It's now clear: neoliberalism and "free trade" are KILLING the world's poor

[Ken Burch]

No one who STILL supports the status quo on trade policy could possibly have humane or progressive values. Thus, no such person could deserve the Democratic nomination. Neither does anyone who favors any MORE "free trade agreements". If you want those things, you are committed to driving down living standards and increasing poverty globally.

The stability of the planet is in jeopardy.

We must support a global trade policy based on justice and hope, not on short-term corporate profit. We must win the support of the Global Majority, the poor and the working-class people around the planet from whom guerrilla armies are raised.

Without justice, without equality and without hope, trade serves only the wealthy and the elitists.

We don't want our party trapped on the inside of the mansion as the world's poor burn it down.

Democrats must support the poor and the dispossed everywhere.

Anyone who doesn't ISN'T a Democrat.

[Hydra]

1. Big surpise

:sarcasm:

Funny to see cheerleading now and then that "Free Trade" will bring limitless prosperity.

I guess they expect us not to ask who will be benefiting from the anything but free trade.

[Big Pappa]

2. "Anyone who doesn't ISN'T a Democrat"

Speak for yourself pal. I am not an elitist and trade damn sure serves me well.

[Jim Sagle]

10. He's speaking for just about all of us. How doest it feel?

[Greyhound]

30. "I've got mine, fuck everybody else", but they hate us for our freedom? n/t

[eallen]

3. Yeah, south Asia and China and Brazil and southeast Asia have gone to hell.

Right?

Oh, wait. That's not right.

There has been, in the last quarter century, an unprecedented economic improvement for a large part of the world's population that for centuries had been the poorest.

What could be causing that? Certainly not globalization. We're supposed to hate globalization. We have to pretend it can't possibly have any good effects.

I know what: let's just ignore that change. Future historians will look back in awe, and study what is now happening. But we should pretend it doesn't exist.

:eyes:

[sandnsea]

4. The rich get richer

Same as here. The poor are still poor. It will take the same kind of union movements we had in this country, like after the Triangle Fire, for these people to create a middle class. Sadly, all we have to do is the honest thing and help them now. Instead, we let our corporations exploit these people the same way we let them exploit immigrants in our country, then and now. We're a vicious, manipulative, destructive race. White people are destroying the planet.

[Solon]

5. I know you don't give a shit about this but...I believe kids should be in school, not work, just...

my opinion. Obviously you think they should work 12+ hours a day for pennies an hour.

[eallen]

7. Fine. Then let's work for schools. In the meantime, let's not curse what has helped.

By all means, let's do what we can to accelerate the process of poor nations becoming wealthier. But what puzzles me is that so many people want to ignore the recent improvement that has occurred, and curse what has caused it. That doesn't help anything. That's like taking away the blanket someone has stitched, because you think what they really need is a house. But you don't have any way for them to get a house.

If people were saying, "hey, it's great that so many formerly poor nations are getting wealthier, and let's work on accelerating that and on making sure they develop public infrastructure and support for their peoples," that would be one thing. But those who curse trade aren't saying that. They're saying, "let's stop what has made these nations wealthier."

Well, it's not going to stop. Yes, the US and other wealthy nations make a lot of unfair trade arrangements with poor nations. And we should try to change those. But if your rhetoric is against trade, you're not trying to help people build houses. You're trying to take away their blankets.

:hippie:

[Solon]

8. Just because the GDP increases in a nation, doesn't mean that everyone in that nation is getting...

a slice of the pie. In fact, local conditions in many cases worsened. Take the case of Argentina, as an example, taking your analogy, first you(first world), take away the blanket, then charge 5 times more for it, forcing the country you took the blanket to take out a loan, while at the same time stripping the clothes off their back, they file bankruptcy, and still have no blanket, and wanted a house in the first place.

Similar scenarios to this have already been played out in not only Argentina, but Bolivia, El Salvador, in fact, all of Latin America, Indonesia, most nations in Africa, etc. As far as I can tell, this "wealth building" only goes in one direction, into corporate coffers. There is little to no development of local economies, instead we get "free trade zones" for foreign companies(to the nations in question), who pay the workers a less than living wage, without regard to any local laws, and they are tax free to boot.

