Conservatives dont lie countries into war for profit.
Conseravtives dont cut taxes and start wars.
Conservatives dont allow mortgage companies to get away with massive fraud and irresponsible lending.
Conservatives dont allow international banks to destroy world economies.
Oh I forgot they do.

“From Henry Carey’s Harmony of Interests, 1851

Henry C. Carey, adviser to Abraham Lincoln, and perhaps the leading American System economist, wrote extensively exposing the failure of the British free trade approach and demonstrating the success of the American System.

“One looks to underworking the Hindoo, and sinking the rest of the world to his level; the other to raising the standard of man throughout the world to our level. One looks to pauperism, ignorance, depopulation, and barbarism; the other in increasing wealth, comfort, intelligence, combination of action, and civilization. One looks towards universal war; the other towards universal peace. One is the English system; the other we may be proud to call the American system, for it is the only one ever devised the tendency of which was that of elevating while equalizing the condition of man throughout the world. ” almanac.tripod.com/carey95.htmrey95.htm – Cached

Which system do you think we are living under?

Which system are conservatives for? I think I know and I dont like it.
Republicans created ZERO jobs the last decade..ZERO!! And the jobs we had were fueled by credit and low interest rates.The best ideas dont win…ask Henry Ford he planned to run his cars on ethonol and hemp..till oil companies took over.And you think microsoft is the best system?..Also we had the EVI1 electric car how many years ago?They killed it and planned to build it in china.Thats why they went bancrupt in the U.S.

So ask yourself how do we get to a place where monied interests dont monopolize great ideas and kill them.

shivasquest:
I sense your anger and frustration and share some of it. However, I’ll confine myself to two points you raise: Britain suppressing innovation and how do we get to a place where monied interest don’t monopolize great ideas and kill them.

The British Parliament, controlled by 1200 families from 1688 until about 1850, had a policy of controlling the spread of innovation and in controlling their “free markets”, which were actually but a tiny fraction of overall commerce. Corn laws (all grains) protected domestic markets from cheap imports, other laws protected finished goods and established monopolies in various industries. They deliberately set out to keep the North American Colonies agrarian, supplying Britain cheap food, cotton and tobacco in exchange for finished goods at rates controlled by Britain. They prevented the development of domestic banks in the colonies and any migration of technical people to the colonies. The spread of education, new forms of property (intellectual property in particular) and global trade enabled our revolution in 1776 and by 1850 broke their domestic stranglehold on membership in Parliament.

How do we prevent a return to oligarchical rule based on inherited wealth? or even worse then proceeding to Dictatorship based on inherited power? First, I think the last scenario is the default condition of all societies (look around the world and back into history), just as the default condition of a building is to eventually be a pile of rubble. The industrial revolution is a blip of organized activity that built the mental and physical infrastructure of our modern economic system. But we are drawn to that default condition by gravitylike forces, not by conspiracies….. which makes it all the more difficult to resist. The short answer is to effectively tax wealth sufficient to balance government budgets, rather than merely taxing income. That answer, without lots of systematic explanation will cause such emotional reactions as to be useless, but it is a very considered statement which I will explain in time.

A hint as to what I’m suggesting can be found by looking at the income tax rates from the 1930s until the early 1970s when the tax rate on incomes over $250,000 was around 90%. It didn’t tax wealth, but it severly slowed the flow of wealth into the hands of the top 0.01% (1 in 10,000) of our population, and it balanced government budgets after WWII. Of course, with time people learned how to game this system with tax loopholes, and later by focusing on how “unfair” a graduated income tax was and lower the taxes on the upper brackets. However, as the tax rates were lowered, it became ever more profitable for CEOs and other hired hands in businesses to fatten their paychecks and take money out. As tax rates went down, salaries and bonuses for executives skyrocketed from 3-4 times median incomes of employees to hundreds of times. (First, I would simply implement a 90% tax on all incomes over $3 million per year… whether salaries, bonuses or capital gains. No loopholes. This bandaid would stop the bleeding… the top 1 in 10,000 people in 2007 received over 6% of all incomes including salaries, bonuses and capital gains. At that rate it will only be a decade before this elite accumulates over 40% of all this nation’s private property!)

A second bandaid would be to re-institute and increase inheritance taxes… up to 70% on wealth over $10 million. I have little concern about those who “earn” wealth managing it, but to have the next generation manage it strictly on biological inheritance means that the average competence in managing wealth will drop, thereby further undermining the system as a whole.

The complete answer is too long for now, but this is just to provide a glimpse of a much larger problem and a much more comprehensive solution.

Ed Lee