>A few days I stated that 'free trade = eliminate
>the social safety net, for practical political purposes'.
When I interviewed Robert Reich for the Nation's WTO roundtable, he said:
>But the political reality is that winners don't compensate losers.
>The only way those who lose from free trade can hope to be
>compensated is if they actively oppose it and hope to be paid off by
>those who gain the most from it. In other words, the hope that their
>opposition can be bought off. I'm not a protectionist. I think the
>gains from trade are significant. I think a lot of very poor people
>around the world would suffer a great deal were we all to put up
>trade barriers. But I don't see any better way to get the winners to
>compensate the losers than for the losers to threaten to block trade
>as a bargaining chip.
This strategy doesn't seem to be working, does it?
Doug