Jack Layton: "Buy Canadian!"

I'm curious. If the principle of protectionism is theoreticaly valid for countries, it should be valid for cities too, right?

Or did I miss

What happened there. I only sent one post.

I would be curious by the way to know the global result of free trade. Has it been positive or negative? Do we have a world-wide statistic to show whether the world's economy has benefitted or suffered through free trade? Clearly to look at Canada alone shows but part of the picture. After all, if Canada suffers 1 dollar from Free trade but a poorer country benefits 2 dollars from free trade, then in fact the world economy would have benefitted 1 dollar from free trade, which would mean that this would be a more efficient way of helping poorer countries than to stop trading with them and then giving them some of our our money thus making them dependent on us.

But Fidel, I'd like to give them a chance. I'll be honest here, I'm not aware of any specific study on this point, but who know, maybe someone in here is. So if someone does have evidence to show the net result to global trade on the world, I'd like to see.

Fidel wrote:

Machjo wrote:

But Fidel, I'd like to give them a chance. I'll be honest here, I'm not aware of any specific study on this point, but who know, maybe someone in here is. So if someone does have evidence to show the net result to global trade on the world, I'd like to see.

What you'll find is that corporate profits have soared and concentration of wealth increased since late 1980's and 1990s. World Bankers have said they have no real information on how globalization has affected desperately poor people. They dont have detailed information as to whether $2 or $3 dollars a day income in one country is significantly better than $1 dollar a day in some other country, or all dollar a day on average poor people living in the poorest part of yet another country. IMF and WTO tend to dictate neoliberal policies to poor countries which were never proven to work in any of the US, Canada or Europe post depression era.

But concentration of wealth and production of wealth are two different things. Concentration could be countered by a wealth tax. That has nothing to do with free trade, but rather the excesses of capitalism. I'm not a socialist myself, but I still don't see why free trade must necessarily be an anti-socialist thing. After all, can't two socialist countries trade with one another? And even a socialist one and a capitalist one, each agreeing to keep its own system?

Also, it's interesting that when we think of trade, we like to dehumanize it. We always talk of trading things. But what about labour-mobility agreements? The EU has such already. Why does the WTO like to focus so much on trading things all the time, and never concenrs itself with people?

I remember on the CBC recently they mentioned that in spite of the recession, Canada was suffering from a 15,000 worker labour shortage owing to a lack of qualified workers in the field. Yet for all we know, we might have unemployed Canadians who have skills that are in shortage aroad. Couldnt a labour-mobility agreement allow foreigners to get jobs in Canada and Canadians to get jobs abroad? How is it that goods can cross borders more easily than humans? If I can sell a good abroad, then should I not also be allowed to seek work abroad? Shouldn't people take priority over goods?

In that sense, we could legitimately argue that labour-mobility agreements should take precedence over free trade agreements. Having said that, though, I still don't see the problem with free trade.

Do the "moderators" have any comment at all regarding just what has happened to this thread ? Is there a new policy at work? Scat lives? Anything goes on any thread? Rational discourse should not inteerfere with the right to say anything?

i.e.

"But concentration of wealth and production of wealth are two different things. Concentration could be countered by a wealth tax. That has nothing to do with free trade, but rather the excesses of capitalism. I'm not a socialist myself, but I still don't see why free trade must necessarily be an anti-socialist thing. After all, can't two socialist countries trade with one another? And even a socialist one and a capitalist one, each agreeing to keep its own system?"

Back to CBC for rational input I guess.

Machjo wrote:

In that sense, we could legitimately argue that labour-mobility agreements should take precedence over free trade agreements. Having said that, though, I still don't see the problem with free trade.

Socialists are not against fair trade or even the idea of globalization. The problem with the capitalist version of G&D(globalization and deregulation) is that what we have are a few rich countries and their corporations raking in revenues world-wide that are sometimes worth several times more than the GDPs of the countries they loot labour and resources from. And the poor countries are typically indebted to western financial institutions and so must agree to terms for emergency aid that tend to cripple the social sectors in order to focus on debt repayment. Think loan sharks and leg-breakers, and that's the western cabal of banksters with NATO as their heavies.

But what I think is just as fundamentally wrong with capitalist globalization is the way in which corporations have been allowed to grow so large. They've attained "supranational" status in most cases and want to basically avoid having to abide by the labour and  environmental laws passed by democratically elected governments. Why do we have elections if important things like laws and wishes of the people are trampled over by these non-elected captains of industry as well as the big time banksters who finance them?

Fidel:

Socialists are not against fair trade or even the idea of globalization.

That's what I thought.

 The problem with the capitalist version of G&D(globalization and deregulation) is that what we have are a few rich countries and their corporations raking in revenues world-wide that are sometimes worth several times more than the GDPs of the countries they loot labour and resources from.

I can agree to that. Though I lean more towards capitalism, I would not call myself a capitalist, but rather capitalistic. I'm open to borrowing from socialism too at times, and have even flirted with anarchism and social democracy. So by no means dogmatic on this front. So in spite of my capitalistic leanings, I agree that the world economy as it is currently structured is unjust. But I'd rather restructure the system itself that turn to protectionism.

And the poor countries are typically indebted to western financial institutions and so must agree to terms for emergency aid that tend to cripple the social sectors in order to focus on debt repayment.

That's true too. Trade is not my strong point, admitedly, though it has come up, surprisingly perhaps, in the field of critical linguistics! According to Robert Phillipson in his book 'Linguistic Imperialism', the World Bank had leant the Phillipines money in the 80's on condition that they increase their investment in English-language learning in their schools. He points out that all this did was make the Phillipine economy and culture ever more dependent on trade with the US. I won't go into too much detail unless you're interested (since then I'd have to go downstairs and get the book and start quoting form it), but it was just one example of what you mention here that I am familiar with. But certainly many of these kinds of issues, though they impact trade, are still peripheral to it. To take the example with the Phillipines, for Canada to have tariffs against them would have done nothing for their independence, because though there is an impact on trade, in the case above the root of the problem has to do with language policy, not trade policy, even though language is the medium through which trade is conducted. So to solve the example here, we'd need to look at the Phillipines' language policy, or perhaps even the UN's, WTO's, and other organizations' language policies. I'm a firm believer in dealing with the root cause of any problem and not the symptoms. So in this case, I'd say that before we just raise tariffs, it would be wiser to first analyse the root cause of this or that unjust trade and tackle the root cause directly if unjust trade is merely the symptom.

  Think loan sharks and leg-breakers, and that's the western cabal of banksters with NATO as their heavies.

I can agree to that.

 But what I think is just as fundamentally wrong with capitalist globalization is the way in which corporations have been allowed to grow so large.

 I can agree to that. But again, this can be remedied directly through wealth taxes, possibly even through UN co-ordination in the case of internationals that try to not pay taxes by shifting across borders all the time.

They've attained "supranational" status in most cases and want to basically avoid having to abide by the labour and  environmental laws passed by democratically elected governments. Why do we have elections if important things like laws and wishes of the people are trampled over by these non-elected captains of industry as well as the big time banksters who finance them?

I don't think we should look upon industry as always bad. After all, they do create jobs. But yes I agree that more international cooperation is needed to stop the loopholes. I'd rather that route to trade wars.