Dialog on FaceBook about government: Should government become the employer of first choice in solving the unemployment problem?

• I wrote:

 

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  Alan L. Maki

  An interesting presentation by Bill Moyers that is well worth watching... I find it interesting that Moyers is still stuck on the idea that private industry and small business should still be looked upon as the creators of jobs when only government can create the large number of jobs required to put all the unemployed to work:http://blip.tv/file/4370057

  

  Bill Moyers - Shades of Howard Zinn: It's Okay If It's Impossible | ZGraphix

  blip.tv

  The first Howard Zinn Memorial Lecture is delivered by veteran journalist, Bill Moyers: Shades of Howard Zinn: It's Okay If It's Impossible Citing Zinn as his i ...

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• A response: Alan, your comment belies the fine line between progressive and fascist. If the only employers are Global Corporations and the Government - that's Mussolini Fascism in action!

 

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  Alan L. Maki

  ‎@Michael; I don't understand where you get this "fine line" from; please explain further.
  In fact, small business is destroyed by big business... its kind of like the big fish eating the small fish. If private industry--- big or small--- could solve the problem of unemployment, why have we had millions of people unemployed at any given time in this country even during capitalism's "boom" cycles?
  Private industry--- big and small--- exist for but one sole purpose: to make profits.
  We for sure don't need these greedy profit driven hands of private industry--- big or small business--- in health care and for sure not in child care. So, let's move forward in solving both this health care mess and the lack of affordable and safe child care with government programs that would create massive public systems employing--- together--- some 15,000,000 workers financed with money cut from military spending and wars and taxing the rich?
  Actually, I think you will find most Americans so eager to move forward in this direction they are more than happy to fund both a public health care system and a public child care system in the very same way Social Security is presently funded... I kind of doubt they would go for funding along the lines of the way we finance our public schools... but, the public schools do serve us well... no one would suggest that the "free market" should be relied upon to teach our kids to read and write so why would we trust the "free market" capitalist system to provide us with health care or child care... and we certainly wouldn't have wanted to see Social Security to have gone the way of 401-K's.
  By the way... single-payer universal health care would produce about three million new jobs; a national public health care system would cost less, provide around ten-million jobs and provide us all with free health care... I don't see any "fine line" here between "progressive and fascist." We are talking progressive all the way!
  Furthermore, the role of government is not to protect the continued existence of any "small businesses;" according to all economists claiming to support small business, "the market" will do this very well... and swimming or sinking is all market driven--- just plain tough luck when a small business fails.