This double standard galls me. If a trend is detrimental to American workers, it's market trends, like the hand of God, irresistible. If it's beneficial, it's a historical fluke (post-WWII boom).
I might buy this if the U.S. government had been a neutral bystander in this process of globalization and the hollowing out of the middle class. In that case, we could say that it was just economics. But, in reality, the government:
- Incentivizes and fails to do anything about offshore tax havens
- Doesn't bust trusts
- Has low tax rates on capital
- Sets immigration and trade laws favorable to corporations
- Spends tons of money on pork, including the porkiest pork of them all, the military
and so on, ad infinitum. Would this process have happened anyway? Maybe. But our government, and the companies running it, actively accelerated it in every way they could. If these trends can't be controlled to some extent, why have so many lobbying dollars been spent to accelerate them?
Most of the things you mention, poor enforcement of tax havens, immigration policy, low taxes on capital, massive military spending, coincided with the development of globalism or were a reaction to it.
But regardless I disagree with your thesis, as I hardly see globalism as something that's detrimental to America as a whole. That may be the mainstream narrative but it's largely inaccurate. The thing about capitalism is that it goes throw booms/busts and it evolves. This is just another phase and we've all been pretending we're in control but the reality of the situation has become apparent recently.
So the dichotomy between historical fluke and market trends doesn't really exist. Historical flukes are market trends.
On further thought, you're right about this. I was rather inarticulately trying to remark on the fact that the supposed "inevitability" of market trends is always used as an excuse to avoid pro-labor legislation, but never pro-business legislation.
> I hardly see globalism as something that's detrimental to America as a whole
Well, we're increasingly seeing that there's no such thing as America "as a whole". There's capital, who it's good for, and labor, who it may be good and bad for in various ways, but a net bad, I'd say. Good for your 401K and the cost of your iPhone, not so much for your salary or employment prospects.
If you take "good for GDP" to mean "good for America as a whole", then yeah, it's probably good. Problem is where that GDP growth is going.
> you think the US government has been highly influential in developing 'globalism'
Yes and no. I think the gov't has been highly influential in ensuring the gains from it go to capital and that its negative effects on labor are not reined in. Globalization would have happened anyway but the govt's approach to it has resulted in more inequality and dislocation than was necessary.
As for whether the government could have slowed or did hasten the process, hard to say, but I think so.
This is most certainly true. And I think dmix hit on a very important point when he mentioned that its hard for politicians to sell a future thats not all rosy and prosperous for everyone.
Off the bat, one of the things the US Govt. could most certainly have done is provide Universal Healthcare and some kind of funding for expanding basic education. I think about all that money earned by US corporations lying abroad...if you think about it, if we had a better taxation system, the strength of US corporations, their ability to generate such profits from around the globe could have been deployed to make all (or most) Americans have better healthcare and education.
I couldn't find where he made that exact point, if he did, I would reply to it by saying that what politicians sell and what they actually do are two completely different things. Both sides of the aisle have been selling rosy futures and working towards the exact opposite for decades. I'd say that Bernie & Trump were evidence that the message "your future isn't all that rosy unless we change substantially" resonated this election.
dmix and I agree globalization is here to stay. I was just a little irritated by his implication that the way we need to respond is by "developing new industries" and "adapting to the global marketplace" and all that jargon. I'd say the S&P has adapted just fine to the global marketplace. The problem is that the median American is worse off anyway. Your second paragraph is apt about some potential solutions.
This is an important and underrated idea that so often gets lost thanks to politics. Much like the drug war, people think that market trends and phenomenons can be controlled somehow, that they are simply choices that people make, and those choices can be controlled - people can simply just choose not to make that choice or face consequences from the state. Rather than a whole new paradigm, something that generates real value that taps into a raw supply/demand, even if it means taking big risks, and that will exist whether or not we ignore it. This is how many ineffective government policies get made.
America needs to embrace globalism as an unhappy reality. The problem is that they have been operating for two decades as if it didn't come with a big downside - that globalism is this great new thing that will make everyone richer. Trump and Bernie have been feeding off this ignored reality without addressing the real consequence. Rather globalism being sold as something that is all good, it should have been sold as a tough new evolution of the marketplace, much like a recession correcting an imbalanced investment bubble. It doesn't need to be rejected by an outsider strongman politician but embraced by an outsider who is willing to face the reality that the consequences extend well beyond the influential class in Washington and they aren't all good.
You can't force your way back to the old reality as if the market phenomenon didn't exist, but you can minimize the downside as you transition to the new reality and do what you can to stay on top of it.
Sadly, hard medicine and politics don't go together. Even if it's the best (and only) medicine.
To continue the drug war analogy, the goal should be minimizing the harms of peoples addictions rather than trying to pretend the addictions won't happen. Likewise the economy needs to either a) compete with the globe in manufacturing and/or b) develop new industries.
I'm not as convinced as many people are that a) is not possible, Apple clearly thinks there's plenty of potential there and so do I. But I'm quite confident that that US is failing to do b) properly. In my business class they called it a new "service-based economy" but clearly that has been insufficient to keep employment and wages high. To develop new industries in place of manufacturing they need to rekindle entrepreneurship and small businesses to give life to new industries. I get the impression the US government is obsessed with appeasing existing BigCos (just look at TPP or Obama's policies during the financial crisis) rather than developing the next generation of industry that functions well in a global marketplace. Silicon Valley is a big piece of the puzzle, but even then it's treated as a sideshow in Washington (even more so now, which is a big fault of Trump) but in the same vein it can't be the only one moving forward.
I really hope Trump's liberal tax and regulatory policy helps boost b). The risk of course is that the usual Washington backroom dealings by legacy BigCos and special interests will guide policy even further towards tired old ideas (like making Wall St even more money) over helping develop new business. At a minimum we know that Trump is motivated to help with a)... so that's something.
(I purposefully ignored social policy consequences here as this comment is getting long enough)