Question by S O: Is a “Free Market,” without any government interference, the best way to achieve a strong middle class?
If a Free Market is best at determining the value of labor, without any help from govt, then why hasn’t a middle class emerged yet in Somali…or in Haiti, where weak or absent governments with little or no regulations exist? Or why at no other time in history has a middle class emerged, except in well regulated markets?
Or is a strong middle class even a goal of those who always promote the idea of further and further deregulation, elimination of tariff’s and any sort of protectionism, and then claim we need a true “Free Market” to have a strong economy?
Best answer:
Answer by SCE2AUX
Yes, the economy would soar.
Give your answer to this question below!
It has worked! It has been proven…
Yes, but it has to police fraud and enforce contracts. Note the absence of both in Haiti and Somalia.
Nope a strong fusion of Socialism and Capitalism that focuses on small business is
Because Somalia and Haiti don’t have strong economies. An economy has to produce things of value in demand by consumers in order to progress. You can’t just have private companies, expect profits to roll in and expect everyone to benefit.
People in Haiti and Somalia are more concerned with getting bread on the table than they are with developing a strong middle class. They have to take things one step at a time.
We tried letting companies do as they pleased. They collapsed the economy.
yes.
Name a good thing coming from Cuba, North Korea.
It worked great in the United States in the 1820s and 1830s, didn’t it? Weren’t most people in the middle class at that time?
Hah!
Nope.
When there was no government interference, it gave rise to Unions, they self regulated.
Government regulations have almost made Unions obsolete.
But Obviously there needs to be some regulation.
An unregulated market means the warlords can get what they want without having to (always) resort to violence. They can simply cut out the middle man and pay a slave wage rather than have to go to all the trouble of robbing you blind for your money.
Which is why the unions started.
Read “Confessions of an Economic Hitman.” The reason that Haiti is dirt poor is because of loans the US government and other governments gave to them.
Anyone who advocates a totally free market marks themselves as a naive twit of the Libertarian ilk.
No person could ever run a legitimate business if they competed with crooks.
It is as simple as that.
“where weak or absent governments…..exist”
u answered it urself free market society dont want a weak government they want no government interference, maybe small gov but def not weak gov
a free market requires government oversight to break monopolies. this is quite to the core of capitalism, it’s in the wealth of nations.
without it companies can make competition impossible and then you don’t really have capitalism, you have the current system.
Nope. We need limited government intervention. How about all the oil companies collude and set the price of gasoline at $ 20/gallon. But for the most part I am with you. Government regulation and unions started because they were needed. Corporations will abuse workers if there are no controls on them. With that said unions and regulations have gone too far and they are bad for business and workers.
yes but gov should do only one thing – be a watchdog for white collar crime that hurts the free market, the middle-class. corruption ruins societies.
The notion of a Free Market is a misconception to begin with. Probably the only true example of a ‘free market’ would be the old barter system, i.e. you are a farmer who needs medical care, you trade eggs and milk to a doctor for the medical care. In our current economic and business environment a market itself would not even exist without rules and regulations imposed by either the participants of the market of by local, state, and/or federal authorities. The notion of a ‘Free Market’ is used as model constant in discussing and evaluating economic systems. In reality they do not and could not actually exist.
It’s too much interference. You need a govt for copyrights, weights & measures, monetary system etc.
Haiti is anarchy.
Government is responsible for oversight and social justice, which greed-driven corporations might consider to be “interference” and which corporate-favoring Republicans might dispute, since they keep beating us over the head with their Grover Norquist calls for “smaller government” (code for “no oversight”, “no regulations”, and “no consumer protections”). Lack of regulation is largely to blame for the housing market/credit market “bubble” and subsequent burst that could have been dealt with as early as 2004, which is when National Public Radio first began warning about potential problems. This same GOP-induced lack of regulation allowed major oil companies to run amok from early 2005 through the Hurricane Katrina period when false claims were made to the American people about damages to refineries that took prices (despite a GLUT of supply) to more than $ 5/gallon, bankrupting families forced to max out credit just to get to and from work, devastating states dependent upon tourist travels for revenue (like California), driving prices for local goods higher because shipping costs rose, causing businesses to lay off or work shorter hours which decreased money being spent by consumers, and all of this leading up to the defaulting on mortgages, which precipitated the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac overleveraged COLLAPSE that had been five years in the making—a collapse closely tied to the subsequent financial system meltdown (“Frontline: Inside the Meltdown”–video) that was also tied closely to GOP-led deregulation and elimination of oversight. Long-time Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, a Republican who had been in favor of the “less government” deregulatory approach to “free market”, testified before a Senate committee in early 2009 that: “I was WRONG to believe that they [banks, Wall Street, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac] could or even would self-regulate.” Mea culpa.
Socialism by itself can produce stagnation, just as capitalism (free market) without restraint produces bottomless-pit greed that leads to the types of destruction we’ve experienced three times now in gradually increasing severities under three Republican regimes: Reagan/Bush, Bush/Quayle, and Bush/Cheney. The savings and loans collapse should have been a warning shot for “supply-side” (Reaganomics or “voodoo” economics) supporters, as should have been the loss of our manufacturing base, our middle class, and the rising numbers of homeless and poor for both the Reagan/Bush and Bush/Quayle presidencies, but no…the Bush/Cheney and the Republican-controlled “less government” Republican right-wingers’ team had to drive the lesson home by producing the absolute WORST “recession” (I think Depression) since the Great Depression of 1929 that lasted until 1938. Even though the housing/credit collapse and subsequent financial meltdown occurred VISIBLY in late 2007 and through 2008, culminating in the second half of 2008, the problems had been building for almost six years because of the widespread deregulation as a “cause celebre” for the Republican party—favored strongly, of course, by the corporations who would no longer be regulated by government and would not have to be focused on consumer protections (for-profit insurance companies, for example, in addition to those involved in the tumble).
“Free” market is profit driven, which has historically proven very COSTLY to our middle-class workers thanks to outsourcing or hiring of illegal immigrants. If keeping low overhead is part of the profit, how can anyone reasonably think that executives would fairly determine “value of labor”? We had a very strong middle-class under President Bill Clinton’s leadership, and my parents were middle-class under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. I don’t know enough about Nixon’s economic policies to assess them from the standpoint of your arguments presented, but I do know that beginning with Reagan/Bush, a war on our middle-class began as less and less regulations were in place and greed became the norm. Bill Clinton was able to rebuild middle-class jobs, creating 2.2 million new jobs during his eight-year term and leaving office with a surplus (Flynt, 2004; Rossi, 2005) which was squandered in the first few months under Bush/Cheney to the point that his Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill quit in disgust (Suskind, 2004).
no, but it is a good formula for putting 98% of the wealth into the hands of 2% of the population.
Look for ‘Somalia’
http://fringeelements.ning.com/page/the-wall
I thought you might be interested, based on how much of an inquirer you are.
(sarcasm)