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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Simeon_Strangelight" data-source="post: 1314851" data-attributes="member: 6783">< Sure - I want as much trade as possible while maximum employment for my people is assured and key industries remain in the country - basic food production (Japan - rice import ban, meat export ban etc) or basic industries that should be made within. This however is not a given fact in the West. As for proven path - actually it was the unions, massive pressure from the grassroots, even basic welfare as well as the wars - that raised living standards. The laissez-faire capitalism was present for centuries in the West from 1700 to 1900 with little improvements in living standards - actually it got worse in many areas. It was enterpreneurs like Ford as well as grassroots protests which made it happen. Also many Western countries feared communist revolutions within and those parties were huge becuase of laissez-faire capitalism. I too was brainwashed into this thinking in college. The reality is that a balance has to be struck - a give and take and then once you struck that balance - you cannot outsource to slave-labor camps, then depend on the fired employees to pay for the same products. That won't work long-term. And that is what you see in the West getting broke while the wealth is syphoned off to China. I like entrepreneurship and I want people to make big bucks, but within a sane framework. I would even make it much easier to start businesses - incentives, no taxes first 2-3 years, easy access to capital etc. The current corporate-lobbyist system actually prevents that - one of the reason for the success of Switzerland and Bavaria is that they have local interest-free currencies like the WIR and others which give access to small companies for really massive start-up capital. Most people don't know this about the silent industrial power-base of those areas. They have plenty of industries left there.</blockquote>

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