Then, once another nation gives a better deal in wages, they pack up and go there instead, closing the factory, and leaving the folks who lived and worked there holding the bag, realizing that they don't even have the capital to open a fruit stand. And you call this progress? Please, we can do better, the status quo is simply the Robber Barons part 2, and the sequel is worse than the original.

[eallen]

19. Except what you describe isn't what is happening.

It isn't just average GDP going up as the richest get richer. There have been tremendous changes in the rest of the world over the past quarter century, and a lot of how people view the world outside the OECD is stuck in the 1970s. If you haven't seen it, take a look at this talk by Hans Rosling:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/92

About 8 minutes in, there is a graph of world income distribution, and how it has changed in the last couple of decades.

:hippie:

[Solon]

21. If that is your argument, its an extremly weak one...

For example, when he splits up the Latin American countries by survival rates of children up to 5 years old, Cuba was at the top, Chile second. The graph on income distribution was also interesting, the most interesting part was that he completely ignored the fact that the dollar has weakened over time, he says the absolute income gap has actually decreased over time, and that's probably true, if you use dollars as they were worth 30 years ago compared to today, but then again, you could buy a soda in the United States back then for about a dime.

The question isn't whether people working in Indonesia or China are making a dollar a day, or 3 cents an hour, but whether that is a living wage in their own damned localities. He also seems to gloss over the problems of free trade in relation to regulation or some of the consequences of free trade. For example, what I described in my previous post is EXACTLY what happened to Argentina in 2001, free trade was a complete disaster there, people are literally living in garbage dumps to survive. Bolivia almost suffered the same consequences in Cochabamba when Bechtel bought out the water utility when the government of Bolivia was told to sell it to them by the IMF. Was this positive? Of course not, they outlawed collecting rainwater, and the citizens had to pay a QUARTER of their income for water. This came to a head when protests against the policy took place, and the people of Cochabamba rose up and took over the utility themselves, and ran it themselves for a long time afterward.

The weakness in this man's argument is the fact that while most people are in the "middle" of his graph, where the hell is the poverty line for those nations on the graph? Is it to the right or, more likely, to the left of the hump. In the United States, for example, the Median wage has NOT kept up with inflation, most people today are making little more than they did 30 years ago, and even worse, the richest 10% in this country have seen their worth rise over 300 percent. That's an increasing wage gap, and it is NOT a myth.

[eallen]

23. Nay, he is using constant 2000 dollars.

You're right that median income in the US hasn't changed much. But there has been a large change in much of the rest of the world. I didn't point to that video as an argument, but to get people to start looking at the data. There has been a tremendous change in the last quarter century, outside the OECD. Many people inside the OECD aren't quite aware of that.

We can have lots of discussion about whether that change could be faster, and what it's dimensions are, and how the increase in wealth relates to other measures. Those who don't even recognize the change are pushing themselves into a rhetoric that simply is contrary to facts. E.g., "trade has only made the richer richer." Well, no, it hasn't. One easily can say that it isn't lifting people out of poverty fast or far enough, simply because so many are still so poor. Or that increasing wealth isn't enough to improve other things, and there also needs to be corresponding investment in health and education infrastructure.

But the global economy of the last three decades has done for many of the world's poor what no one would have expected thirty years past. When something has worked, it is important to recognize not just where it isn't doing enough of what we want, but also to recognize the fact of how much it has worked.

:hippie:

[Solon]

24. We aren't talking about trade, but free trade, two different yet related things...

The first thing to recognize is that we aren't talking about ALL trade, but trade within a specific frame work, what is billed as "free" trade, which is supposed to be trade without tariffs, but in reality is trade without government, specifically democratic government, oversight. You seem to completely ignore this fact and in fact is talking about trade itself, which CAN include regulations when needed. We are talking about the real world here, not some fantasy you cooked up, if you can't even acknowledge that problems exist in the first place, then there is no use talking to you.

[eallen]

25. However labeled, recent global trade has done much good outside OECD.

Many of those who object to "free" trade also seem to target the last couple of decades of globalization. I'm not an ideologue, and don't really care much about whether or not actual trade agreements and actual commerce meet some criteria that someone wants to call "free" trade. What does seem important to me is to recognize the effects of recent past policies.

