"What was the selling price of our nation?"

If you are a right-wing conservative, then your “Holy Grail” is the free market system.  Any interference with, or regulation of, or taxation of the industrial complex and its banking and investment system will damage its God given efficiency.  “What is good for General Bullmoose, is good for the nation.” – Al Capp.  Even the dumbest wealthy person knows that this isn’t true.  But, the folks who make the rules have been bought.  A good example of “free market rule” is in today’s paper.  AT&T is in the process of buying DirectTV for $48.5 billion dollars.  Can you comprehend this sum of money?  I can’t.  If a billion dollars is one thousand million and a million is one thousand thousands, then what does forty-eight and a half of them look like?  I know what the basic thousand looks like, but my experience does not include the reality of a million, let alone a billion.  The problem here is not the price of purchase; it is what it says about the efficiency of the free market.  Competition is the theoretical driving force behind the free market.  Competition gives us product improvement, while striving for an advantage in price to the consumer.  Large corporations know that it is far more cost efficient to buy your competition, rather than compete against them.  Profit, not product or labor is its main consideration and it matters little where the product is produced.  So the merger generally raises your, the consumer’s, cost of goods and lowers your standard of living.

We are entering the final stages of the free market system.  The early stages were great.  Competition was a benefit to almost everyone.  It built our nation.  The wealthy gray haired men still have wonderful memories of it.  They have purchased a tax structure that is very favorable to them, chosen wars to stimulate the economy, set up a healthcare system that cares for health insurance companies over the patient and a graduate level of education that is only affordable by the wealthy.  The small business man has largely been replaced by the Walmart and Costco big boxes.  These stores have basically won the retail competition, with few staggering competitors like JC Penny’s, Sears and Target.  Walmart (with lower income shoppers) and Costco (with upper income shoppers) will probably prevail, but there is a new kid, Amazon and its ilk, that are about to make a run and will either be bought by the big guys, or buy them.  The challenge is to find an American made product, made by American labor, in any of these giant retailers.  If you do find an American made product, like Rubber Maid, the manufacturer has been contractually squeezed so tight by the retail behemoth that to keep their head above water, while paying the CEO an exorbitant wage, it requires punishing their labor force.

I want to clarify something in a recent blog.  The term “Koch-Suckers”, was not meant to imply that the brothers themselves are in any way suckers.  The millions of campaign dollars that they expend in elections around the nation are not spent foolishly.  They buy legislators with these dollars and the returns to investment, in the form of friendly legislation, pay them back many fold.  The investment in campaigns is out of love … love of money.  No, the “Koch-Suckers” term was meant for you folks that take their suggestions.

Comments are welcome, Old Buz