“The whole strategy of Ricardo’s volumes is to keep the discussion focused on fringe details such as comparative advantage, and away from the underlying basis. That basis is that the producers of wealth have to be reduced to “bare subsistance” lifestyles, while the corrupt politicians and market manipulators get filthy rich.”
You are the sort of person who reads every third sentence of an economics text and thinks they understand, aren’t you? Where’d you learn this about Ricardo, from the Communist Party? For a look at what the classical economists actually said, I suggest you read Thomas Sowell’s “Classical Economics Reconsidered,” or “On Classical Economics.”
As for “substinence wages,” what Ricardo and the other economists of the 18th and 19th centuries meant (and this includes Marx) was that wages of the unskilled laborers would always be at some culturally-defined “substinence level,” which would provide him with the necessities of life and an ever-growing list of luxuries that culture considered standard or close-to-necessary.
The classical economists (and not even Marx) did not predict that wages would stay at a level that would just barely keep workers fed, as is commonly depicted.
I think you’ll find that Ricardo, Smith, and other classical economists despised market manipulators and corrupt politicians.
“This perverted form of capitalism didn’t even work back in the 1800’s, when the vast majority of labor needs was for unskilled manual labor.”
In what way is this a “perverted” form of “capitalism”? Capitalism is a term coined by Marx. And in what way did the markets at the time not work? Standard of living grew by leaps and bounds throughout the 1800s, 1900s, and today.
“It definitely does not work in the information age when 70% of economic activity is driven by consumer spending. The economic situation in the USA today is living proof of its failure.”
Define what “it” is in this sentence.
Suffice it to say global trade has been running along fairly inimpeded for the past two decades, and the economies of the various affected nations are either already collapsed or close to it.
I don't have to know what your background experience and education is to recognize the same Free Traitor talking points that show up every time some jackleg reads a few Cato web pages and a couple of essays on economics.
Welcome to Free Republic.