True.
I would add.
Capital wants the lowest possible labor costs coupled with the lest possible competition. This is why it goes to Taiwan for sweatshop labor costs, and why it goes to congress for regulatory control over most domestic markets. Research the number of cable/internet providers and how they have (with the help of congress) divided the nation mostly into fixed no-compete zones, allowing them to raise rates/decrease services without being disciplined by market competition. Real money comes from government protected monopolies.
Capital wants and gets a ton of free technological research and advanced industrial infrastructure. The 80s consumer electronics boom was heavily dependent upon the state sector (mostly Defense and NASA). Research the history of satellite and Internet technology or containerization or Aerospace, to name only a few industries. FDR and Reagan were masters of Military Keynesianism; both grew the economy and our technological superiority with the help of The Big Government Defense Sector.
[Most Republicans don't know the kind of subsidies say Boeing received. Nor do they understand how WWII manufacturing helped to end the depression; nor do they know how the aforementioned government-lead manufacturing was converted to the commercial boom that undergird the great postwar growth from 1945-1973.]
[Seriously, ask a republican to talk about the government-lead industrial output of WWII or the Cold War (including the number of jobs and spenders it put into the economy), and then ask how said output was converted to domestic commercial uses... and you will get a blank stare followed by simplistic cliches about the evils of government. These people are know-nothings who have never studied this stuff - never fucking read an actual policy paper. They get their information from pop media bafoons like Limbaugh, Hannity and Levin]
The carrying capacity of the Southwest, with all its thriving profit centers, wouldn't exist without the Hoover Dam and the multi-trillion dollar engineering of the Colorado tributary system, which no combination of corporations could have afforded in the 20s. Same goes for the nation's energy or overseas trade routes, which require a massive military (government) effort across multiple continents.
The reason why large corporations build massive offices in Washington DC is precisely because so much profit making is parasitic on the public dollar.
And when those large corporations place massive bets they can't cover, like AIG and their corrupt derivative insurance scam, who do you think bails them out so that the global market doesn't tank?
Listen, my family owned a successful small business across several generations. I support a system that provides incentives to the productive, one that doesn't reward laziness. This is second grade stuff.
I also think price controls are fucking moronic because they not only fail to create appropriate incentives for suppliers but no central planner could ever have enough information to predict consumer behavior.
Let's cut to the chase. The Republican Party takes advantage of well-meaning uneducated people who have no clue the degree to which profit makers are parasitic on the state. This means any debate regarding government involvement in the economy can't even get started.
Turn off Fox News and go to a library.
(We're begging you)
On the upside ...
Good thread, better than most here. Kudos to OP.
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