We're in rough shape. Both big corporations and big government are out of control and out of touch. We're all going to pay to bail out Bear Stearns and the bankrupt mega-corporations and their CEOs with their salaries in the hundreds of millions. Who's going to bail us out?
No economic theory justifies speculation as economic growth. Speculative bubbles inevitably burst.
Early on the US government adopted the laissez faire creed of Adam Smith, prophet of free enterprise--whose economic theory was itself speculative philosophy. But the government ignores Smith when it bails out speculators over and over again. They are always rewarded and never suffer the consequences of their greed.
Smith wrote that loans should never be made made to imprudent risk takers. He said that if speculators are able to use bank loans to leverage their debt, the savings of the nation will be wasted and destroyed. Smith wrote about speculation from experience. Several speculative manias devastated England, Holland and France in the 1700s.
Smith was disgusted by greed. His thought that greed would be checked by competition. We've been testing that theory for 232 years. It's been hard on farmers.
More than 90 percent of Americans worked the land in Adam Smith's times. Now it's less than 2 % and the average age of the farmer is 57 years old. Citizens who want to make a killing have always been given priority over those who just want to make a living. Farmers used to shoot bankers. Now they just quietly kill themselves. Somebody made a killing.
In Washington they think that farming is easy and natural and they'll just have farmers solve all our energy problems. City folks don't need to change their livestyle or conserve the resources.
In 1929, the last time the economy collapsed, almost half the people were still on the land. Except in the dust bowl, folks had the opportunity and skills to survive on their own.
Most people can't even cook their own food anymore, much less raise it. I know what my parents did to survive the Great Depression. I can't fathom how people will survive the next economic collapse.
No economic theory justifies speculation as economic growth. Speculative bubbles inevitably burst.
Early on the US government adopted the laissez faire creed of Adam Smith, prophet of free enterprise--whose economic theory was itself speculative philosophy. But the government ignores Smith when it bails out speculators over and over again. They are always rewarded and never suffer the consequences of their greed.
Smith wrote that loans should never be made made to imprudent risk takers. He said that if speculators are able to use bank loans to leverage their debt, the savings of the nation will be wasted and destroyed. Smith wrote about speculation from experience. Several speculative manias devastated England, Holland and France in the 1700s.
Smith was disgusted by greed. His thought that greed would be checked by competition. We've been testing that theory for 232 years. It's been hard on farmers.
More than 90 percent of Americans worked the land in Adam Smith's times. Now it's less than 2 % and the average age of the farmer is 57 years old. Citizens who want to make a killing have always been given priority over those who just want to make a living. Farmers used to shoot bankers. Now they just quietly kill themselves. Somebody made a killing.
In Washington they think that farming is easy and natural and they'll just have farmers solve all our energy problems. City folks don't need to change their livestyle or conserve the resources.
In 1929, the last time the economy collapsed, almost half the people were still on the land. Except in the dust bowl, folks had the opportunity and skills to survive on their own.
Most people can't even cook their own food anymore, much less raise it. I know what my parents did to survive the Great Depression. I can't fathom how people will survive the next economic collapse.