Reply #40: It has not "been very good for people in the developing world", it has been a disaster.

[Greyhound]

It has been very, very good for a very few people granted license in those countries to steal even more, but "free trade" is an unmitigated disaster for the average proles.

India is just one example, a "new middle class" rises there at the expense of an entire sector of the economy here, more people begin to do better, but far more people (the poorest) do much worse as they cannot afford to participate in this new prosperity. After a decade or so, this "new middle class" has accumulated more stuff and their lifestyle has improved and they begin to demand higher wages and better conditions and are then replaced with even lower cost workers in other countries. India has a few billionaires and a larger consumer class, but loses the advantage that started it and millions more have even less than they did when it began. Now, the citizens of both The U.S. and India are worse off, overall.

This "free trade" scam simply pushes more capital into fewer hands in each cycle leaving devastation in it's wake. The same scenario has played out in Mexico, Argentina, Ireland, nation after nation. China is still on the up cycle and has the benefit of being a dictatorship, but is already feeling the pressure.

It is literally a race to the bottom with the only winners being the corporations that invented it in the first place.