Post by unlawflcombatnt on Mar 8, 2007 16:41:33 GMT -6
Here is a great article by economist Jeff Faux on Globalization, titled
Globalization That Works for Working Americans. (I've posted this link previously. However, it may have gotten lost in the shuffle, so I'm posting it again.
Below are some selected excerpts from Faux's article.
"In America, as elsewhere, the benefits of the current form of globalization have been concentrated among those at the top of the income and wealth ladder, while the costs have been paid by working families at the middle and the bottom. Real wages and benefits for the majority of workers are stagnant, jobs have been destroyed, and family and community life has been stressed and, at times, broken apart....
To some extent the economic harm has been obscured by massive borrowing from the rest of the world, borrowing that is clearly unsustainable....
From the end of the Civil War to the 1970s the international share of the U.S. economy was modest, and exports and imports were generally in balance or showed a small surplus. But in the last 25 years, foreign trade has risen 700%, more than doubling as a share of gross domestic product to 28%....
This dramatic shift reflects more than simply an increased movement of goods and services between the United States and other nations. It reflects an unprecedented economic integration with the rest of the world that is blurring the very definition of the “American” economy....
American business is steadily moving finance, technology, production, and marketing beyond our borders. Some 50% of all U.S.-owned manufacturing production is now located in foreign countries, and 25% of the profits of U.S. multinational corporations are generated overseas—and the shares are rapidly growing....
As Renato Ruggiero, the first director-general of the World Trade Organization (WTO), observed in 1995: “We are no longer writing the rules of interaction among separate national economies. We are writing the constitution of a single global economy....
Unfortunately, this new global economic constitution primarily protects and promotes the interests of only one category of citizen—the global corporate investor. The rules of the global economy now give corporate property rights priority over human rights, undercutting the hard-won domestic social contract that has supported broadly shared prosperity in advanced societies and in some developing countries as well. The rules have encouraged and often imposed policies of privatization, deregulation, domestic austerity, and export-dependent growth on sovereign nations. They have denied governments the right to effectively regulate imported products produced by exploiting labor and the environment, while requiring governments to protect corporate patents and other intellectual property. And they give corporate investors extraordinary privileges to sue governments in secret tribunals...."
The entire 22-page pdf file article can be found at Globalization That Works for Working Americans
Globalization That Works for Working Americans. (I've posted this link previously. However, it may have gotten lost in the shuffle, so I'm posting it again.
Below are some selected excerpts from Faux's article.
"In America, as elsewhere, the benefits of the current form of globalization have been concentrated among those at the top of the income and wealth ladder, while the costs have been paid by working families at the middle and the bottom. Real wages and benefits for the majority of workers are stagnant, jobs have been destroyed, and family and community life has been stressed and, at times, broken apart....
To some extent the economic harm has been obscured by massive borrowing from the rest of the world, borrowing that is clearly unsustainable....
From the end of the Civil War to the 1970s the international share of the U.S. economy was modest, and exports and imports were generally in balance or showed a small surplus. But in the last 25 years, foreign trade has risen 700%, more than doubling as a share of gross domestic product to 28%....
This dramatic shift reflects more than simply an increased movement of goods and services between the United States and other nations. It reflects an unprecedented economic integration with the rest of the world that is blurring the very definition of the “American” economy....
American business is steadily moving finance, technology, production, and marketing beyond our borders. Some 50% of all U.S.-owned manufacturing production is now located in foreign countries, and 25% of the profits of U.S. multinational corporations are generated overseas—and the shares are rapidly growing....
As Renato Ruggiero, the first director-general of the World Trade Organization (WTO), observed in 1995: “We are no longer writing the rules of interaction among separate national economies. We are writing the constitution of a single global economy....
Unfortunately, this new global economic constitution primarily protects and promotes the interests of only one category of citizen—the global corporate investor. The rules of the global economy now give corporate property rights priority over human rights, undercutting the hard-won domestic social contract that has supported broadly shared prosperity in advanced societies and in some developing countries as well. The rules have encouraged and often imposed policies of privatization, deregulation, domestic austerity, and export-dependent growth on sovereign nations. They have denied governments the right to effectively regulate imported products produced by exploiting labor and the environment, while requiring governments to protect corporate patents and other intellectual property. And they give corporate investors extraordinary privileges to sue governments in secret tribunals...."
The entire 22-page pdf file article can be found at Globalization That Works for Working Americans