We the people need economic principles to live by ...

We the people need economic principles to live by, principles we can understand ... principles that actually apply to the real world.

And we should know and understand the history of how these principles evolved out of our experience.

Like labor laws including those against children working in coal mines at the age of twelve. Did you know about that? Did I say twelve? How about seven and eight?

How about the 40-hour work week, lunch and rest breaks, weekends ... did you know that the concept of the "weekend" was given us by the labor movement?

And then there is the history of imperialism and other economic structures to funnel wealth upward to the top tier of wealth gatherers. Take salt. Take India. Take the British. Take Gandhi.

The Gandhi Salt March
1930

In 1930 in order to help free India from British control, Mahatma Gandhi proposed a non-violent march protesting the British Salt Tax, continuing Gandhi's pleas for civil disobedience. The Salt Tax essentially made it illegal to sell or produce salt, allowing a complete British monopoly. Since salt is necessary in everyone's daily diet, everyone in India was affected. The Salt Tax made it illegal for workers to freely collect their own salt from the coasts of India, making them buy salt they couldn't really afford.

http://www.thenagain.info/webchron/india/SaltMarch.html

There it is. All spelled out in black and white for us. If we have a necessary (without it our basic well-being, health, life itself is threatened directly by not having it) "commodity" that we actually could have in abundance, and some "market force" (in the case of the salt in India, "a complete British monopoly") creates what is quite clearly an artificial price (in this case, a tax) for the purchase of the "commodity" ... and the British do this on the basis of a law ... What do you think?

Life-saving medicines that are beyond their patent-life are what? And what if the law actually says that the market forces of negotiation cannot be applied ... as in the case of Medicare?

This is becoming so convoluted behind the smoke screen of a "free market" that without some common agreement on principle, we are doomed to failure ... or until we the people start our own march to the sea.

The Salt March started a series of protests, closing many British shops and British mills. A march to Dharshana resulted in horrible violence. The non-violent satyagrahis did not defend themselves against the clubs of policemen, and many were killed instantly. The world embraced the satyagrahis and their non-violence, and eventually enabled India to gain their freedom from Britain.

-Ibid.