a couple great ideas

I have always thought free trade was the way to go. In theory everybody wins. Well not exactly. Workers in industries that are underpriced by industries in other countries, lose their jobs. Theoretically they can simply get jobs in industries that their country is better at doing. Theoretically. Consumers certainly win in that they can now buy cheaper goods. I guess that should be a spur to the economy because now they have more money to spend and will buy more goods. But now my head is in the dizzying heights of economics and I am dizzy.

It’s been good for the US. If all our states had tariffs against each other that would be a mess. That was the idea behind the common market which was doing very well until it ran into trouble with freeloaders like Greece, and now it seems to be rocked by this Russian thing though they would have been equally rocked if there were no common market at all.

The idea with China was that they would be buying all these goods from us, but that hasn’t happened, partly because they are penny pinchers to our American spendthrifts, and then there is all this talk about how they are cheating on the deal.

Which all gets me to thinking. What if, out of sheer love of country and their fellow man, Americans tried to buy American goods even though it would cost more? And what if employers got together to pay a living wage, just because it was the right thing to do? And customers, many of them now being paid a living wage, would go to the living wage stores and not mind that it would cost them extra because now they are making more?

Oh I suppose the price of our exports would soar and we wouldn’t be selling much abroad and we would become a nation of folks taking in each others laundry, and I am told that never works.

Speaking of things that never work, those one percenters have plenty of dough, but it has to worry them the country is shambling under this huge national debt. What if they contributed their money bags to bringing down the national debt? I’m not sure how the math would come out, but surely they could put a big dent in it without having to mortgage any of their mansions or yachts, and then since the government would no longer have to pay that onerous interest the economy would soar and they would make most of it all back. Wouldn’t that be great? But maybe not. Most of their money is not in mansions and yachts, but in stocks and bonds, and if they sold them wouldn’t the stock market sink like a stone?

I think it turned out that the Yazidis weren’t so bad off and the Kurds were able to evacuate, so I think, as of this morning, we have no boots on the ground. But now this is at least the second time it has been contemplated and there has been no uproar, so I think it is just a matter of time.

Those daffy Scotsmen. I have long maintained that people would rather be oppressed by their own people than by some other country, and it now appears that people would rather not be oppressed by their own people than to not be oppressed by some other country.