Workers of the World...

BETWEEN 1970 AND 1995 the average import tariff into the united states fell from roughly 31% to about 7%, due to the free trade movement. Richard Nixon was the first american president to really push for open trade. Since 1995, it has leveled off. In his book "The Pooring of America", economist Ravi Batra states that this is the cause of our national economic decline.

When you consider that in the 1950s a man making minimum wage could support a fmaily of four, economic decline, collapse of the value of the american dollar, seems quite real to millions of twenty first century americans.

All this global free trade, with goods and jobs being sent all over the world, with corporations moving operations to low cost labor markets, who benefits? Why is all this happening? To improve the living standard of all humanity? To help the employees? To increase profits for corporations and dividends for shareholders?

International free trade seems to create international conflict. Every time you turn around some country is accusing some other country of deliberating devaluing its currency to gain a trading edge. All wars, it could be argued, are based on economic competition.

Nearly everyone seems to agree that international free trade is a good thing, but nobody seems to know exactly why. Some people, lilke Ravi Batra, argue that it reduces the real wages of workers, exploits labor, and impoverishes nations where labor is increasingly unrewarded, like the united states. Proponents argue that free trade is a blessing to everyone, including the workers. Well, maybe

With all these good obs leaving the united states, american workers are not doing as well at they wre forty years ago, but other countries, like mexico and china, are getting much needed jobs, and the cheap labor is pleasing to american comsumers, if not american workers.

Free trade is great if countries like the united states can create new jobs that are better than the ones they lose, and if third world countries can keep some of the watlth they nmanufuacture, and keep their workers out of poverty. But even in the united states, right now, about one fourth of all jobs pay close to minimum wage, which is poverty level. We are impoverishing the working class in america.

Internationl labor unions, including and uniting workers from from all over the world, including third world countries, would  have a common interest: survival.