I’ll really have to stop posting links from Alternet soon but before I get there…
Among the most fanciful is the notion that conservatives are self-reliant actors who embrace a private sector free from government meddling. Supposedly, the right is content to take on the free-market with strength and skill, and let the chips fall where they may, while liberals look to the state to be their protective nanny, there to iron out the wrinkles of a dynamic, entrepreneurial society
A quick example of how the deck is stacked in certain ways:
Now what they could have done — and this would have been a true free trade policy — they could have said, “Look, there are a lot of very smart people in Mexico and China and India. And they can be doctors, lawyers, accountants and economists, and they would drive down costs in those areas enormously.” We’d get our health care for much, much less — we’d save hundreds of billions of dollars per year — our college tuition would fall, because we’d pay college professors much less. We could make the whole thing transparent — set up standards to make sure that we get the same quality of doctors.
Enormous savings for the United States — a great free trade story — but instead of putting downward pressure on the wages of our auto workers, we’d be putting downward pressure on the wages of our highest earners. If we brought our wage structure for doctors just down to European levels, you’d be talking about saving $80 billion per year. That’s a big chunk of our health care bill right there. But no one talks about that, and that’s a classic example of framing the debate about what “free” trade is.
You can read the article here and download the PDF book here
Post a Comment