kangaeru

For those of you who don't know, the United States is crippling the international economy.

Think about that for a second...we are CRIPPLING the international economy.

You look at the Iraq war like it means something--it's just a side show, meant to distract the masses from the real underlying events going on. But that's how truly wise men go about their business...undetected because of their preconceived distractions.

Okay so I probably sound a little looney right now, like this belongs in conspiracy theories or something. That would be true...if these were theories without extensive evidence to support them.

The extensions through which the U.S. subjugates third world nations are known as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) . The IMF was a bank set up after World War II which was meant to allow ruined countries to make low interest loans so they could rebuild. The WTO is the international 'trade police' and is comprised of the largest countries in the world. If you want to join the club, you have to agree to play by their rules, or you can trade with none of those countries--which is pretty all of the major global economic players.

So, a poor country wants to join the club. They want to take out loans from the IMF so that they can invest into their industries and enter the global market with some competitiveness. In order for a country to receive a loan from the IMF, they must conform to mandatory structural adjustment programs. SAP's typically forced countries to cut a lot of spending, specifically on public health, education, transportation, etc. They weak labor laws and give more strength to employers, they force governments to end subsidies of protected domestic markets.

Take Haiti for example. Rice is the main staple food of their country, and in 1986 they imported only 7,000 tons of rice a year, their domestic industry creating supply for the majority of people. After pressure from the WTO and the U.S. to end the government's protection of the rice farmers, citing it as being unfair, the government conceded. Around the same time this happened, the U.S. instituted a national farm bill giving a wide range of American farmers U.S. government subsidies--in the case of American rice farmers, 40% of their profits came from the U.S. govt. So...of course, Haitian farmers couldn't compete with the foreign rice flooding the country, and the amount of rice imported to the country rose to 192,000 tons at a cost of 50 million dollars a year to the economy.

The purpose of structural adjustment programs on the surface is to make third world countries economy's stable enough so that they will be able to attract foreign investment, and pay off their debt (with interest) to the IMF. What really happens is that these SAP's sabotage a country's ability to independantly support itself--it comes to rely on international suppliers for all of its staple products like food, cooking oil, etc, and multinational corporations for labor supply. We have all heard of sweatshops, and that is the kind of conditions many of these workers are forced to live in. If they try to protest, they're marched back to work by the army. If they try to unionize, they're assassinated. If they try to quit and find work elsewhere, they're black listed and can't find work anywhere. They're paid only enough to sustain their lives so that they can come to work and toil the next day. This is the economic freedom which the U.S. spreading throughout the world--we're destroying the lives of millions of people all so we can live saturated in our own indulgences.

The funny thing is, we're cannibalizing our own country. All of our firms are going to countries where labor is cheaper and products can be made for less, and then they're shipped here. The same cheap flood of imports which we use to ruin other country's economies is exactly what is happening to us, although we are so huge it is going to take time for the effects to show to the point where people can see it everyday.

For example, in 1994 GM built a large production facility in Mexico, for Suburbans. In 1994, the price of a Suburban was 21-25k U.S. dollars. In 1996, when the Mexican production plant produced 84,500 suburbans compared with the 85,000 built in the U.S., the price of suburbans rose to 25-31k. The average pay of the U.S. plant workers was $18.96 an hour--in Mexico, the plant workers were paid $1.54 an hour. So why did the price skyrocket?

There is a growing trend in the world of CEO's hording all of the profit and passing none of it on to the consumers. In 1970 the average CEO to average employee pay of fortune 500 companies was 49 to 1. By 2002, this number had risen to 354 to 1. Can you imagine that? For every 1 dollar you make, your CEO makes $354. It's just mind blowing.

This is global capitalism...or global imperialism, if you want to call it that. Since the days of Old Europe, stronger, more economically and militarily advanced countries have subjugated weaker smaller countries, making them specialize in the exportation of only one product, and making them buy all of their products from the mother country, holding them economically hostage. What do you do if you're Jamaican and your ONLY profitable export is bananas, and all of a sudden there's a global drop in the price of bananas. All of a sudden, you're making half of what you used to, but everything you still HAVE to buy to sustain your life is now double the real cost of what it used to be.

This is why people truly hate our country. Because we control the WTO and IMF, which are run by a 'largest piece of the pie' majority rule. The United States holds about 17% of the voting power, and together with Europe and Japan combined, these three major areas hold over 85% of voting power. So if the most powerful countries in the world are the ones influencing the policies which directly affect them, how can you not expect a conflict of interest to arise? But that's the whole point, that's how they like it. And there is nothing anybody can do to stop them.

