Regarding Kerk Phillips' defense of a market that is neither pro-business nor pro-labor ("What's wrong with maximizing profits," June 11), unfortunately his economic theory works only in, well, theory.
In his summary, he says, "We need to allow workers to compete with each other in the labor market and thus reward those who provide quality labor at competitive wages." In the real world of large corporations and free trade, we've been doing this for a long time now. The result is that American workers cannot compete with laborers in China, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Costa Rica,and dozens of other low-wage locales.
Corporations have been shipping jobs off to third-world countries for decades now, then turning around and expecting American consumers to buy the products they no longer produce. It has now been over 36 years since the U.S. ran a trade surplus. If we think we can keep this up indefinitely, we are delusional.
There is a reason corporate profits and CEO pay are at record levels, the middle class is in steep decline, and there is a decreasing availability of decent-paying jobs. It appears the free market is in the process of destroying the conditions that make a free market possible.
Roger Terry
Orem
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