For those at the bottom, it does not matter whether the way to prosperity is through corporate employment or through one's financial portfolio. Because for those who are below the middle class, both ways give nothing.

I consider this debate ridiculous. The real debate should about how to reinstate high tax rates against the wealthy to create programs that support those at the bottom. I applaud the idea of taxing the wealthy an additional 1-3% to pay for healthcare. How about more so we can have enough public housing to end homelessness, to really fund public education, to fund public transit, a network of high speed trains, and a myriad of unmet public needs.

I can certainly agree that American economic history since the last Great Depression in the 30's has moved from an economy dominated by a few large oligopolies like the auto industry, the department stores, the railroads and such all monitored by independent analysts and financially supervised by a stock market. That Stock market was forced by the government that wished to avoid the return of the Depression into much greater openness, something the bankers have constantly hated. The result was two generations of growth and innovation, occasionally spurred on by the Sherman Anti-Trust act (as the phone company found out.)

But now what do we have? The bankers who hated and still hate market openness have largely won the day, and we now have an economy dominated by Goldman Sachs and a few mega-Banks like Bank of America and Citibank. And that financial market has largely slipped the government leash to the point that when it permitted exactly the disaster that the greater public openness of financial markets was intended to foster. Instead of the financial giants being forced by the government to operate openly and honestly in public their secretive deals have led the economy to the edge of another Great Depression, and the banks have then roped in the government to tax the public to bail the banks out of the dilemma their unconsidered secretly built risky deals has caused.

The new growing behemoth at the center of the economy is no longer a production or retail oligopoly that requires the work of many people. It is now a financial oligopoly in which competition is being choked off by centralization where ever it appears. And the financial markets are themselves becoming more private and secretive because the oligopoly investment banks themselves are the financial markets.

Essentially we have replaced the WW II style paternalism (after two generations of innovation and change) with a dominance by flinty-eyed bankers who see the world through the eyes of computers and currencies, without any real need for or interest in the welfare of anyone except themselves.

At least the production and retail oligopolies had to have people to function. The bankers are perfectly happy with a few operational computers and someone out there feeding them without every appearing the banking offices. What do they need paternalism for? And the only innovation a banker cares about is innovating new ways to skim a larger cut off the top of every financial transaction they can get their hands on and manipulate.

Justin, I really don't think we want that world to continue and grow, any more than any of us want to leave a cancer free to grow.

I agree that the image of a lifelong career at a single industrial firm is both unappealing and anachronistic. It is an image derived from an older ideal of something close to a steady-state industrial economy, one that lacks the dynamism, innovation, "creative destruction" and consistent opportunities for progress provided by mixed economies functioning at their best, which are driven by a balanced combination of private entrepreneurial innovation and strategic public investment.

Of course, even that dreary old steady-state ideal now seems preferable to what replaced it for many in the laissez faire dystopia that followed it, after the decline of labor and the old industrial economy. What people got was anxious, nomadic insecurity, a climate of persistent threat of being wiped out, the ceaseless exploitation and commodification of human life and a degrading, artless social environment of vulgar, omnipresent commercial speech.

Some would prefer a system in which we are all members of a sort of national labor union. Our jobs may change, our companies may change. But the basic components of our economic security would move with us, along with our work records and seniority, a steady income during periods of unemployment, and continued opportunities for education and training. This would be more than just a safety net, but an entirely different system for organizing our working lives in which every private firm has to deal with a "single seller" for labor, but in which firms can also operate more efficiently in other ways by being freed from the chores of handling their employees' retirement accounts, health care, etc.

And let's do something about putting commerce and commercial speech back in their social place. Most civilized societies have the good sense to locate the bazaar in only one part of the city. But our public sphere in the United States is entirely drenched in and polluted by the norms and messages of the bazaar. There are fewer and fewer places where one can go to find peace and repose; find human relationships that are not commercial partnerships and networks; and escape from the unending obscenity, vulgarity and titillating assaults on the senses and desire of market economies run amok.

People really have to stop even talking of 'free' markets in relation to the more recent financial setup. Once the government is involved in enforcing contracts, they choose what contracts to enforce. They've chosen to enforce contracts that amount to frauds and cons. That is not even freedom to rob people. It is government collusion in robbery.

A truly free market is the Congo blood-diamond 'market' or the Mexican drug 'market'. Once we have bankers shooting each other in the street, we can talk of free markets. What we have is government-sponsored financial mafia.