Naturally, our concern for foreign standards of living is in our own self-interest in that foreign standards create demand on a world wide scale.
On a more altruistic note, free and independent labor unions are the basis of any modern democracy. Besides they raise living standards too.
Tom
Rakesh Bhandari wrote:
> 1. What was the consequence of Harkin Bill, the Child Deterrance Act of
> 1993? Shouldn't we know that if we are going to press for bans on imports
> produced by children of <15 yrs old? According to Peter Custers in Capital
> Accumulation and Women's Labour in Asian Economies, there were no
> provisions to guard against the negative consequences of the ban for all
> those families in urban slums areas who, for their survival, are dependent
> on income contributed by children. In her Critique of Postcolonial Reason,
> Spivak reports on the 1995 agreement entered into by a Bangladesh mfg
> group, NGOs and the US Ambassador to Bangladesh to financially compensate
> the parents of the released children and provide primary education to the
> children. It seems to me that Spivak is indicating the 'severance pay'
> amounted to $7.50 while the education provided tended to be useless and
> actually unavailable. She concludes: "The righteous anger of a Harkin Bill
> or the benevolence of a long term benefactor lose all plausibility when
> confronted with the actual indifference and deception that follow the
> dismissal of these children." p. 420
>
> 2. Where was all the righteous anger by protestors and brilliant criticism
> by AFL-CIO post keynesian theorists over the continuing exclusion of
> commodity price stabilization mechanisms? We all know that the US Congress
> failed to ratify the 1947 ITO with such mechanism proposed by Keynes.
> Neither GATT nor the newly established WTO has any of the commodity
> functions envisaged for the ITO.
>
> 3. While protestors were further threatening disruption of foreign exchange
> for third world countries by supporting sanctions which can only be
> arbitrarily applied (since as Barkley has pointed out, they can be applied
> to any and all--or at least most--WTO members), what provisions were they
> proposing to counteract the $500 billion per resource outflow from the
> developing countries, the four principle causes of which are
>
> a. terms of trade losses, this factor alone amounting to a tax of 20-25
> percent on the export earnings of developing countries
> b. debt servicing, another 20-25 percent tax on export earnings
> c. repatriation of profits and transfer pricing
> d. capital flight from developing countries.
> Source Hans Singer in JM Keynes, ed. Soumitra Sharma, 1998
>
> Or should so much of profitability difficulties continued to be put on the
> not too broad shoulders of the third world.
>
> 4. Don't the protestors have an inflated conception of themselves? The US
> ruling class is manifestly using this threat of protectionism in order to
> get more concessions (re: services, insurance, telecommunication,
> repatriation rights, freedom from local suppliers and investors, etc) from
> China before codifying its access to the US market. If successful, then the
> US ruling class will shove trade agreements through to the displeasure of
> the pathetic Hoffa who, along with the AFL-CIO, seems no more than pawns in
> this game.
>
> 5. Aren't we leftists here this least bit concerned with the effects of the
> Seattle protests on the nationalism of the US working class? Didn't many of
> the union rank and file walk away a uniquely opproprious estimation of
> *foreign* ruling classes? Now in Doug's case, I am surprised he is not
> uncomfortable to be in the same bed with Vandana Shiva, but that's another
> story...
>
> 6. If Hoffa, AFL-CIO theorists are going to continue to bellyache about how
> globalization is going to take away 'our' jobs, wouldn't it be appropriate
> at some point to explain why plunging US unemployment has coincided with
> mounting current account and trade deficits?
>
> Yours, Rakesh