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Showing Original Post only (View all)Duh!!! Protectionism is rising because globalization has hurt American workers. [View all]
Free trade advocates keep bailing out water from their lifeboat but they won't recognize the cannon hole that's been blown through it: globalization has destroyed job stability, stagnated wages, and has kept job growth LAGGING BEHIND population growth.
Free trade advocates can't bring themselves to realize that the longer globalization goes, the more spectacular its collapse will be. It is Ouroboros.
Protectionism isn't a nationalist or racist response. It is an immune system response to a clear and present economic pathogen. Globalization cannot sustain itself - by nature it is a polluting influence that cannot survive without keeping third world nations impoverished (see: the US telling Haiti not to raise its minimum wage) while moving jobs out of more economically stable nations, thereby destabilizing them. Globalization must destabilize the healthy and keeps the weak perpetually weak. If weak nations become strong then there's no reason for globalization: because then it costs too much to continue.
Globalization holds no benefits for American workers. The trade deficit is itself a shining example of what is inherently wrong with the system. No amount of reform can make this deficit go away. And that trade deficit is the world's anti-American sentiment given voice: American workers are being driven out of the global economy, and even being driven out of their own economy. Free traders know this, and they would resort to anything to keep this fact from being discussed.
Unfortunately for them, Americans know they are being pushed out of the global and even domestic economy. Which is why the great modern Ouroboros is unsure of whether it will be put down mercifully by protectionism, or whether it will be allowed to keep imploding.
Oh yes, free traders, globalism is very much imploding. It is headed for a disastrous end by its own hand, or by the hand of Protectionism. There is no scenario that sees globalism coming to a good end. The only choices left are whether it will collapse disastrously on its own, or whether it will be euthanized by the electorate. Globalization has passed that point of no return. Self-destruction or economic euthanasia. What will it be?
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/06/a_new_deal_for_globalization.html
In short: remember how everyone said Americans need more skills and education? Well, those who got that, are benefiting less and less. Because of globalization, Americans are competing harder than anyone in the world for a ever-shrinking pool of jobs and decreasing wages, relative to the population.
The problem is not how much education Americans get. The problem is that only 1% of Americans can ever be in the 99th percentile, period, no matter how much education the country gets. The problem is that the gains from globalization are only going to 1% of Americans. Everyone else is getting the shaft.
If every American had a PhD in a high-tech field, there would still only be 1% of Americans whose incomes would rise as a result of globalization. Before globalization matured in the 1980s, this was not the case. Free traders don't ever want to talk about that. No matter how much you bring it up, they will not discuss it. It is the smoking gun of globalization, the shining evidence of its culpability in the decline of America's working class.
In short: globalization displaces Americans from manufacturing, and these displaced workers are trying to get into other fields, all of which are becoming overcrowded with applicants. Trade adjustment assistance doesn't work because of one basic problem: there are not enough jobs to go around. Ever played musical chairs? It's like that.
If there hadn't been globalization, domestic jobs would not have left the country, and this would not have happened.
In short: globalization has forced more people to get college degrees, and now there are a glut of college graduates, which is driving their wages down by right of increased supply overwhelming employer demand.
If there hadn't been globalization, domestic jobs would not have left the country, and this would not have happened.
This does absolutely nothing for people who don't have a job, and is a perfect explanation for why there is nothing that can be done to save Globalism.
Nothing can be done. Even invoking Franklin Delano "I stopped Smoot/Hawley" Roosevelt is useless against reality: globalism is going to die, and it is going to die quite painfully, if not by protectionism then by a total economic collapse either because of the ongoing pattern of mass impoverishment, or the collapse of the US Dollar.
Invoking FDR cannot save Globalism. Globalization is a WEAPON to use against America's working class, and nothing more. The question that free traders have left to deal with is: which awful, painful way do they want this anti-American weapon to die? All that is left is Protectionism now, or a devastating collapse later. That's it and that's all that's left for Globalism to choose, folks.