General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Since Free Traders believe that America should lower its standard of living to help the third world [View all]Lydia Leftcoast
(48,217 posts)seen what kinds of conditions the casualties of "free" trade in China live in, who treat The Economist magazine as some kind of Revealed Wisdom from God.
America's wars may have CREATED more poverty than its "free" trade policies ever solved.
I wonder how many of the "free" trade advocates went straight from suburban affluence through a college economics major and into more suburban affluence and therefore see "the poor," American or otherwise, as mere abstractions.
I wonder how many of the "free" trade advocates have ever worked at blue collar jobs. (I have, not only during the summer during my college years but also during three years of temping when I couldn't find a permanent teaching job after graduate school.) I wonder how many of them have volunteered in meal programs for the poor and have seen people who are obviously former members of the middle class (not the hardcore street people who patronized these services twenty and thirty years ago) lining up for a meal in a church basement.
I wonder how many of the "free" trade advocates understand how much the growth of a Chinese upper class has been more than balanced by worsening conditions for the poor, who have lost their social safety nets.
I wonder how many of the "free" trade advocates have seen the horrible council flats in London, with two generations of unemployment among native-born British people, and then gone to hotels and restaurants to see that almost all the jobs are held by Eastern Europeans. (Why hire a Brit with a school leaving certificate when you can get a university-educated Pole for the same price or less?)