Reply #31: race to the bottom [View All]

[Sorry.]

well, er no not really. Thing is 'free trade' is the west's panacea for everything, from low growth to under development. It hasn't (and doesn't) really worked that way. All of the major economies grew through proctecting their domestic industries from competition and domestic accumulation to invest in infrastructure and education. You used the example of the Soviet Union and it's an excellent one - it's one of very few nations to make a significant economic transformation inside one or two decades (1920s/30s, then again in the 1940s/50s). Why? Import substitution, selling huge quantities of raw materials to invest in new technology and drag the economy artificially into modernity.

You also have to place yourself in the realities of modern economics. It's easier than ever to move your manufacturing workforce (and increasingly your service workforce too) to somewhere cheaper. And there will always be workers more impoverished than you are, and willing to do the work for less. In that situation our hard fought worker's rights, social provision and minimum wage isn't worth shit, because its constantly undermined.

Western workers have rights because they're unionised and fought for them, not because wealthy capitalists decided to throw people a bone. And we stop fighting for them, then they'll rapidly dissapear. Productivity is meaningless if social inequality goes up and real wages go down - which is exactly what is happening