situation, or the ultimate dis-incentive provided by such action to future businesses. We kept our job and that's what's important. Do we really believe that bailing out GM was a wise move? There are no more cars being built today than if GM had been allowed to fail. The only difference is that the people buying the cars now have the added financial burden of propping up a proven failure, GM. I suppose we will also end up paying all of their health care and retirement costs as well. Where does it stop? The company I worked for for 23 years went through quite a transition over its life. Originally it needed experienced electronics troubleshooters to repair the avionics equipment that they serviced. As time went on, the prevailing method of repair was to replace whole circuit boards which had become fairly cheap with all the advances in circuit board design and manufacture. The company was now in a predicament with a highly skilled, well-paid workforce that was competing with younger companies who could hire less skilled workers for less money and provide a similar level of service to its customers. While this is unfortunate, it is, in fact, capitalism. Bailing out such a company only artificially sustains a segment of the workforce, while burdening the rest of it. It is not, at all, an example of a "Free Market" but rather an example of an artificially skewed market. That is what we have here in the United States now as government has become more and more involved in business. We are destroying the most remarkable system ever encountered in this world and we are inhibiting its ability to adjust and respond to challenges. We are loading its backpack up with more and more rocks as it tries to compete on a global scale. We are prolonging an unsustainable illusion while destroying our ability to excel in the future. We are, in fact, guaranteeing a mediocre future, rather than offering ourselves the chance to continue with our truly exceptional economic system.
