Jerry, allowing wide lattitude for personal opinion, which God knows, I have plenty of, I'd challenge your fact. The politicians are pikers. The banks and very large businesses are our real enemies -- or not enemies, but things over which we'd have no control without government. And they're doing a piss poor job. Since the deregulation by conservative elected officials, I've lost more money from standard, minimum risk investments (like the S&P 500 index fund) than ever before.
You talk about a loss of manufacturing -- another factor is since the rich can make money by just dealing with money -- which is fast, no need to actually make anything -- why bother making anything. Esp. since the greater risks are covered by the government. Edit: It is probably true that we cannot now let the large banks fail. But who let them get that big? Clue: Ronald Regan's administration & that congress, whatever their personal philosophies. Clue 2: nobody's had the balls to break them up, including Obama.
There is no perfect, quick fix. If there were, either the conservatives or the liberals would have fixed things long ago, when one or the other was in power. It is a delicate balance, and we're depending on the pendulum never swinging too far in either direction, because it ALWAYS overshoots.
For example, I imagine Joe Salt is down on the unions just now. But ask him where he'd be if they had never played a role? Like so many institutions, they addressed a problem, & just overshot. And by in large, it wasn't the workers, it was the bureaucratic structure of the unions that (1) felt they had to justify their position, and (2) got a bit greedy. In my somewhat less than humble opinion, good government tries to get at & limit this overshooting a bit quicker. Right now, our dysfunctional government -- AND ESPECIALLY THE FAR RIGHT -- our elected officials -- are just trying for personal satisfaction, not trying to fix any problems. The old notion that one person's greed counteracts the others assumes a certain leveling of the playing field, and we're losing it.
Edit:
In other words, I'm a Teddy Roosevelt progressive. The world changes, you cannot stop it, you cannot roll it back, all you can do is adjust to the new situation. That applies to government and its role as well as to personal attitude. Go look at the time of the robber barons if you think government should have no limiting power. Assume you would not be one of the rich 1 percent. They tell you you could be, but make sure you won't. Now look at how the other 99 percent -- us -- had to live. (Even this example doesn't work, because then we had the family farm...)
