One might ask, though, why service jobs have to be _so_ lower-paid. Without the labor movement devising a way of raising the living standard of service workers dramatically, the labor movement is dead, and even the current tight labor market (which won't last forever) can't be taken advantage of. (This is a gender issue as well, as you -- a femecon subscriber -- should know.) Even in factory jobs, trade cannot explain the steep decline in wages for meatpacking workers, for instance. And what of two-, three-, or more-tiered wage schedules for the same work that sacrifice new hires? And the growth of low-paying subcontractors in the USA? . . .
[mbs] Sure. But while the key concern w/trade has to do with job quality, it does not follow that the main cause of declining job quality is trade. I don't think it is by a long shot. I could also say I think EPI over-emphasizes the issue. There is much else to be interested in.
I take your point via Kim Moody that some jobs can't be moved and on the account should be more vulnerable to labor action. Why they aren't, I couldn't say.
For better or worse, the labor movement has settled on trade as the place to fight. On, say, the Federal budget or industrial action they have not chosen to fight. I would much prefer the latter, but it's not my decision to make.
This goes back to one of my mantras. What is the labor movement? How does it struggle? Where is it going? These are the questions, not exercises which unfavorably compare what's going on with our assorted, favored idealized scenarios for insurgency, whether it's anarchism, council communism, or some other daydream.
Anti-globalism is good politics. It is not always pretty. It has to be dealt with.
PB understands this; he has come to his current position from an entirely different one. The left wants to give him credit for this, instead of pointing out his opportunism, among other gross deficiencies.
An old buzzword at EPI not heard much more recently was 'progressive nationalism,' not much different from your progressive isolationism. I agree that this is good politics, good populist politics actually (as I've said before), and potentially good policy too. But there remains a critique of the economic system in terms of its relation to common living standards -- workers' material self-interest. Foreign policy is not a sufficient response to that, whether it's anti-globalism, protectionism, or progressive isolationism.
mbs