I'm fully aware that those effects are complex, and include problems as well as benefits. I think the discussion of how to decrease the former and increase the latter is a good one. I'm also aware of trade inequities, and yes, we need to lessen those. But the starting point for discussion cannot be "globalization sucks." At least, not if one cares about the majority of the world's population who live outside the OECD.

:hippie:

[Solon]

29. I never said that Globalization sucks, but Globalization AS PRACTICED NOW, sucks...

There is a difference here. To give a classic example of this, Mexico is one of the most "open" countries when it comes to free trade, with about 90% of all trade in Mexico coming from over 40 nations that Mexico has free trade agreements with. Given this, you would think that Mexico would be as close to paradise as possible, considering the promises of free trade. However, as we all know, that isn't the case, NAFTA was promised to lower illegal immigration from Mexico to the United States by 2/3rds in 6 years, as Janet Reno said. Instead, in the early 1990s, before NAFTA, about 400,000 Mexicans entered the United States illegally per year, now its 500,000 Mexicans that enter the United States per year. I don't see a decrease here.

In addition, Mexican owned manufacturing has been devastated, while foreign owned manufacturing has skyrocketed. Wages have decreased since 1994, and Mexican farmers mostly maize farmers, have been driven out of business due to the flood of cheap maize from the United States that is, oddly enough, subsidized by our Government. I can also mention NAFTA: Chapter 11, which forces governments to compensate companies when they forbid those companies from poisoning water or violating local, State/Provincial, or National laws.

We have had 14 years of a test, so to speak, with NAFTA, and in any event, it has failed. The problem isn't TRADE, trade has always existed, its the fact that these types of agreements have a bad habit of putting the good of the private interests above the interests of the public at large. The biggest problem is that these "free" trade agreements only free up capital, not people, and that capital is limited, a company can invest millions to build a factory for export only in some impoverished nation, pay the workers substandard wages, and leave when a better opportunity arises for that company, and the people in that nation they just left had little opportunity for sustainable economic development, the product left, very little money circulates in the local economy, so whatever growth occurred then collapses into a local depression.

Sources:

http://www.ilsr.org/columns/2006/050706.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/18/weekinreview/18uchitelle.html?ex=1329454800&en=a25f2c10ae431b9c&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

My problems with Globalization and regional free trade blocs has more to do with accountability than anything else. We need a transparent system where economic decisions can be made democratically, right now they are not. To be honest, I'm glad the FTAA has failed ratification so far, mostly due to the resistance in Latin America, but also domestically as well. Its yet another bad deal, we should not sign onto bad deals and then pray they get better over time, we should instead sign onto good deals in the first place, at least then problems could be solved instead of getting worse. The fact of the matter is that when a deal doesn't live up to its promises, then we need a better deal. I made a modest proposal over a year ago now, oddly enough, its proposal is similar to but predates the two articles mentioned above.

Here it is:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x1064574

While the title seems to focus on one issue, I feel that the totality of it is basically a way of economic development that is accountable to the people. In addition, the proposal I made isn't nearly complete, as I mentioned in that original post, and many things occurred to me after I wrote it that would amend it greatly. However, it could be a good starting off point for creating a regional economic/political bloc in North America that is both fair and democratic.

[Adelante]

36. China goods are killing Mexico

Even chile peppers! 80% sold in the Mexican market today are imported from China. Farmers and craftspeople are being wiped out by Chinese goods in traditional markets. It's just awful.

[Ken Burch]

9. I'm not "cursing trade" I'm cursing "free trade"

That is, trade on corporate terms, which has always been accompanied by brutal "structural adjustment" programs that impose massive increases in inequality, and which supercede democratic accountability, since, in countries with "free trade agreements", governments aren't allowed to deviate from the pro-corporate, anti-worker and anti-poor program.

Trade agreements should be based on working "from the bottom up", not "from the top down". And they should not force countries to abandon social investment and drive down wages.

And the poorer nations should be treated as equals in the negotiations process, because their resources are just as important as "foreign investment".

