Hey, I would be happy to see the guy down the street get ahead too. But I am not going to support policies which, in the long run, let me do so at the expense of the poorer countries in the world.

Do you believe in Equal Opportunity? Do you retrict that notion to just the US? Why, because of some tribe concept you have in your head?

But the American middle class doesn't live in the third world. They live, pay mortgages taxes and stuff here at US rates.

And why are those expenses so high? Because Americans demand so much in terms of pay. The cost of labor is ultimately just turned right back around by the corporations and passed on to their consumers. It is a vicious circle.

Prices go up, people need and demand more to maintain their standard of living, costs to corporations rise, which in turn drives prices up. This is the basic cause of inflation.

The cycle can run backwards too, though. Corporations outsource jobs to cheap labor, costs decrease, competition forces the savings to be passed back to the consumers, cost of living drops, so consumers can get by on less.

The world is just at a point in time where we are observing the latter case due to the cheap labor in other countries coupled with the globalization of the economy.

Why are CEOs making 440 time their average workers? Because they can demand, AND receive, that much for their services. CEOs are a commodity too. They sell their expertise just as much as the brick layer or the painter does. They both demand as much as the market will bear. Demand too much, and you get undercut by cheap labor.

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I favor a minimum of regulation on the market, but I certainly favor anti-trust laws. I believe that true competition is a critical ingredient to making a capitalist syste, work. Monopolies, obviously, work against the benefits incurred through competition.

I also have no problem with these things: wage discrimination laws and pollution regulations and safety requirements.

Social security is another matter altogether, but since it is here now I don't think that there is any way to put it back in the bottle.

Overtime regulations? I guess that those are OK too, especially for certain industries where alertness is a key requirement.

Minimum wage laws? They are evil and should be abolished. Let the market set the price. Artificial barriers always lead to inefficiencies within the system, and thus they are always a source of higher than needed costs and prices.

I appreciate your perspective on all this, which I think is brilliant in its simplicity.

If I could I would hire you to be THE go to guy, lobbyist to speak for the interests of the American people!

The equalization of standards of living that I am referring to is NOT a consciously thought out and intended program or policy. It is merely a natural outcome of the free market for labor coupled with the globalization of that market.

Why don't we just sell them guns so they can overthrow their inefficient governments?

 Give me a break!

Look I know that Walmart doesn't have a spotless record and everything, but let's get a little perspective here-- they have about 2 million employees. Find me a city with 2 million people that doesn't have crime, pollution, corruption, etc.

Furthermore, they are a discount retailer.  The margins are tight, and the jobs are low pay and low benefit-- but you go around the corner to Dollar General or Dollar Tree or Aldi's or Odd Lots or other discounters, you'll find the same low wage, low benefit jobs.  It ain't Nordstroms or Nieman Marcus we're talking about here.

Walmart is just the biggest, and therefore the biggest target.  

In Walmart's defense, it paid over 6 billion in income tax to the federal government last year.  It provided almost 2 million workers with income, maybe not as much income as one would like, but better than zero.  And you can buy stuff there for cheap prices without showing a friggin club card!  When I'm on the road, I'll get food etc. at a Walmart rather than some regional grocery store for this fact alone. 

[prepares to be bombarded with anti-Walmart links] 

I myself don't approve of many actions of the Coca~Cola company and yet I have this very second a sprite bottle on my desk. Why? Is it a vote on my part that the coke company is providing a positive impact?

Of course not. Rather it's that the vending machines at work carry exclusively coke products and I haven;t been able to break my sugar addiction. Good reasons? No. But real reasons.

So individuals have no role in policing business by making socially conscious choices as consumers-- it's all up to government?  Bull sh#t.  People should take at least a modicum of responsibility for the social impact of their purchases.  It doesn't have to be obsessive-- a little bit goes a long way in this regard.  So go ahead and have the Sprite, but if you really have real objections to Coca Cola, maybe you could have hit the water fountain.

That's because we are talking about priveleges and not rights.

Absolutely false.

Why exactly should I spend my time reading a long discredited thesis?

Because, of course, it has not been "discredited!" I'd say that some of the ideas falsely attributed to it are shaky. But it is one of the foundational tomes of liberalism.

Democracy is a process of imposing government on people by forming a consensus.

I've never been a fan of Stalinism. Our democracy, on the other hand, was specifically set up to limit the federal; government and protect the people from it.

What it has to do with is the market self regulating.<

Maybe you should go read that again.

I'm not surprised that you're naive enough to think that buying a product indicates a vote of confidence on the part of the consumer. In the real world (where the invisible hand argument doesn't work) we know that people often buy products from companies they don't like and even more often buy products from companies they don't know anything about.

I'm not a big fan of the intentionally idiotic. The vote is for the product, aand, as such, is only that. It makes no moral judgment about the moral rectitude of the third assistant laghe operator at the Simpsonburg plant. And for those who can think, rather than merely parrot what others say (say, like saying a boo=k =is refuted without reading it!), one would realistically say that such a vote may be the product of several decisions, and makes not claim that the product is the best possible. Geesh!

I myself don't approve of many actions of the Coca~Cola company and yet I have this very second a sprite bottle on my desk. Why? Is it a vote on my part that the coke company is providing a positive impact?

Geesh! See above. If you want to choose products on research that tells you which companies have a positive impact on some collective noun outside that of their product for the people who buy themn, you are free to make your purchase decisions accordingly. What you prefer would take that away!

Rather it's that the vending machines at work carry exclusively coke products and I haven;t been able to break my sugar addiction. Good reasons? No. But real reasons.

And your reasons. You could easily8 avoid using that vending machine, and you could break your sugar habit. In fact, I bet water is available. And I bet you don't drink it because the evil corporate powers have put chemicals in it that cause you to bbuy their products. (say)

Get off your elitist, non-thinking, dogmatic high horse, and don't make so many presumptions. I worked most of my life for the government in programs designed to help the most vulnerable of our fellow citizens. Poverty and mentql illness, and crime, none are the kinds of thengs that can be subsumed under abstract nouns to me. Instead, they are real, and they are real in people whose names I knopw, with whom I actually interact.

When you stop parroting what you/ve heard, and start at least paying attention to what I actually say, let me know.

Stop assuming. Check things out.