Baraka_Guru

Pan, while I get your grievances, I don't get your solutions. Raising wages and tariffs, in addition to banning many imports will do nothing but spike inflation---and quite dramatically at that. This will be devastating on the lower classes, and will only create further disparity of wealth, as the wealthy will still have access to outside markets (both in consumption and investing), but the poor won't.

Your concern about distribution of wealth isn't an issue of purely wages and protectionism and regulating corporate executives; it's an issue of liberalism and socialism. As mentioned here and in other threads, American politics is decidedly not left wing. The Democratic party sometimes leans left of centre, and there are socialized aspects to your economy, such as unions, minimum wages, labour laws, social security, welfare, etc., but your politics has a huge void when it comes to the left. You have no social democratic voice as other countries do---a voice that strives for a more mixed economy brought by further subsidization of problematic areas, extended social security to the most in need, a reinforcing of the progressive tax system, programs to alleviate strife related to immigration/multiculturalism, etc.

America does not have a social democratic voice that I know of, and it certainly doesn't seem to have one in government.

I see a problem, though. In America, socialism of any form is viewed as an evil. This is why America remains a predominantly conservative nation, tempered with centrism.

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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot