Reverend Blair said:
Odd, you business types were killing labour activists here and in the US, as well as Europe, and fighting every environmental advancement, every innovation in safety, and every attempt to institute workers' rights. Our curve to prosperity happened anyway, even though you said each of those things would prevent it. Now when I hear that same old corporate lie applied to the developing world, it rings extremely hollow.
We were able to institute such laws
because we became richer. This is no different than what is happening in the developing world today. As countries become richer, quality of life issues become more important and subsistence issues become less important. If you can't eat, nobody cares about a 40 hours work week. The problem is that the socialists tie these issues to trade, which eliminates a poor country's competitive advantage, which hurts the poor countries, especially the poorest living in the poor countries. Countries can still sign treaties regarding the environment and human rights and not tying it to trade. In fact,
almost all such treaties are constructed this way.
Labour has a history of violence and death to, so don't get too holier than thou.
Reverend Blair said:
The basic flaw in your rant is that you are implying that everything has to be immediate. The second is that you are ignoring the fact that where we had our own corporations, much of the developing is having our worst corporations foisted upon them.
The first basic flaw in your rant is your assumption about what I was saying. I have no idea where you got the idea that I said it had to be immediate. Like I just said, as countries get richer, quality of life issues become more important as individuals focus on other things besides subsistence.
Your second basic flaw is implying that we had our own corporations while today the developing countries do not. That is false. There were domestic corporations during both scenarios. But Canada and the US were net importers of capital in the 18th and 19ths century. It was Europe, and in particular Britain, who financed much of the industrialization of North America through bond issues.
Your third basic flaw is what you say next.
Reverend Blair said:
Conveniently, your corporate pals set up shop in developing countries...generally complete with bribes that make your corporate leaders (including Dick Cheney) as corrupt as the people they are bribing. They hire private armies to intimidate and murder labour activists. They hire children to work 12 and 16 hour days. They underpay workers. They physically abuse people who don't meet their insane quotas. They create dangerous working conditions. They create environmental disasters. Your corporate pals get rich by taking advantage of the poor and weak, Toro.
My corporate pals are lifting the living standards in the developing world. Western corporations who set up shop treat their employees better than the local employers. They pay more, have better working conditions, and provide a transferance of technology to the host country. The evidence is overwhelming. In his book
Fighting the Wrong Enemy, Edward Graham undertook an exhaustive study of working conditions in American corporations abroad. US-owned manufacturing corporations paid twice the the average wage in low income countries. Another paper by
NBER Looked at 20,000 manufacturing plants in Indonesia and concluded that the average wage for foreign-owned plants was 50% higher than private domestic plants. Not only that, but the presence of such factories drove the wages higher in domestic plants because of increased competition for labour and technological spill-over. This is logical and what one would expect. Even anti-globalization Lefties such as
Noreen Hertz admit this. There have been various other economic studies concluding the same thing, including the border zone of Mexico and your buddies in Venezuela. Wage surveys by the International Labor Organization and the US Department of Labor have also made the same conclusions.
Reverend Blair said:
Here's a little number for you, Toro...the 255 richest people in the world have more money than the poorest 2.5 billion. The gap between rich and poor is growing, not shrinking. The wealth is becoming more concentrated in the hands of a few while an ever-increasing number of people struggle just to feed themselves. So tell us all again how by robbing the poor to enrich yourselves, you are actually helping all those poor people. It's a load of crap.
Mr. Blair, here's another number for you - 440%. That is the growth of real incomes in China from 1980 to 2000, a time when China was globalizing. Compare that to 60% in the US. The ratio of Chinese real incomes per head compared to those in the US rose from 3% to 12% over that time period. During this time period, virtually all other countries in Asia experienced narrowing of real income differentials compared to the West, as did some in Latin America and even a few in Africa. That's a couple billion people who who have seen an increase in living standards relative to the West. Relative inequality is falling, not rising, due in large part to the opening of economies, something the Leftists are now campaigning against.
