“The Movement We Started Is Only Just Beginning” – President Trump Promises His Movement Will Live O

Agreed. But in the past, advances in technology led to a requirement of MORE labor, not less. More labor fit the rule of scarcity...leading to organized labor and higher wages, leading to the Middle Class. But today's technological revolution results, ultimately, in LESS labor. There is a period of transition, that initially results in additional labor to provide the new technology (the IT jobs). Those could have been filled by the people who had held the old jobs, but that required educating and training them for new jobs and the costs of doing so...and ultimately they'd be gone as well. So, we borrowed that labor from countries that had educated their people better or we outsourced jobs. The basic problem for capitalism today is the need for a reevaluation of the value of labor.

I agree that globalization is the natural movement of capital. But the reason for that movement is to provide a greater return to investors...usually, in the short term, by the reduction of labor costs and, in the longer term, for the expansion of markets. The latter was the capitalist reason for moving production of American distributed products to China...it was an inexpensive means that avoided the cost of capital expansion for new means of production in the U.S. And, the theory was that even low wage production in China would lead, eventually to new markets, with rising wages creating new Chinese markets. It failed because the one party communist system could dictate how the profits from Chinese exports were used. Scarcity of labor was not a principle in modern China. Instead of raising wages to create a democratic Chinese middle class, they could instead redirect the profits in to the expansion of infrastructure, making themselves more than a source of cheap labor for Western corporations and true competitors. The transition to a political democratic middle class never happened.

 

I vehemently disagree. You started out somewhat strong and then just gave up.
"A major purpose for globalization was for global stability" - was it? Or was stabilization a nice side effect?

"Had we returned to "economic nationalism" and tariffs 40 or 50 years ago, maybe it would have had some effect in regard to bringing old jobs home. " Show your work! If we had curled into the fetal position 40 or 50 years ago we might still be sending snail mail watching OTA tv on our 24 inch tubes. It's hard to argue that Americans standard of living (which is the only metric that I'm personally concerned with) is not above and beyond better than what it was only decades ago. But maybe you're right, it's hard to say because you didn't support your position.

"Today, however, it is more likely it will only encourage the more rapid decline of the U.S. as a major global player and promote growth elsewhere" - or perhaps we continue to lead the way in tech research and development as well as providing top notch services to the rest of the globe. It's been aces so far. I have no reason (and you provided none) to think we will not continue on this trajectory.

"Ultimately, technology will drive globalization for the same reason people climb mountains...because they can." - Well there ya go. Because they can. No other reasons?

 

It's more efficient use of resources. Everyone benefits from it.

 

OK...here goes...There is a school of thought that believes had the U.S. entered into the League of Nations, WW II could have been avoided. That was what drove the post-WW II international milieu...the United Nations, The World Bank, The World Trade Organization, NATO, et al. Democrats were certainly behind it, as well as Republicans such as Senator Arthur Vandenberg, for whom Vandenberg AFB, in California is named. The bipartisan purpose was greater global stability and a more integrated and interdependent global community, with the U.S. overseeing it. There may have certainly been other more partisan motivations ranging from laissaz-faire capitalism to world communism, but those were secondary to global stability...after all, we'd just emerged from two world wars. Economically, Bretton Woods (1944) resulted in GATT, which was another movement toward a global economy, that subordinated national tariffs to international supervision. I believe Gramm's push for free trade coincided with a Republican resurgence of nationalism, at roughly the same time we went from trade surpluses to trade deficits, which were due in part to the costs of our defense budgets, in turn because of FDR's understanding of our post war global role as inheritor of European colonialism. The clash between that and the onset of global communism led to the Cold War and eventually to the trade deficits, the cost of which maintained our role as "world policeman."

However, those deficits also helped us win the Cold War and broke the USSR financially before they broke us. The American standard of living is still extremely impressive, but much of our income began disappearing from the middle class and Main Street and became increasingly concentrated in the upper class and Wall Street from around the LBJ/Nixon years to present.

My theory is that if we continue to push away from our post war internationalism, what will happen to us is very much what may now happen to Trump...creditors may begin calling in our indebtedness expressed in trade deficients, sensing U.S. attempts to demoneitize our debt. The dollar as the global currency may be a sign of this. Most economists have been discussing over the last decade or so, the advantage in going to come form of global currency based on a basket of different currencies.

This decline of American financial power (not military power...we're still way and above second place in that...spending more than the next 10 largest military forces on the planet), through the decline of the middle class and further concentration of income may lead eventually to our military decline as well. Remember, much of our foreign aid is tied to military hardware, in turn, tied to "buy American." Pushing for more NATO contributions from our NATO partners is OK, but to threaten withdrawal may lead those partners to build their own military-industrial capability and stop underwriting ours.

The more you ask nations to share the costs of a common defense, the more they will demand a greater say so in the decision making. Making enemies of friends is seldom a good course, particularly when there are potential enemies beyond the circle of friends.