When the North American Free Trade Alliance talks happened in Miami, FL, 50,000 + people showed up to protest it. They were met by 5,000 riot police with tear gas and rubber bullets. People died from catching rubber bullets to their ears or eyes, but you never heard about any of this. It looked like some kind of scene out of a science fiction movie in with a neo-facist government supresses it's peoples' right to free speech...it's the Tinnamen square of U.S. history, but NOBODY knows about it.

Because we're always distracted.

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highthief

Or maybe Haiti just was better off under Duvalier (as they were until 86 when got the boot) than under the anarchy that has taken place there since? Or perhaps the population explosion on that poor little island has degraded the soils to the point where growing anything at all is a major challenge?

Why do all these poor or lower-middle income nations (like Mexico or other Latin American states) want to join NAFTA if it sucks so hard?

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Si vis pacem parabellum.

politicophile

Free trade benefits all the nations involved.

I would be happy to go into details about why this is so, but your rant against removing barriers to trade is fairly general, so I'll just give a basic overview. To begin, in the Haitian rice farmers example, you are correct that it costs more to import nearly all the country's rice rather than just a small fraction. What you are leaving out of the equation is the cost to consumers to buy the rice sold at an unnecessarily high price by local farmers. The imported rice is obviously cheaper than the domestically produced rice, or nobody would buy it. Thus, despite your true but misleading claim that import costs rose, the consumers in Haiti need to pay less to buy their rice, which is a staple.

On the down side, all the Haitian rice farmers go out of business. In countries where agriculture is the major source of employment, this kind of undercutting can be devastating. In the short term, farmers will lose the means to support themselves. In the long term, Haiti will begin to produce a different sort of good that is comparitively advantageous.

The end result will be that the output of Haiti's rice industry will be replaced with goods imported from another country that were made more efficiently. Haiti will develop a different export that they can manufacture with comparative advantage to other nations. Thus, using the same resources, more goods are produced and the consumer receives them from lower prices.

And as for the NAFTA riots, there will always be liberal college students who don't take economics courses. White American college students always seem to know what is best for people living in third world countries.

__________________
The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. ~John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

host

I disagree with the points contained in your post and I'll be happy to examine and either concur with, or attempt to refute any references that you can offer to back them up. (Preferably with linked excerpts....)

As a side note, I find your new avatar very offensive. You have chosen to represent yourself here with a visual symbol of a POTUS who was devisive, partisan to the point of pandering, incompetent, disconnected, and extremely similar in accomplishment and in presence to the man who currently occupies that office. I consider you avatar choice as baiting or trolling on this forum.
The avatar I have chosen here, in contrast, is a photo of a man who stood for the principles of international justice and accountability that influenced the preservation of world peace for 50 years after his passing, and hopefully far into the future.

Everyone is free to choose whatever avatar they wish.....and personal offense is no reason to change it, as someone who respects free speech, I would hope you understand this.

We can all follow your example, and make this board even more highly polarized than it already is. I take the risk of doing that by bringing the offense I take to your choice, to your attention here.Yes...you do I think that it is worth the risk of pointing this out to you, with an appeal for emphasizing our POV's here with words and ideas, instead of with controversial visual symbols.

In advance of any argument that you might make in criticism of my avatar, I will be happy to change it to a photo of Mahatma Ghandi, if it would be more appropriate to the goal that I am trying to achieve here, in your opinion.



There is no reason to become agitated by a picture....it serves no purpose

politicophile

I'm game: which points do you disagree with?

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The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. ~John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

kangaeru

Okay guys, since you both think you can handle this, let me refer you to someone who can put it much better than I. If you're really into this politickin shit youre not going to be able to stop reading.

http://people.umass.edu/sluce/glob/Yates2.pdf

There you have it. Everything I am saying here is because of what I read and how much sense it made in what THAT guy wrote. The argument I am trying to relate from is this directly, so read it and then attack that if you want to take a crack at me. Let's not get into this personal petty avatar playground sissy bullshit. Okay then.

If you want to read some additional stuff,

http://people.umass.edu/sluce/glob/Yates3.pdf

http://people.umass.edu/sluce/glob/Yates8.pdf

I suggest you do, because I have.

"Capitalism was born in theft and would not have been possible without it."

I'm out.

