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Balance is good in our ecology and in our economy.
The stock markets were the last holdout in our hollowed out
economy. But the markets in the U.S., Europe and Asia - even
Shanghai - got crushed back to reality. Yesterday was a bad day.
The Wal-Mart/import
pushers have been telling us
that keeping prices low is good despite job loss. Never mind that
the $2,500 per year Wal-Mart claims to save us cannot begin to compensate for the job losses and low wages their model causes.
The nice thing about having a good job is that the stock market
does not kill your household. You just keep drawing a
paycheck. If your job is good enough to allow you to put money
away for retirement regularly, a high stock market means that your
holdings appreciate, while a low stock market means that you can buy at
good prices. But the paycheck is your lifeline, your family's stability.
Our economy used to be balanced, relying upon many
sectors. Now, we have upon jobs increases in government,
health care and relatively low wage service jobs. The high-tech
jobs the free trade pushers told us were coming primarily are in other
countries. Housing and construction held us up for a while,
through the Fed's low interest policies and the subprime mortgage teaser rate fiasco, but that turned out to be a
bubble.
Government,
health care and low-end service jobs cannot sustain us. Its not
monoculture, but it is not multifaceted ecological balance. We're going
nowhere even faster than before. We need
production of food and goods of all types for balance.
Trade
policy is the lever. Lets use it.
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