Side 1 - From the folks who love Roosevelt

I promised I'd write about two opposing views of the economy.

On one side are the people who want the government to be so small, that they could hold their Christmas parties in someones mom's basement. I follow a lot of sites run by people who subscribe to this feeling. To these writers, Ron Paul is a white-hatted underdog, Reagan was a genius and Roosevelt ruined the country with his social programs. This is the maximum free-market, minimum regulation credo.

On the other side are folks like Thom Hartmann, radio host and author of Screwed: The Undeclared War Against The Middle-Class, which I am currently reading. Hartman gushes in almost every chapter how Roosevelt's amazing foresight led us to be "a Great" nation, until Reagan killed the good thing and planted the seeds to kill America as we know it. Hartman isn't anti-free market. He argues that there is no such thing as a free market, and, if government didn't intervene in the economy, there'd be no such thing as a middle class either. We'd be back in the days where there were only the very rich and the very poor. Mind you those very rich today would not be royalty or the elite, they'd be corporations.

A quick look at Hartman's blog and you'll see his cure for the "financial crisis" is to tax stock buys and sells. Let Wall Street fund their own bailout. Let speculation be dampened and investing regain it's rightful place.

He also wants America to go back to the regulations we abandoned - the Sherman Act, Glass-Stegall, and to return to the roots of trade laid down for us by the founding fathers. He would like us to quit this "service economy" we have; it doesn't produce anything -- doesn't build real wealth, and return to the industrialized nation we used to be.

I do like a lot of things he says. But maybe I'm just a Baby Boomer longing for the simpler times of the 60s and early 70s. I would always like to see corporations held to better moral standards. I can't, though, get myself to agree with imposing limits on wealth, particularly for individuals as Hartmann states in his book. If someone is a billionaire, shouldn't they be able to leave that money to their children instead of having it taxed away to keep dynasties from developing?

Otherwise, I think Hartmann has some good ideas. And, being middle class myself, I sure would like to win this war.

Next: Details on the other side -- from the folks who wish Ron Paul were president.