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Dont be afraid to change who you are for what you could become

kangaeru

Yeah, it's cheaper. You know why? Because the Haitian rice farmers had to compete against the U.S. farmers who are subsidized by the U.S. Govt to the tune of 40% of their profits. Not really fair competiton when a giant country with the largest economy in the world, the most efficient science and technology in the world, make the little guy cut their subsidies when we use them ourselves. But we control the WTO so if people don't like it they can bite us, right?

Yeah, I know about comparitive advantage. Too bad that's bullshit, because the IMF and WTO don't allow that to happen. The structural adjustment programs make these countries extremely exploitable by multinational corporations, and all domestic industries are wiped out until nearly everyone is working in sweat shops. When a country depends on imports for ALL it's staples, and foreign investment for ALL it's labor demand, they've got no independance, and therefore no bargaining power, and in capatialistic environments, that means you get abused.
See the last thing I said.

YOU are the one who knows nothing about how real economics work. In an ideal capitalistic environment, yes, the things you speak of would theoretically work. However the United States and other economic super powers are in a position to control the policies of the people they trade with through the WTO and IMF which are under their control. Therefore, there is a totally unfair advantage which is exploited due to a blatant conflict of interest.

Hey, you ever heard of Argentina? Menen implemented ALL of the IMF policies he could, all at the same time, and the economy of Argentina went into a nose dive which they're still recovering from. Explain that to me.

You talk about comparitive advantage like it's people making apples instead of oranges because they can make 3 bushels of apples per hour but only 1.5 of oranges. That's not the case--this is neo-colonialism, where most third world nations only have one or two major outputs, which are raw materials. They focus all their energy on this and become completely dependant on it--if the price of their export drops then all of a sudden all of their imports are so much more expensive...it's completely unstable.

I would really like to see what you have to say about those Michael Yates articles. You've been pretty quiet since I posted them.

Put up some rebuttal or shut up with your condescending pompous attitude.

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Dont be afraid to change who you are for what you could become

Cynthetiq

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Willravel

But tree trade means freedom from both government and private coercion. Let's keep that in mind and read on...
How do you or I know if they will find another good or service to export to take the place of rice? Even if they do, what are the odds that the rice farmers will have the skills to enter this new good or service industry?

Those who orchestrated Haiti's transfer to free trade knew that Haiti couldn't compete with the rice from the US. 75% of the workers in Haiti are in agraculture, btw. Once the rice industry is in shambles, corperations can move in and take advantage of political instability and a lack of labor laws. I'm sure you remember the news about Disney running sweatshops in Haiti back in the mid to late 90s. The reason those shops were able to operate is because of the vacume created by free trade. Because they were making 2-3 cents per hour, they were able to produce the goods at an extremly competitive price. The problem is that sweatshops are essentially filled with slaves working in sub human conditions.
I've only taken a few economic courses (and I'm obviously very liberal), but I understand the reprecussions of free trade on Haiti pretty well. I think it's best not to promote slavery.

politicophile

I oppose all farm subsidies, including those in the United States. It is extremely unfortunate that the U.S. resorts to them because they result in the unfair destruction of efficient farms in poorer nations. There is some solace in the fact that U.S. subsidies are reactionary. To what, you ask? To the mother of all farm subsidy programs: the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy. The number one contributor to the starvation of farmers in the third world is France, not the United States. I say this not to rationalize the actions of the U.S., as I believe our farm subsidies are as deplorable as the next guy's. However, it helps to explain why U.S. subsidies exist: if we didn't have them, the EU would put our farmers out of business too.

I don't know where you got the idea that the U.S. controls the WTO. Do you think we have more influence than the EU?

Sure, the race to the bottom is a phenomenon that one sees in certain third world countries. I bet you've never heard of the race to the top, though. In an age where large corporations need to compete in multiple international markets in order to be successful, the corporations must design products that satisfy the most stringent regulations so that they can be sold in the greatest possible number of markets. This means, for example, that stringent automotive emissions standards in California can force Japanese car manufacturers to redesign the powertrains of cars they sell both in the States and in JDM. Since it is cheaper to design only the cleaner powertrain than to design a clean one for U.S. export and a dirty one for domestic use, you end up with cleaner cars in Tokyo because of regulations put in place in California. In the same way, getting rid of sweatshops would be as simple as banning sweatshop-made goods from the United States. Instantly, you would see factory workers in the third world receiving living wages.

Thank you for filling me in. I strive to eliminate gaps in my knowledge of important concepts.

I'm certainly not denying that there is abuse of free trade by the powerful nations. However, one should not be too hasty to discount the enthusiasm of the third world in signing agreements like NAFTA and CAFTA.