[OnionPatch]

16. Seems like a lot of people don't see the distinction

Free trade means "dog eat dog" to me. Trade is a good thing, a wonderful thing, when carried out within some framework of social justice and for the good of all involved, not just the bottom line for some huge corporation.

[Hippo_Tron]

12. The internal distribution of wealth within developing countries has changed very little

The steps we have taken in recent decades have had the potential to lift people out of poverty in the third world. The problem is that we don't force the countries that we trade with to reform their economic and political systems so that a strong middle class can be created. Essentially, the developing world is about where we were in the Gilded Age. They need a Progressive Era and a New Deal before we will start to see people lifted out of poverty.

Unlike some, I don't believe in legislating to stop the spread of the global economy. But the trade agreements we have signed have created a global economy that is essentially a race to the bottom. That needs to be reformed.

[illinoisprogressive]

6. real democrats are not into free trade and want american jobs here.

[killbotfactory]

11. Killing as in murder/homicide/etc. Literally.

[Ken Burch]

27. As in these lyrics by Bruce Cockburn:

Call it Democracy
by Bruce Cockburn, written Nov. 1985

Padded with power here they come
international loan sharks backed by the guns
of market hungry military profiteers
whose word is a swamp and whose brow is smeared
with the blood of the poor

Who rob life of its quality
who render rage a necessity
by turning countries into labour camps
modern slavers in drag as champions of freedom

Sinister cynical instrument
who makes the gun into a sacrament --
the only response to the deification
of tyranny by so-called "developed" nations'
idolatry of ideology

North south east west
kill the best and buy the rest
it's just spend a buck to make a buck
you don't really give a flying fuck
about the people in misery

IMF dirty MF
takes away everything it can get
always making certain that there's one thing left
keep them on the hook with insupportable debt

See the paid-off local bottom feeders
passing themselves off as leaders
kiss the ladies shake hands with the fellows
open for business like a cheap bordello

And they call it democracy
and they call it democracy
and they call it democracy
and they call it democracy

See the loaded eyes of the children too
trying to make the best of it the way kids do
one day you're going to rise from your habitual feast
to find yourself staring down the throat of the beast
they call the revolution

IMF dirty MF
takes away everything it can get
always making certain that there's one thing left
keep them on the hook with insupportable debt

[Norrin Radd]

13. k+r

[The Backlash Cometh]

14. I think there must be a word for it.

You know, when you're a kid, or a Republican, whose belief system is completely constructed on the things you overhear around you, but then you jump the fence to the neighbor's yard and hear a totally different belief system so you start reading for yourself to reach your own conclusions, and the conclusions are that the original premise, the one you were taught at birth, is the cause of your problems in your future. What word is there to describe that?

Well, that cognitive dissonance is what I feel whenever I see the word, "neo-liberalism" attached to the word "free trade." Or when I hear that it's liberals on the Supreme Court who are pushing for eminent domain. Can anyone step in here and tell me how this can be so? How can some of the worst ideas of our time be derived from the philosophical approach that government should be benign?

[robcon]

15. Free trade is not only making the poor richer (see India),

it is the best way to secure peace. Trade among nations is the surest way to avoid conflicts.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

17. "Free" trade has actually worsened the situation of many in China and India

The kind of equitable growth seen in Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea (all boats lifted, not just the yachts and cabin cruisers, as in India and China) was not promoted by "free" trade but by strict government control of resources and foreign investment.

During the Asian currency crisis of 1997, the "free" trade pundits were telling the Asian nations that the cure for their ailments was greater freedom for foreign investors, even though foreign speculators had caused the crisis in the first place. The first nation to recover was Malaysia, not coincidentally the first of the affected nations to impose strict currency controls, even though the high priests of the Great God "Free" Trade predicted disaster. But real world facts never stopped a True Believer in "Free" Trade.

Corporate free trade is just another example of greedheads claiming that the self-serving things they do are for the common good.

You point to India, a great example of wildly uneven development: new millionaires in Mumbai and Bangalore, people who were already educated getting jobs in call centers, and still massive, massive poverty within the provinces, including debt slavery, child labor, and terrible health conditions.

