CSpan2 Booknotes, 9am EST: Jeff Faux on Global Trade (must see tee vee!)

[Kolesar]

I caught most of this a few weeks ago. He details how NAFTA was concieved to help all three countries--that is, the wealthy class of Canada, Mexico, and the United States.

He has a good take on how the insurance companies strongarmed the automakers to kill health care reform. A decade and a half later, the big three are begging the federal government to take over their "legacy" health care costs for pensioners. That is hardly a fix. They blew it in 1993.

His other revealing thesis is that global trade helps the red states--big agribusiness--and hurts the blue states--manufacturing.

Note to the Democratic Party--job losses to global outsourcing is the ultimate wedge issue for 2006 and beyond.

[The2ndWheel]

1. Kick

TV does do some good sometimes, and this is one of those hours.

"job losses to global outsourcing is the ultimate wedge issue for 2006 and beyond."

It may be a wedge issue, but it won't work. Globalization isn't going to stop before it collapses on its own. There may be a politician here and there that speak against it, but none of them really have any power. It works the same way as any expansion does. Could anyone(outside of another empire) have stopped the western expansion of America(or any center of power, Rome, Russia, whoever, not just picking on America)? No, and many died because they were in the way. That's what globalization has done, is doing, and will do.

The only way this expansion stops is by it falling under the pressure of it's own weight. There is no other system/empire/whatever to counter-balance it. It won't be a China for example, because their elite are in on it with the elite from around the world.

[liveoaktx]

2. Very interesting speaker

[liveoaktx]

3. "They don't want a social contract"-yup, makes sense

As the author says, it isn't that the corporations are trying to deliberately ruin this country, they are merely indifferent.

His book "The Global Class War" sounds like a good read.

[Kolesar]

4. Per the health care question: "Whose side are you on"

was asked of the Big Three by the insurance companies. At that moment, health care reform died.

[sarahlee]

5. I started a new thread without seeing this one

So I asked the admin's to delete the one I started. --- Looks like they merged it into this one.

[sarahlee]

6. "The Global Class War" by Jeff Faux

I have not read this yet, but am going to order it after watching the the author on CSpan2's Book TV this morning.

Review at The Economic Policy Institute:
http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/books_global_class_war

"You will never think about 'free trade' the same way after reading Jeff Faux's superb book. As Faux makes clear, the globalization debate is really about whose interests are served by global elites, and how we need to go about reclaiming a democracy that serves ordinary people. This book should transform public discourse in America."
—Robert Kuttner, founding coeditor of The American Prospect and a contributing columnist to Business Week

Publisher:
http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0471697613.html

We talk all the time about China taking jobs, the number of things we are importing from them, and how China holds so much of our debt. But did you realize that it is American investor money that is funding the making of all those gadgets we import? One more way that the rich get richer and the rest of us struggle along. Watching the Book TV program, I realize that Faux probably isn't going to tell me anything I don't already know. But my practice is to buy, read, share with friends and then donate to the local library to get books on their shelves that expose these ideas. So I am going to order and read it anyway.

[Joanne98]

7. "The Party of Davos". We got sold out!

[Kolesar]

8. We were following it in the GD forum

A "few of us" at least: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=578738&mesg_id=578738

[liveoaktx]

10. The book sounds excellent-and he's a great speaker

I was reminded of one of the first political books I read, the one from Jim Hightower entitled something like "Thieves in High Places" about Bushco.

[sarahlee]

11. Sorry I missed that

Personal/family stuff happening this past fall and now trying to catch up economically a bit, has kept my time on DU waaaaay down....

Thanks for sharing that link.

[lectrobyte]

9. I only caught the last half of it, but definitely seemed worth reading.

He had a lot of harsh things to say about Democrats, too, such as we comitted suicide with NAFTA -- the winners were Wall Street and red-stage agribusiness, the losers blue state manufacturing workers.

[The2ndWheel]

12. "we comitted suicide"

Those three words shouldn't be together after watching that program.

"the winners were Wall Street and red-stage agribusiness, the losers blue state manufacturing workers."

Don't forget the red-state farmers losing, and blue-state manufacturing CEO's winning.