I'm not familiar with this specific example, but I'll say two things: First, I didn't overlook the "he could" clause you added in the second sentence. Were there recommeded reforms that "he couldn't" impliment? Second, nobody, least of all me, is claiming that the IMF is infallable!

Your apples/oranges example indicates to me that you don't understand what comparative advantage is. It is often the case that one nation should make the good they produce less efficiently in the name of comparative advantage. The north-south disparity is shocking and extremely unjust. On this we can agree. But do you have any idea how we might fix it?

I regret that I don't have time to read a 30-page anti-capitalist rant. I am aware of (and disturbed by) global inegalitarianism. However, I see no need to learn more about a problem that I already understand. I am looking for an article written be someone who appreciates the great benefits of capitalism and has suggestions for remedying the drawbacks.

If I'm not mistaken, you are a college student taking a course about the horrors of capitalism taught by an angry Marxist professor who has never worked outside the Academy (i.e., had a real job). You fail to offer real-world solutions, instead deriding the actions of the United States without endeavoring to understand its motives. And then you demand that I should stop being quiet and instead "shut up with [my] condescending pompous attitude." I find it unfortunate that my silence was interpreted as "condescending pompous attitude", as it was merely the result of my personal disinterest in carrying on a conversation with a reactionary college student who has no interest in understanding alternative viewpoints. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some exploiting to do.

__________________
The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. ~John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

Willravel

But what about the abuse? This isn't just some CEOs being dicks, this is millions of jobs lost, regions being economically and politically destabilized, and people dying.

Have you ever had a banana that's not from Chiquita, Dole or Del Monte? You probably never will. A WTO panel in 1999 ruled that the EU could no longer give preferential treatment to banana imports from the Caribbean. The EU had agreed with the Caribbean to purchase 2/3 of all banans from the Caribbean Islands. Thanks to the WTO, mass poverty, high unemployment, regional instability , and starvation overtook the the Caribbean. BTW, the bananas from the Caribbean were the last 3% of bananas produced worldwide that were not under the direct control of Chiquita, Dole or Del Monte. Who elected the WTO panel? No one.

It is because of cases like this that many were forced to sign the CAFTA.

It never hurts to hear someone else's perspective.
Aren't you 20? What real world experience do you have? I'm sory to sound ageist, but the reality of being a 20 year old in America is that you are not likely to have real world experience with complex economics.

I realize that I'm only 22, but I am a VP of a large internet company (just got promoted from head of HR!!). My economics from college is a bit fuzzy, I'll admit. I try to let my conscience lead my intelect in most matters though. In the case of global capitolism and the corporations taking advantage of free trade and the WTO, my sonscience is telling me to try to defend the weak and stop those who would oppress.

kangaeru

I see where you're coming from here, but then why does the U.S. force third world nations to cut their subsidies for farmers? To a degree they are subsidized to offset each other, but it's also so they can carve up third world countries for staple dependance. How else do you explain the amount of food we export to Central and South America?

The WTO is run by a majority vote system. The larger your economy, the larger your vote. Considering the US economy (10,416,820 mil GDP 2002) is more than twice the size of the next largest economy (Japan, 3,978,872 mil GDP 2002), and is actually larger than the next 5 country's GDP's COMBINED (2 Japan - , 3 Germany 1,976,240 mil, 4 UK 1,552,437 mil, 5 France 1,409,604
6 China 1,237,145)

If you want to talk about EU countries, the US has a larger economy and therefore more voting power than Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Spain, and Sweden put together. The US's piece of the voting pie is 17-20%.

Your car example is true, but it works both ways. California IMPOSES those restrictions upon Japanese automakers, if the Japanese want to sell their cars there, they have to comply. California's decision to impose that law has NOTHING to do with capitalism--if the Japanese could sell cheap air polluting cars, that's what we'd be driving today, so you can thank democracy (or republic, whatever you want to call it) for that one.

Did you know international trade rules prohibit governments from discriminating against products on the basis of how they were produced? This means that foreign producers can use pesticides and other chemicals banned in the US on products coming to our markets. Even within our own domestic production, look at the genetic enhancements of cattle and other slaughterhouse livestock. They're given hormonal treatments to make them yeild more meat per animal--yum, cancer tastes good.

