Paying The Piper-Part 8/2-An Unpleasant Ticket To The Past

A couple of weeks ago on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," host, former conservative Republican congressman Joe Scarborough, stated that the "free trade" policy that has shipped so many jobs overseas, along with investment, has become difficult to change because it has become "a religion."* I think Joe has hit the nail on the head. It is much the same with the "free market" ideology, and I believe you can more or less lump the two together; "free trade/free markets." The interesting thing is, the "super patriots" of the American Right talked about no unilateral disarmament in our relationship with the former Soviet Union. Now, maybe I'm wrong, but many of these same people, or their more recent clones, are always touting "free trade" that is often unilateral. We needn't dig up Einstein to ask him why so many American jobs have gone overseas. Forget about patriotism, American business people will go to where one of their highest expenses, labor, is cheapest. Costs are always important. If you had a lemonade stand when you were a kid, you probably didn't buy lemons at the most expensive place in the neighborhood. Americans basically understand all of this; it is a part of our society. The American labor movement understands it, too. What concerns many in American labor is that the basic trade system with many countries is not fair to start with. Workers in many of the "new" economies of the world make a fraction of what many American workers make, or should I say, what many American workers MADE. Be careful of the code phrase oft stated by executives, "Our production costs are too high." With the system that is now in place, essentially what America's powerful interests are saying with this phrase is, "American workers make too much!" Of course, they don't say that executives or wealthy investors make too much, although the incomes of the wealthiest Americans are really the only incomes that have grown much in the last thirty years, under the prevailing economic philosophy of modern American conservatism (if it can be called "conservatism"). Pat Buchanan, a frequent participant on "Morning Joe," and noted conservative commentator, also recently stated how all of this "free trade" policy has damaged the country. Okay Pat, then why are you pushing for more conservative Republican victories? It's like saying, "My party is destroying the American economy. Let's elect more people from my party!"** You can't have this both ways, unless you're willing to pay the price; the ultimate demise of the country. Until this mentality changes, woe to America.

(A Word History is below the notes)

* I really like Joe Scarborough. I don't always agree with him; in fact, at times, I very much disagree with him, but he is one conservative who seems to have learned some lessons from the economic mistakes of the last few decades, and Joe is willing to say so. This seems to run contrary to many other conservatives who act as if they did absolutely NOTHING WRONG to bring on the current economic problems of the country, and in fact, seem to advocate their policies even more strongly. When the Bush Administration proposed the "bank bailout" bill in September of 2008, many conservative lawmakers said that banks that made bad decisions should just be allowed to fail. That all sounds good until you see what happened when just one bank failed, Lehman Brothers. The whole WORLD financial structure shook, with world stock markets tumbling by huge amounts. Where would we be now if virtually ALL banks had been left to fail? This is the very same philosophy that says, "Look, if you're sick and you don't have insurance, the HELL WITH YOU! I've got mine!" Don't be confused by any of this, folks! If this kind of thinking had prevailed throughout history, humans would still live in trees. "Hey you birds! What ya doin' buildin' that nest in my tree?"

** I don't agree much with Pat Buchanan, but when he's right on policy, he's right. In fairness to his position, he did try to get Republicans to abandon or modify these trade policies, especially in his presidential run in the primaries of 1996. He was HIGHLY CRITICAL of the Republican position. He seemed to have drawn a lot of former Ross Perot supporters to his banner, but the problem has been, after Buchanan's run, who did these types, including Buchanan, eventually vote for? More Republicans with the same ideology they claimed to be against.

WORD HISTORY:
Morel-The ultimate origin of this word for a type of mushroom is uncertain. One source notes that it goes back to Indo European "mork," which meant "root, tuber," but I can't find "mork" in any Indo European words. So how Germanic got the word, I can't say, although the one source could be correct. Old Proto Germanic had "murhon," which indeed meant "edible root." This then gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "more" (the ending "e" was pronounced back then as "eh/ah"), which meant "carrot," which included parsnips, back then. It seems the Germanic dialects of those times did not distinguish between carrots and parsnips, because the "orange" carrot either hadn't yet been cultivated, or was unavailable to our ancestors at that time. "More" (then also spelled "moore") remained the English word for "carrot" until the 1500s! Gradually English usage of the borrowed word "carrot" developed, replacing the native word. I'll probably get around to covering "carrot's" history in the near future. The Old Germanic word also gave Frankish, another Germanic dialect, the form "morhila," which meant "mushroom" in that dialect. This then was absorbed into French, a Latin-based language, but with a good number of Germanic words, as "morille." The French term was borrowed into English in the 1670s as "morel." The Germanic word also gave Old High German "morhilo," which has since become modern German "Morchel," which is their term for the type of mushroom. The same Old Germanic word that gave Old English "more," also gave German "Möhre," still one of their words for "carrot" (they also use "Karotte," which they too borrowed).