Glenn is right and we’re already close to it.
You don’t have to have a picture of the politburo head in every school and office in order for the government to more or less be managing people lives and “directing” an economy. As in Europe, where you have these pseudo market economies where the government really has the power and complete control but private property, enterprise, etc still exists, it is easy to have only a facade but no real economic or personal freedom. With the takeover of the US financial industry some time ago, health care which alone is 1/8 of the economy, stimulus bills that included massive expansions in government programs.....etc. you essentially have an economy that is as in Europe, state run. You still have private citizens buying and selling, but the real power broker behind the scene is a government that is calling the shots. The average German does not consider his economy to be state run, but it is. Essential industries and infrastructure as well as banking and finance are all either outright government run or so regulated that they de facto are. In an economy where 48% of the GDP is in some form managed by a government and the rest is highly regulated, where the banking and finance industry as well as other core industries serving the economic functions are largely government run, one can only make rhetorical arguments that this is still a free market. The US is rapidly mirroring this form of government run and pseudo free economy.
Only on paper and at face value without looking behind the curtain, are you free and is the economy a free market being directed by the choices of individual consumers in such an economy. In reality like Europe, we are becoming an economy run by czars, bureaucrats, and politicians. From wind mills (which are being built with stimulus money) to what car GM will build or what a CEO can earn, the government is “directing” things, and the long term outcome for these command driven economies is well known.
it only took inside work by GS and the Fed and Soros and the union pension funds to enable this....
but to what end?......well, the end is instead of a capitalist society, where people earn their money and assets, we'll have a communist society...where the oligharchy of a few ultra rich can run rough shod over the peasants.....
afterall, why share Yellowstone or Glacier of Monterey bay with the peasants.....
its all about money and power...
hate to say this, but Russia was or is run by the Russian Jewish mob......now, I think we are too...