You're right, if you banned sweatshop made clothing, those people would get living wages. Who is going to ban sweatshop clothing? The only programs I know of have been grass roots movements at Universities throughout the country. It took sit-ins, protests, large scale student mobilization, and awareness campaigns just to get schools to stop. What kind of power do you have over Filene's, or JC Penny, or Abercrombie? You think these stores are gonna say, "Hey listen producers, we don't like the fact that you're abusing illiterate starving people thousands of miles away from us, we want you to give them living wages so the prices at which you buy from usl go up (or we'll take it out of our profits and you can redistribute it to the workers, for that matter)" Yeah, good luck parting that ocean Moses.


Just doin what I can.

The enthusiasm? Their leaders are enthusiastic, who wouldn't be?-- you get to chill with Bush at a summit some place nice for a few days, wine and dine, spit off the roof onto some dirty college students, and shop yourself around to multinational corporations so you can hook them up with sweetheart deals so you can be wealthy until the day you die. Ask Argentenians how enthusiastic they were in the 90's...right before their economy collapsed and their country fell apart. Oh, what caused it by the way? International banks saw instability in the economy so they whisked away 500 billion dollars one night by armored truck caravan. The Argentenian govt. flipped out, froze all bank accounts, which meant 95% of the country couldn't touch their life savings, while the 5% wealthy elite were able to draw from their off shore accounts. Hundreds of thousands of people stormed the streets with hammers, tin cans, whatever, and literally brick by break destroyed hundreds of banks.


Okay, here's what he could, and did, do.

1. Reduced deficits by cutting govt. spending --this came from education, health care, public works, and environmental programs
2. devalue currency and export more
3. liberalize financial market -- much more volatile short term investments which caused people to go into debt
4. increase interest rates to attract foreign capital -- sweet, now that interest rates are high, no one can take out affordable loans to buy shit they need! Hope you didn't get screwed on a short term investment or you're really in deep shit
5. cut price subsidies on staples -- we've been over what this does
6. weakened labor standards -- put downward pressure on wages and working conditions
7. Auctioned off government run businesses causing widespread privitization of essential institutions (utilities, public water, roads and highways--the street signs in Argentina had MasterCard logos on them--imagine seeing that when you're looking for your exit)

Comparative advantage is just when a country is more efficient at producing something, even though they might not produce MORE of it than another country.

If the US can make 500 liters of beer in an hour or 300 liters of apple cider, assuming the prices per liter are the same, a country which can make 60 liters of beer an hour or 20 liters of apple cider would have comparative advantage over us because they get more liters of beer per liter of cider they don't make, even though we make a lot more volume of both.

Yeah, I know how we can fix it. We have to allow third world governments to invest in public infrastructure. Education, public transportation, healthcare. Education is the most important thing--without education, these people will always just be cheap exploitable labor. When you focus on the important keys which make a society prosperous, a strong economy will come as a side effect--not the other way around.

I do appreciate capitalism. It's a great theory, you take two opposing forces like supply and demand and both will fight until equilibrium and maximum utility is achieved. Let's people work for themselves, go as far as their work ethic allows them, etc. I have NO problem with capitalism. The problem is that anomalies in the system crop up which are cancerous, and break the whole model.

Look at monopolies in the early 20th century. That was an unnatural form of capitalism, because, again, people in power were able to use that power to unfairly influence the market, offsetting the balance. How would you like living in a house on land owned by your company, as you pay off the mortgage to a bank owned by your company? You get paid enough to barely pay your bills...which go back to your employer anyways. That's what happened to some people back then.

It's the same thing now. The world's super powers are monopolies, they use their power to put third world nations in that same kind of dependant situation, where once you're in the hole there is no way out. The way to fix it is what I mentioned before--raising the quality of life of the public. You can't have a strong labor force when millions of people in your country are illiterate and uneducated. It does you no good to have schools, shopping centers, etc, if no one can afford cars and you don't have any cheap public transportation like busses or trains. Build up all those things and then strong economies will crop up as a by product of doing all the other stuff right.

I won't even justify answering any of that, as you're completely wrong on every point. Let's stop tacking on these pot shot comments tothe end of our posts hmm? So we can actually debate this cleanly?

If you're so intellectually superior, why don't you try disproving me without using these tired baseless biases?

Thanks in advance.

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Dont be afraid to change who you are for what you could become

kangaeru

Hey,

Did you see where I made posts refuting all your quotes? Or were you too busy were you too busy trying to whip up sentiment for people who "irrationally" hate bush?

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Dont be afraid to change who you are for what you could become

tecoyah

Seems you guys managed to derail another thread to the point of uselesness....


Congratulations

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