...*Crickets chirping*... I'm still waiting for that Article or Amendment of the Constitution that says protecting the employment of the US worker is the government's job. I'm ignoring your diversions until then.
Labor is what most consumers do to earn an income so they can buy things and put money into various investments...
Or, in other words, most consumers sell their labor on the open market to an employer in return for money. The employee is free to sell that labor to any employer which will hire him.
...they don't shake money trees.
Did I ever say they do?? Where did this come from?
Labor is also what companies use to produce goods and services.
Or, in other words, it is what companies buy from employees with money. The employee is free to terminate the arrangement at any time (i.e. quit) and the employer is free to hire whomever it chooses, yes?
NS
NS? I'm not sure what you're abbreviating here.
...now who makes the labor available at a lower cost and why?
Umm, let me hazard a guess or two here. Workers who want a job make their labor available at a cost that an employer is willing to pay. Why? Because he wants a paycheck.
This is a fun game. :-) Are there more questions like this?
So our government can ignore the factors that make Americans uncompetitive...
Again, explain why it's the government's job to make a worker more competitive? In an open market, isn't it the seller's job to make his product competitive? The seller (worker) is responsible for making his own product (labor) competitive.
...while exposing the US to global competition?
By "exposing the US to global competition" you mean "refusing to close our borders to all foreign trade", right? Competition is good. Isolationism doesn't work; it only drives up prices for everyone while reducing the choices available to consumers.
I'm all for "freeing" of markets...
No, you're not. You're "all for" government regulation of markets. It's usually called Fascism.
...but the gov can't free markets while leaving all the legacy US market conditions in place. They also have to recognize predatory practices by other governments that make competition impossible.
Where has competition been rendered "impossible" by international trade?
We need a more holistic view of "free trade" that incorporates changes in domestic policy in a way that is compatible with a global marketplace.
OK, that has to win some kind of award for its tiny to nonexistant signal-to-noise ratio. Did that sentence even say anything?
Right now it's just a corporate giveaway designed to build equity for those who have money to invest.
And your argument is that a business shouldn't have the right to share its profits with those who own it, right? After all, there are loads of poor people who "need" that money more than the ones who invested theirs to build the business in the first place, right?
Part of the problem with your reasoning is the blatant presumption that stock holders are all members of "the rich". The truth of the matter, if you would look at it, is that stock holders come from every economic level. Every worker at my place of employment, from the General Manager to the latest mechanic hired off the street, has a 401K account available. That employee can choose from a wide array of investment opportunities for his employer-matched contributions to be invested in. All those who own stock in a company are co-owners of it, entitled to a share of the success of that company equal to his or her ownership stake in it. If I owned half of a company (half of its stock) then I would rightly be entitled to half of that company's profits, wouldn't I? Am I a greedy monster because I expect the money I have loaned to various companies in the form of stocks to earn me some return? Do you loan your money to strangers with no expectation of interest? I sure don't.
If mom and pop can't get in the global game with the big boys we should consider that a big problem.
Why? Is it any different if you look only at the local scene? Can mom & pop compete with GM or Ford? Can they compete with Verizon? This is a silly standard.
I do have a sizable 401k and I shop at Walmart all day long. The market as it stands leaves me no choice but to take advantage of the efficiencies as they exist.
Sure! You have no choice, but those eeeeevil corporations would do just fine paying twice as much for labor as their competition does, right? The laws of economics are no different for a company than for a person: You can't afford not to buy the least expensive!
The poor bastards coming out of college will unfortunately have to deal with a "global market" without the years of career building I'm lucky to have.
Poor college graduate "bastards" will deal with a global market in just the same way they always have. The global market is not a new phenomenon. Foreign cars came, foreign electronics came, foreign-made clothing came... and we still have very low unemployment... and we have very low prices, which makes everyone's dollar buy more.
Competition is a GOOD thing, even in the labor market. Perhaps especially in the labor market!
Saying it's not in the constitution is disingenuous because I can identify all kinds of legislation that has no correlation with constitutional law. Until the Supremes challenge a piece of legislation it still remains on the books and enforced.
That's not to say that a market participant can't change his/her role from employee to employer or retrain/retool for a different market opportunity. The feasibility of that happening on a mass scale without a cost to other market participants is unlikely.
Our goal should not be to "free the market" it should be to optimize the market so that all participants can be successful and productive. In the vast majority of cases that means undoing the many things the government has done in the past. The problem is most of the free trade legislation flies through the senate while all the other important legislation that should be associated with it is held up indefinitely.
We should include health care reform, tax reform, tort reform, etc in with these FT agreements. Otherwise the deck will be stacked against American's because of our onerous government burden.
It is at very beginning:
For example "promote the general welfare" does not mean promoting the interest of the owners of capital only. General means for every group and every interest including workers. "Establishing justice" - does the word justice means anything to you?
People who approach economy only from the point of the employers/investors and relegate the rest into category of losers or "talking tools" promote the real class warfare where profits are good and wages are evil.