Reply #83: I think the late J K Galbraith may have made a comment, very germane

[Joe Chi Minh]

to this situation we are in:

"In all modern depressions, recessions, or growth-correction, as variously they are called, we never miss the goods that are not produced. We miss only the opportunities for the labour - for the jobs - that are not provided." The priority of governments should be to staunch the hemorrhaging of jobs overseas, no less than the protection of jobs at home. Well, it's surely the rational priority.

If US job-protection is pursued and globalisation wholly repudiated, it will be another very important part of the jig-saw that needs to be completed. It would provide a fitting backdrop for the debt amnesty proposed by Rick Williams, and relayed to DU via a post of Joanne98. "All hands to the pump" should be the watch-word, in the sense that all such positive measures, working in concert, would create just the synergies needed to put the country back on an even keel.

However, I don't know if Obama realises the extent to which the corporatocracy needs to be brought under control and forced to pay its way via taxation and other means. Well, I think he knows, but is mindful of the power of the super rich and cautious. There really should be no role for tax lawyers, imo. If one large corporation doesn't want to invest in RD without a sweetener from government, another will. It's called "competition", I believe, though I'd hardly be a maven on the matter.

In short, jobs should come before the "twice shy" citizen will become a happy-go-lucky consumer again. Then incomes will need to be re-jigged to reflect a sane corporate distribution. It worked for Japan after WWII, though I doubt if adjustment of the ratio of the CEO to his lowest-paid worker could be as drastic as that, in the US or the UK. But should the economy turn apocalyptic through the obduracy of the Have-Yachts, who knows how it could turn out?