Quoting Freddie: When Reihan and Drezner talk about globalization being somehow imperiled, I shook my head. There is no issue-- none-- that is enforced in the blogosphere with more intellectual violence and ruthless quashing of dissent than the notion that globalization must be supported by all people at all times. You can disagree about almost anything, but you better not disagree about globalization. That is a one-way ticket to irrelevance and being banished from the ranks of Very Serious People.

Never mind that lower class and lower middle class Americans have every reason to be angry about the losses in employment levels from globalization; about utterly flatlined real wages; about the loss of the ability to collectively bargained for improved standard of living, thanks to the lack of any apparatus to privilege American workers above those who will work in squalid, unsafe conditions for next to nothing; about the flat lie that economic growth would float all boats and improve their lives dramatically; about the utter cratering of the American manufacturing industry. It doesn't matter-- people at all skeptical of globalization are not to be taken seriously.

Quoting qingl78: Do I misunderstand or are a couple of conservatives/glibertarians seeing benefit of government intervention in the economy in the current recession? Have I got it right that there are a couple of conservatives who want a robust social safety net (at least in China)?

Maybe these guys aren't conservative/glibertarians?

Quoting Freddie: When Reihan and Drezner talk about globalization being somehow imperiled, I shook my head. There is no issue-- none-- that is enforced in the blogosphere with more intellectual violence and ruthless quashing of dissent than the notion that globalization must be supported by all people at all times. You can disagree about almost anything, but you better not disagree about globalization. That is a one-way ticket to irrelevance and being banished from the ranks of Very Serious People.

Never mind that lower class and lower middle class Americans have every reason to be angry about the losses in employment levels from globalization; about utterly flatlined real wages; about the loss of the ability to collectively bargained for improved standard of living, thanks to the lack of any apparatus to privilege American workers above those who will work in squalid, unsafe conditions for next to nothing; about the flat lie that economic growth would float all boats and improve their lives dramatically; about the utter cratering of the American manufacturing industry. It doesn't matter-- people at all skeptical of globalization are not to be taken seriously.

Quoting claymisher: I blame the "econ 101" two-step. You show people the supply and demand graph, you give people the little parable about comparative advantage and gains from trade, and mention some hand-wavy stuff about the winners winning more than the losers losing, and everybody goes home happy. Step two is, government is bad, redistribution is bad, so never compensate the losers.

(As for me, I'm for the open economy with robust social insurance, like Denmark and the Netherlands.)

Quoting bkjazfan: millions of well paying jobs working for progressive companies in information technology sector. That never materialized and many of those jobs went offshore, too.

Quoting bkjazfan: However, what me worry, there is always "American Idol." Things can't be that bad.

Quoting TwinSwords: Yep. At my company, the IT department had 1200 US employees in 1998. Today there are fewer than 300. All those jobs moved to China and India. And the process continues: a team of IT people I work with almost every day will be losing their jobs to India sometime in the next few weeks. 18 more American families thrown to the wolves.

You can hire 20-30 Chinese or Indian IT professionals for the cost of a single American. Despite all the disadvantages of outsourcing IT work to people who are 8-12 time zones away, it's hard to argue with the economics. I'm not an economist, but it seems to me that the world's economic leader (the US) could have chosen to exert some pressure to protect US workers. Instead of lowering American standards of living to that of the 3rd world, we should be trying to bring the 3rd world up to our standards.

LOL, so true. See Roger Waters' Amused to Death.

Quoting Freddie: When Reihan and Drezner talk about globalization being somehow imperiled, I shook my head. There is no issue-- none-- that is enforced in the blogosphere with more intellectual violence and ruthless quashing of dissent than the notion that globalization must be supported by all people at all times. You can disagree about almost anything, but you better not disagree about globalization. That is a one-way ticket to irrelevance and being banished from the ranks of Very Serious People.

Never mind that lower class and lower middle class Americans have every reason to be angry about the losses in employment levels from globalization; about utterly flatlined real wages; about the loss of the ability to collectively bargained for improved standard of living, thanks to the lack of any apparatus to privilege American workers above those who will work in squalid, unsafe conditions for next to nothing; about the flat lie that economic growth would float all boats and improve their lives dramatically; about the utter cratering of the American manufacturing industry. It doesn't matter-- people at all skeptical of globalization are not to be taken seriously.

Quoting TwinSwords: Unfortunately, there seems to be no immediate reason to hope for a change in our present course, as both parties are in thrall to the wealthy. If anyone doubts this, see Max Baucus's gift to insurance industry and boot to the face of the American people. One almost wonders how many millions Baucus is being paid in bribes – unless he really is just naturally that malevolent.

As they scoured the 223-page document, many of the most influential players found elements to dislike, but not necessarily reasons to kill the effort. Most enticing was the prospect of 30 million new customers.