HOLD it right there, folks! Minimum wages, the 40-hour work week, overtime wages, and a host of other government standards and regulations help control extreme laissez-faire capitalism. This is not a new feature or principle in our system.

Economics professor Paul Samuelson instructed us for generations that our free enterprise-market system must be guided by the government. Why then would political pundits or a presidential candidate even question this principle?

So, let us use our energy and resources, our business expertise, and our technology to enhance our economic advantages. As some are saying here in New England (particularly in Massachusetts where Mitt Romney was a former governor), "Outsourcing isn't evil. Building businesses overseas doesn't necessarily cost America a thing and often creates wealth and value both here and there." What nonsense is this; does the author actually think this is applicable to our present financial situation? Once upon a time, the U.S. was a creditor nation, but not anymore and, unfortunately, not for a long time.

The U.S. trade deficit began falling in the mid-1970s (more imports than exports). The downward trend increased during the presidency of Ronald Reagan; and, the trade deficit increased the most during George W. Bush’s eight-year administration. This long period of debtor nation status in our trading markets along with the financial market collapse in 2007 to 2008 (Big Bank and real estate failures) produced the deepest economic depression since the 1930s.

For a long time now, our economy has been changing. For example, in the post-WWII era, our manufacturing industries led the world in production of aircraft, agricultural technology, machinery, and automobiles to name only a few. In fact, automobile production (which centered on our famous auto companies) in Detroit, Flint, Lansing – Michigan cities – in the 1950s and 1960s was the greatest exporting industry in the world. It was told, "As General Motors goes, so goes the nation." This statement was credited to the president of General Motors Inc., Charles E. Wilson, who later became Secretary of Defense under President Eisenhower.

Today, we are in the throes of a tight presidential campaign; the candidates drift into the mythology of our economic system. The great American feature of “individualism” and the cowboy way may be what we are witnessing. Certainly, the privileged, the rich, the 1 to 2 percent of our people are enjoying the greatest amount of wealth in the history of the world.

On the one hand, the ultra-conservative side, presidential candidate Mitt Romney wants the public, the voters to know that free-enterprise means profits come first. If that requires an American company today to outsource its capital, and that same company finds cheap labor abroad in order to make the company profitable, so be it.

On the other hand, incumbent President Obama says “yes” to profitable enterprise, but asks: What about our workers, what about the whole of the country? And, what about in-sourcing the industrial jobs for American working and middle-class folks? This is the leader that provided the motivation and plan for the General Motors and Chrysler auto bailouts in 2009, thus saving this important American industry; isn’t that what we can do?