Excuse me while I vomit: WaPo's editorial endorsing the TPP- because it'll help income inequality

[cali]

Not that one would expect anything but an endorsement from those putrid fucks, but this is particularly heinous and duplicitous.

Free-trade deals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership help the United

AMERICA’S INCREASINGLY skewed income distribution is finally getting the attention it deserves. The bad news is that some people might use the issue to justify otherwise unjustifiable policy agendas. Case in point: Opponents of a free-trade agreement among the United States and 11 Pacific Rim nations are claiming that it will destroy U.S. jobs, thus exacerbating income inequality in this country, just as previous deals, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, allegedly did

This is an old argument and, admittedly, plausible in theory: All else being equal, firms move where labor is cheapest. In practice, it is hard to isolate the degree to which the post-1979 surge of inequality is due to expanded trade with lower-wage nations such as China and Mexico rather than to, say, technology or education. Timothy Noah’s review of economic literature, reported in his recent book on inequality, “The Great Divergence,” produced an estimate of 12 percent to 13?percent. Not trivial but hardly decisive. And without trade agreements, globalization would still be affecting U.S. employment, only on less advantageous terms to the United States

In any case, President Obama’s proposed ­Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) would hardly increase U.S. free trade with low-wage nations. By far the largest proposed partner is Japan, which has slightly higher hourly compensation in manufacturing than the United States does. Given Japan’s protectionist history, the TPP will likely open its markets more to U.S. goods than vice versa. Of the other nations involved, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Chile, Peru and Singapore already have free-trade agreements with the United States, so the TPP mainly elaborates on the status quo. Brunei and New Zealand are lightly-populated, distant, high-income nations — hardly destinations for “offshoring” U.S factories. Malaysia is slightly higher-income than Mexico.

<snip>

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trans-pacific-partnership-and-all-free-trade-deals-help-the-united-states/2014/01/16/c595da66-7ef5-11e3-93c1-0e888170b723_story.html

[House of Roberts]

1. It will help income inequality.

It will make US worker incomes equal to those in emerging economies.

[Eleanors38]

2. All well-coordinated.

[cali]

3. the comments are amazing- I don't think there's one that's in agreement with the dog shit

that the Post editorial board dribbled from their corporate dick sucking lying lips.

[jsr]

4. The cheerleading has started

[cali]

5. It sure has.

Jeff Bezos has his own little megaphone in the WaPo.

[jsr]

8. Absolutely. That was his primary motivation:

http://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-washington-post-for-political-influence-2013-8

[stillwaiting]

6. That is some blatantly disingenuous bullshit.

As anyone who keeps up with DU knows, the TPP is about so very much more than trade.

It fucking pisses me off that an endorsement can be given in light of the fact that so very much has been purposefully hidden from just about every person living in this country. That right there should cause enough outrage to stop any chance of this from passing in a supposed democracy or representative democracy.

[cali]

7. It's about just about anything BUT trade

and it sure as shit isn't about lowering tariffs.

[octoberlib]

9. K&R

The comments are well worth reading.

[El_Johns]

10. Like WaPo cares about inequality.

[X_Digger]

11. Why yes, if we throw away manufacturing jobs, the distance between bottom and the top will shrink

.. since an unemployed person doesn't count in that math.

What fucking morons.

[Buns_of_Fire]

12. WaPo decides that two wrongs DO make a right, after all!

And that "fool me once, shame on you..." is a really stupid statement, even before ex-president Shit-fer-Brains swallowed his own lips trying to say it.

And that "once burned, twice shy" doesn't apply here and we should burn ourselves as often as possible, because, you know, FREEDOM!

[TheKentuckian]

13. What a lovely piece of con artistry

Sure, let's have another bite of that apple. This time it will work, pinky swear!

[cali]

14. At least the NYT editorial endorsement was on the shamefaced side of it

this is just so brazen.

[subterranean]

15. So many contradictions in that editorial

On the one hand, it says the TPP won't have any significant impact on U.S. trade with countries other than Japan (with its declining and aging population) and Vietnam because we already have "free trade" deals with all the other countries. On the other hand, it tells us that the TPP will somehow usher in a new era of prosperity for American workers and that we'll all regret it if we "miss that opportunity." (Reminds me of those advertising pitches: "Hurry, you must act now! This offer ends soon!&quot If it's such a great deal, why can't we see what's in it?

At least the editorial acknowledges that the U.S. has a skewed income distribution, and that earlier "free trade" deals are partly to blame. But later it tells us that this inequality is natural, and the relative income equality after WW2 until 1980 was an aberration, so we should get used to it.

Finally, it tries to pull the wool over our eyes by pretending that the TPP is about free trade, when all indications are that it is mostly about expanding the power of multinational corporations at the expense of ordinary citizens.

The whole thing reeks of the kind of propaganda the Post used to sell the Iraq war. We know how that turned out.

[MisterP]

16. that's how they do things: drumbeat that Plan X great and wonderful for 3 years,

maybe throw in a few Bircher nuts as "the opposition," pass it, say it's crap and it'll get reformed later, then years down the road say "whattya gonna do--repeal it?!"