So should we have a developed nations club which the less-developed can join by providing such rights? I think that would be a good idea. The political benefits of such an imposition to the populations of those countries would come much more quickly than the economic benefits of industrialization and without the attendant costs to the poorer or even average people of the richer countries. Reforming the WTO or creating an institution to enforce such a thing, though, is a radical proposition.

One of the reasons I think the global elite supported Bush at first despite his obvious incompetence is that he was obviously going to weaken the US by putting it in great debt. Though the US has been the linchpin of globalization, it is also, for that reason, the vulnerability. If the progressives came to power in the US, the IMF could not simply hold the economy hostage as it does to third world countries. At least that has been the case; we may be sailing into different waters now. If nations cannot control their own economic policies, the institution of the nation state has been eviscerated. Although the nation state is highly imperfect in its best manifestations, to the extent that large-scale democracy exists in the world, that is where you can find it.

Thanks for the info. I'll look into those things.

I can see that a developed nations club would improve developing nations labor standards ,perhaps the only thing that would .The economic advantages to each developing nation of low wages and standards (as with the advantages of slavery to the South ) are such that those "ing" countries will change only when the benefit of change outweighs that of the status quo.

But it's beyond my competence to guess
whether such a devnat club is feasible.
Such are the built-in incentives for each devnat country to protect trading relationships that play to its particular economic circumstances-in particular varying import needs as a function of their varying ecomonies- as to increase the odds of cheating or simply abstaining. .

Economics are not the only motivator. The more disconnected and disaffected a society, the more anger will build and extremists aim against the countries they feel are keeping them down.
--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

Although I like the idea of the devnet club, I differ from most progressives in that I oppose world government. The two great totalitarianisms of the 20th century were both dedicated to uniting the world under single rule, and both were defeated by pressure from with. There is no alternative to a world government by definition, and I don't think that centralization of power will resist abuse in the long run, even if founded on legitimate ideals (most religions and political movements are founded on legitimate ideals and become abusive in power in direct proportion to the power they accrue).

Mr. Faux writes:

The integrating global market ought to have the same sort of social protections that we want in a domestic market economy. Labor rights, social safety nets, environmental standards, etc. Of course, we should distinguish between rights and standards. Every worker in every country should have the right to join an independent trade union to bargain collectively. But standards, i.e., the minimum wage, would obviously be a function of that nation’s level of development.

But it’s all pie in the sky without a political strategy.

I'm having a deja vu all over again moment.  A competent labor historian needs to tackle this one, and a competent cultural geographer could assist.  The more I look at the globalization argument the more I'm reminded of the internal decline of the Labor Movement in the United States, which I mark with the passage of the Taft Hartley Act in 1947.  This tool, combined with an embedded racism which made it difficult for working class whites and blacks to see common interests in the south, started the flight of industry from high-wage, Unionized states in the north to low wage, industrializing states in the south. 

Tax policies also incentivized moving factories from states with a strong commitment to the idea of the "common wealth" (i.e., Northern States) to states captivated by the State's Rights Ideology as a tool to protected institutionalized segregation. 

What we see now, MHO, is nothing more than a continuation of the movement which emptied the mills of Massachusetts in the last half of the twentieth century, then began emptying the mills of the Carolinas, and now proceeding to put workers of Latin America, hardly out of poverty themselves, under pressure from places with even lower standards of labor rights. 

To say this is simply the product of irresistible market forces is to forget there ever was a man named Jack Abramoff or a place known as the Northern Marianas.

aMike

Are you saying firms relocating from the Northeast to Tennessee & the Carolinas and eventually off shore has nothing to do with "market" forces?

My bad.

Not you, amike.

What I'm saying is that the "market forces" are not "free," and never have been, and that capital has always been freer than labor.

You aren't making any sense to me. Regardless of the relative mobility of capital & labor, you seem to be saying that the decision of a firm to relocate to somewhere where costs are cheaper & profits larger, or for that matter, a laborer switching jobs or moving somewhere where he can earn is not "market forces" at work. Quite the contrary.

I'm also saying that the very concept "market forces" implies that people don't make these decisions, but some sort of demigod forces these decisions upon people.

Well then you would be incorrect. If Store A is selling milk for 5 dollarw a Gallon and storbe B for 3 dollars a gallon, you're correct that the devil is not "forcing" me to buy from the 3 dollar a gallon store. You would be incorrect in stating the resulting preference of many consumers purchasing more and more milk from store B and less so from store A is not the work of market forces in action.

The problem here is that "market forces" is an abstraction that covers many that are in fact human decisions. It is a way of abstracting human conduct and applying to it a metaphor ("forces") drawn from the inanimate world with its attendant lack or moral accountability. Your contention that decisions such as these are market forces, and the other view that they are moral choices, are both correct. I

Here's two examples:

Q. 1

You aren't making any sense to me. Regardless of the relative mobility of capital & labor, you seem to be saying that the decision of a firm to relocate to somewhere where costs are cheaper & profits larger, or for that matter, a laborer switching jobs or moving somewhere where he can earn is not "market forces" at work. Quite the contrary.