[BornagainDUer]

22. You got nothing to back this up. It is all Right-Wing ideology

that has failed time and again. Remember the "free trade" with Saddam before Kuwait.
Free trade must be fair trade and that is where NAFTA, the WTO and rest of the neoliberal people draw the line. These trade agreements prohibit signatores from enforcing environmental and other laws if that enforcement affects profits of the corporation.

[Ken Burch]

26. Trade is fine. But it should be FAIR trade, not the falsely termed "free" trade.

We don't have to settle for international trade being conducted on the terms of corporate power with the sovereignty of democratic states being overruled and invalidated.

Bring the world together through trade, yes...but not through more profits for the few and more misery for the many.

Let's create trade that honors the values of social justice, human rights, environmental survivability, indigenous culture, and the dignity of working people. It doesn't have to be "free trade" as the World Bank defines it.

Is that too much to ask?

[Greyhound]

31. LOL!

[Larry Ogg]

18. Corporate free trade policy imposed on third world countries looks like this.

Sell us your countries resources at a low price, with out the consideration of the needs of your country or your countries citizens. If your country needs the resources that we covet, then you may buy back the same resources you sold us at a much higher price. And don’t forget to add the shipping and handling charges, sales commission, inflated fuel cost and a certain percentage that will be paid to the corrupt politicians who would allow this to happen, or if needed, to terrorist death squads (also known as, freedom fighters) who will overthrow and assassinate any democratically elected honest person who stands in the way of the elites right to loot and plunder the resources of the world, (also known as free trade)…

Any one who thinks free trade is good for anyone but the most wealthy, needs to read the book 'Confessions of an Economic Hit Man’.

[mdmc]

20. They are still democrats

k/r

[creeksneakers2]

28. Trade is great

As long as citizens of other countries are free to make their own economic decisions, they'll choose what is best for them. I couldn't vote to take away some Chinaman's two dollars a day if I couldn't give him three. I expect that without the two dollar a day job, he'd be earning less, otherwise he wouldn't take the job.

Crooked trade deals are another matter. If the deal involves taking resources from populations without fair compensation, the deal should be halted. If the deal involves corruption of officials, that should be halted. If the deal subjugates populations, that deal should be ended.

But I don't believe in ending trade just because some American jobs are lost to foreigners (God's children). And I don't think it would be productive to make global wage demands that would kill off the economic benefits of trade.

I don't care how many people get rich. I wish everybody could be rich. I'm worried about how many people are poor. If something makes the poor better off, I'm happy to see somebody make a lot of money doing it.

[Agnostic_Jihad]

32. Your post is too vague

to make sense. If you think the global economy could survive without some free trade you're delusional. SOme of the armchair marxists around here need to get used to the fact that the world is changing from a world of nation-states to a world of transnational corporations and it's best to adjust to that reality and try and find the best policies we can implement within that paradigm

[ulysses]

33. the desire to protect workers

makes one an "armchair marxist"? Thanks. :crazy:

[Ken Burch]

37. You do realize that a world where all power went to "transnational corporations"

Would be a world where democracy no longer existed, don't you?

Are you comfortable with the idea of us having no choices above the level of what kind of ice cream we buy(that is, if we are in the tiny handful of people who will remain able to AFFORD ice cream after the next few years?)?

And once again, I never said "there must be NO trade". But trade can be on the terms of working people and the Global Majority. It doesn't have to exist first and solely for the good of the wealthy.

Your last post might just as well have read "Resistance is Futile...You Must Assimilate!"

[OHdem10]

34. Globalization and Free Trade impact Americans the most

of any issue today. Yet, this issues are not even
seriously covered in Debates. We are working very fast
to bring American Incomes down to meet those of Mexico
and other 3rd World Countries.

As a guest on C. Rose last week so aptly put it:
Americans can no longer earn 10 times as much other
workers in the world. American salaries must drop.

[Greyhound]

35. Yet our corporations dictate the prices of everything we need, and they are not willing

to cut profits by 98% to accommodate our diminished wages. Just like our health care scheme, everybody is dissatisfied and abused except the corporations. I wonder where the real problem really lies?