When I still had my company, I thought about that a lot about what would it take to get the economy back to what it was 40 years ago. One must remember first that it took 170 years to get it to its full flower, and once it got disemboweled it can’t be re-built in any short time at all.
My best guess is that it will need small USA companies need to deal with other small USA companies as much as possible and keep doing it. The big boys are all about $0.12/hr Chinese labor vs $18.00/hr US labor. And trust me, the biggest expense for any company BY FAR is labor costs.
Even just with the small companies in the U.S. they constitute a very large market – still one of the largest economies in the world.
There have to be two economies – one for the big corporations and one for the small businesses. Like their own Chamber of Commerce the small manufacturers need to pull together and help each other, and become – like Adam Smith called it – ‘the domestic society.’
The Republicans like to drag out Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand,” as the guiding principle behind their greed. Here it is, the part they quote extensively:
…he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.
In other words, by trying to make himself as profitable as possible, the supposedly selfish and greedy person is actually doing his society a great favor – even though the society isn’t part of his thinking. Continue reading
Feet2TheFire and his bloggie thingie 