Example 1:  If I've fully depreciated the investment in plant and machinery (the rate of depreciation being a political decision) and I receive an incentive to relocate (say tax forgiveness for up to fifty years--another political decision) I may actually have little cost to relocate production and no incentive to upgrade production where the factory is located.  I may not have to relocate personally at all.  The company headquarters stays where it is, and I stay in my suburb with my familiar associates.  As a worker, I may have neither the personal resources or the substantive knowledge to follow the work elsewhere, and even if I do, my network, of friends, family, and institutions (churches, schools, clubs, organizations) will be irretrievably disrupted if I do.  I'm not a cog in my community, even if my employer treats me as a cog in the machine of productivity.  Moving investments from place to place costs the commission of the trade and now takes the time for one computer to connect to another computer.  The pressure on managers to boost profits to protect stock value responds to this speed, and even conservative economists are concerned that short-range profit pressures lead to decisions which have long-term negative consequences for the organizations.   For example, profitable newspapers close overseas bureaus because the "market" tells them, through declining share prices, that they are not profitable enough.  Consumers of news be damned...the product is weakened.

Q. 2. 

Well then you would be incorrect. If Store A is selling milk for 5 dollarw a Gallon and storbe B for 3 dollars a gallon, you're correct that the devil is not "forcing" me to buy from the 3 dollar a gallon store. You would be incorrect in stating the resulting preference of many consumers purchasing more and more milk from store B and less so from store A is not the work of market forces in action.

Example 2:  I rather think this hypothetical isn't reasonable in the context of my argument, and may not be reasonable in any context.  In any specific location the difference in price of milk is measured in cents, not dollars, and besides milk is often used as a "loss leader" to attract purchasers into a store in the first place.  If milk sells for 5 dollars a gallon in Maine and 3 dollars a gallon in Nebraska, I'm not going to go to Nebraska to buy milk.  In my own community I make a moral choice and spend more on items rather than shop Wal*mart.  But the context of my argument had to do with the financial market and finance corporate capitalism, not the local dairy mart.  One would think that the observation about relatively few persons made that clear, but I guess it didn't. 

aMike

Traditional worker relocation is part of a larger issue, even completely within the US. For example, to recruit specialized talent, US companies traditionally helped with relocation, often with not just expenses but with assistance in finding new homes, moving, etc. I experienced firms that would even fly out the spouse to see the community before I made a final decision.

While relocation hasn't totally disappeared, in large part, it's one of those things largely gone through the constant pressure of cost-cutting to increase profitability. As you have mentioned, a quite profitable site may be closed because the financial markets don't see it as profitable enough.

Especially when the workforce is not full of hard-to-replace skills, there can be strong incentives to businesses to relocate. This goes beyond sunk costs of services in the existing area, but literally to changes in law, such as South Dakota effectively abandoning usury laws to attract credit card operations.

Another approach, used in technical fields, is to move to an area that has very few engineers of a given specialty, and very low demand for them. From that limited demand, a "prevailing wage" is determined, for which citizens cannot afford to relocate -- houses, etc., all being factors. Now, with a shortage of the desired skill and a low prevailing wage, the employer often can get a pile of H1B visas, and pay a salary good enough for people that don't plan to bring a family and will live in a crowded apartment for a few years.

This isn't just a matter of being nice to the existing US worker base, but of losing the skills here, and disincentivizing students to learn the given field.

There are legitimate reasons for H1B's, but some of the gaming I've described needs to be fixed. Also, another check and balance on employers would be to lengthen the time that an H1B worker has to find a new job, and keep the visa, if the worker leaves the original sponsor. Right now, the sponsor has leverage akin to the principal of an indentured servant. If the H1B visa holder is recruited and can go immediately to a new job, they may be OK, but an employer can discharge them suddenly,perhaps due to demands, and they have a matter of a couple of weeks before their visa expires.

Ideally, I'd like to see a tax or fee on H1B applications that goes to subsidize US education in the specific fields that the employer can't seem to find qualified citizens.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

Thanks, Howard,

I've learned a little something here.  The side I'd like to see discussed someplace, though it is only tangential to this thread, is the social cost of economic dislocations.   I'm thinking of the work of persons like Roy Oldenburg (The Great Good Place) and Robert Putnam (Better Together, Bowling Alone).  Even if all the economic costs of relocation were fully absorbed, a life of high physical mobility leaves its own scars.  There have been some very good studies of this relating to the toll on children of military families and what happens to their ability to form intimate, trusting friendships. 

Probably the most extreme case I've ever seen of this in one of my own classes was a student from a military family who had lived in 17 communities in 21 years.  I gather this was abnormal even by military standards (this was about 1988-89), and I don't know why the family was transferred so often, but the student said she had no fixed memories of a peer group of friends.  She said she had no peer group, and that the college dorm, where she'd been living for three years, was the longest she'd lived in one place ever.  She hoped that the residential college would lead to at least some life-long friendships. 

The studies to which I refer above mark that communities bear the scars of this kind of too high mobility, too.  Persons who know they'll be moving in 1-2 years are less involved in local politics and less willing to vote for such things as capital improvement bonds when they know that the project funded, whether a new school or library, or an upgrade to local amenities like sidewalks, is likely not to be completed before they move to a new community.  The reasoning is logical, I guess.  Why tax myself for an amenity I'll never get to use?

aMike