>>Well, PTNR passed. What next?
>>Doug
>Minimum wage? Unified child credit? Cheap AIDS drugs for Africa and
>South Asia? Expanded foreign aid budget to fund technology transfer?
>More student loan money?
>Brad DeLong
A few days I stated that 'free trade = eliminate the social safety net, for practical political purposes'.
Do you see any of the factions pushing PNTR with China who are going to support the above things that you mention?
The GOP won't. The DLC won't. Summers won't make this the centerpiece of his term of office. Gore will make some speeches advocating the above, no doubt, but *I've* got more political credits than he'll spend trying to get them actually accomplished.
The WSJ editorial page will certainly not advocate the above; they'll probably have some U Chic alum from a S. American dictatorship wax enthusiastically about the US adopting some of their social policies.
Thomas Friedman (NYT columnist and noted sneerer) won't, even though he was hinting at such things a week or so ago in a column - it will turn out that he was just providing some political cover for PNTR.
You (and possibly James Galbraith) are probably the only economists I will see advocating these things; the others will have more pressing things to say. The rest will either be silent, talk only about more free trade, or wax enthuusiastically about the wonderful social policies of their S. American dictator friends.
In think that we'll see that in the end, in terms of real, existing political forces, free trade = support for abolition of the social safety net, and destruction of social democrary.
Barry