Maybe I've been brainwashed during the past 3 decades.  But I still believe in the free markets.

 

The idea that one person has leverage, if they can move away, while the population that's left behind has no say in the negotiation.  Is nonsense.

 

The group will move.

 

Not as a threat to the folks they're negotiating with, but because economic conditions require them to move.

 

In creating a flatter earth, one where wealth is distributed more evenly across the globe, it is going to suck to be among those who were near the top of the pyramid.  Why?  Because the rest of the pyramid is growing to catch up to you.

 

And when that means relocating plants away from the midwest and into south east asia, that is what will happen.  Will those folks now have the ability to earn more money than before?  Probably.

 

It comes with lowered pollution controls, more corruption, and greater health problems to the workers, but some of these folks will earn more money than they could have otherwise.

 

A middle class now exists in India and China, where 30 years ago, that population didn't exist.  There is still a huge % of people living in poverty in those countries, but at least today, that number isn't 99.99% of the population.

 

As for being a free market economist.  I will say that the folks, ALL the folks who helped this mess, should pay some cost.  Part of that cost is they won't be trusted again to work with other people's money, they won't be trusted to work in the financial field, they won't have the opportunity to do what they did before.

 

That's the long term cost that a free market will extract from bad actors.  You don't get trusted again, you don't get to do business again.  This is the stick that free markets are supposed to allow.  Company destruction is the "death penalty" for businesses.  Quite simply it is the cost of being stupid.

 

I have no problem with groups that were dumb, paying the penality by going out of business.  There's no such thing as too big to fail.

 

The final paragraph irks me.

Why focus on the "most vulnerable people in the country"?

 

Why not focus on the most vulnerable people in the world?  If you can expand the marketplace to incorporate all of their needs/resources, then you will have to respond to their issues.  A global marketspace that incorporates everyone has no exogenous factors.