I like the quote from Alexander Hamilton very much.
I see the government having a very positive role for businesses and business's sake, even though some in the business world would balk at such a notion.
I think it is a question of national security to have a domestic manufacturing base, and to have a population that can actually afford to have it. We can make it possible through the use of government to have a clean and fair compensating industrial base in this country, even if our business folks would rather have the quick buck from environmentally destabilizing industrialization and unfair worker treatment.
I don't think this should be centrally planned, as was the disastrous case in the Soviet Union or Maoist China. Only guided gently through the use of subsidies, regulation (which can include deregulation as well) and other measures to set the conditions in which the free market may emerge. Otherwise, you're just going on the personal whims of the business folks. And, as we saw in the Bush/Republican years, the results of this are frequently detrimental to the rest of society, and therefore, detrimental to the individuals in question who are perpetuating it.
It's a nice ideal from Mr. Jefferson.
But it doesn't work like that in practice. Even government deregulation is only a choice made by the government.
QED, the free market as we know it does not exist when it actually comes down to the wire. Deregulation is just another set of conditions set by government policy. And the effects of this deregulation, as defined by the Republican Party, are frequently counteractive to supportable and sustainable economic growth, environmental well being and individual prosperity for everybody (not just for the elites), which then translates into prosperity for the elites as a result of the increased economic activity of the lower and middle classes.
This bifurcated system that our leaders have produced for us is unsustainable, especially in the context of the American political system and the American political culture.
And, it's only a matter of time before it collapses around itself, as all small minded minority governments have done throughout time and space.
Don't believe me?
https://docs.google.com/
Think about it.
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