[sourcery]

Labor unions, protectionism, and socialism, with the resultant unjustified increases in costs and taxes are the reason we are in the shape we are in. Re-embracing them won't solve the problem.

I know that. You know that. Many of the politicians and policy wonks know that. But it won't make any difference, in the end. The demagogues will succeed in inflaming public opinion against free trade. Free trade will become the scapegoat for the bad economy and high unemployment. Protectionism will follows as naturally as night follows day.

[Mind-numbed Robot]

I understand your point but I think their day has passed. The left is in its death throes. They no longer have a monopoly on the news nor do they control Congress and the Presidency. Conservatism is on the rise and we are not as sensitive to the left's tactics. Labor unions, trial lawyers, Democrats, and other leftists parasites are all recognized for what they are now. Their arguments have lost their emotional appeal and that is all they ever had. Logic was never on their side.

Neither of us can be sure but I am more optimistic.

[Mortimer Snavely]

"In a market economy the workers within a finite boundary of economic interaction must be paid enough to purchase goods that they produce or the system fails for lack of sufficient market to sell those goods. Extending the idea further, somewhere in the evolution of a finite healthy free enterprise market economy a close to optimum equilibrium of worker salaries develops, or should develop, based upon this principle."

From Economics 543