Reply #79: Who is Wal Mart to say those farmers shouldn;t have better options?

[Armstead]

Under the current model of corporate globalization, those farmers you mentioned don't really have a chance to better themselves. They are merely exchanging one form of misery for another.

The whole basis of so many US corporations going to China and gutting the ecionomny here is to exploit the wortkers in China and other poor nations. That gives those nations the incentives to keep their people poor and miserable in order to satisfy their US paymasters. It discourags the Chinese from developing a healthier and more self-sustaining forms of economic develoipment.

That is NOT progress, and it is not how the US (or I assume Canada) advanced.

Also, we have self-interest in expecting otehr nations to raise their standards. That is the whole notion of precventing the "Race to the Bottom" in which our populations have to fall backward and be driven by the standards of the poorest nations. If China chooses to "grow" by providing an exploitative labor market, that is their issue. But when that screws our people and our real economic health, it IS our business.

There are middle grounds and win-win possibilities in global trading policies. But the current "free trade" regime is not interested in finding them. Instead they are attempting to impose one single hard nosed system through the world that will ultimately benefit neither the developed or the developing nations ultimately....All they will benefit are the elites at the top.

To paraphrase Paul Wellstone, a critic of this scam who was before his time, "We can do better." But we have to start by rejecting the con job that is being perpretratedf by the neo-CONS and is unfortunately being echoed and supported by too many neo-liberal Democrats.