Too Much Government? Yes!

Competition and free market forces are key to a healthy economy as long as there are safeguards to offset the pressures for the formation of monopolies. Monopolies earn above market profits by limiting the competitiveness of other firms in the market. How? Unfair competition, price fixing, patent trolling, and a host of other edges which business schools now call "barriers to competition". It is up to government is to be the fair referee. Americans understood that back when they busted up the trusts under Teddy, set up the FTC and SEC. Unfortunately those safeguards have seen their power eroded.

I too distrust big government and government regulation when deep pockets use the Federal Government to abet unfair competition and tap the tax payer pocket book to transfer wealth from the taxpayer to the campaign financeer. That's socialism too. Mostly corporate socialism.

Lobbying for industrial subsidies, undermining bargaining, allowing unfair licensing practices, making back room deals for access to resources, and the like have become the quid pro quo for campaign contributions which officials need to get elected.

Ike warned back in the 50's about the increasing control of the military-industrial complex. Since then we have seen each large industry copy that model to their enormous benefit. Large banks are the worst; they made the S&L crisis look like a hiccup. Big oil, big pharma, and health care insurers have all done it.

That horse is long, long out of the barn. The referee has been bought and paid for by the booster clubs. The results are clear: the top 1% has the field tilted in their favor, and the rest of society is slowing slipping downhill. If the CEO of public company blows it, he walks away with millions. If a group of banks lose trillions playing with government guaranteed money, they get bailed out because they are 'too big to fail." If industries improve their productivity, the benefits go entirely to the execs and are not shared with the wage earners. It goes on.

It's been a great short term ride for those at the top, but for the country as whole, our economy has become less and less healthy which has underminined our international competitiveness, destroyed our middle class, increased the ranks of the poor, and polarized our politics.