If there is one thing good to say about Free Trade and Global Capitalism...it is perhaps this:
We in North America -- or at least the middle and lower classes -- are suffering such that millions of people in some of the poorest countries in the world (or what used to be -- China, Mexico, India, The Philippines) --- who are, generally speaking much more impoverished than us, or at least were before Free Trade and Global Capitalism affected them and us -- can work -- and at least take something home to feed their families...Indeed, China and India are probably two of the most economically solid and self-sufficient countries in the world right now, China, in effect, now owns much of North America so the negative here is that Free Trade and Global Capitalism was, and still is, a 'win-lose' conflict solution -- other countries and people in these countries gaining at our expense....One can say that 'Ultra-Powerful-North American-Unions' has lead to the death or self-destruction of the North American Manufacturing Industry and/or that Corporate Leaders at the time that Reagan and Mulroney were in power, got in their respective ears to influence their change in political policy -- out with the tariffs and National Protectionism like Japan has -- and in with Free Trade and Global Capitalism which sent North American Manufacturing Industries to all corners of the world....
Whoever, and wherever the responsibility lies, both historically and still today -- Big Unions, Big Corporations, and/or Big Government being affected more by Big Corporations than by Big Unions obviously -- the result of Free Trade and Global Capitalism has been the destruction of most of the major manufacturing jobs in North America. Some of them -- like the car manufacturing jobs -- are coming back, but many never will....Consequently, so many North Americans -- both Americans and Canadians -- losing their jobs in shut down manufacturing plants (I can still see some of these shuts down automobile parts plants where I live)...and with these lost manufacturing jobs, so too have many Unions lost power, and their constituencies, leaving individual workers to fight among themselves for left-over jobs, paying less money, with less benefits, sometimes not even overtime or holiday pay for part-timers and contract workers, and no collective bargaining power to take on much more powerful corporations with a large, unemployed work force to continue to pick from...
In effect, first and second world countries are slithering down the economic totem pole while third world countries are climbing up it...
Great for the previously impoverished countries like China and India that are now more economically more stable than America and Canada -- indeed, we have even become dependent on their financial loans....
However, Free Trade and Global Capitalism sure has not helped North America except for Global Corporate Leaders...
Japan, to my knowledge, has stayed true to their principle of National Protectionism...
And they haven't sank economically like North America and Europe did...
At least that is how I see the whole Free Trade and Global Capitalism business...since Reagan and Mulroney signed the agreement....
I'm not talking from an expert's eyes...
But from a citizen's eyes, a lay person's eyes...
And I don't think I am very wrong....
-- dgb, April 25th, 2011, updated Dec. 18, 2012
-- David Gordon Bain
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