<story><title>Populism and the Economics of Globalization [pdf]</title><url>https://drodrik.scholar.harvard.edu/files/dani-rodrik/files/populism_and_the_economics_of_globalization.pdf</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>candiodari</author><text>It is too easy to forget that when a person is employed at $100k-$200k per year in the Bay Area, you want things like stopping climate change, more parks, more air, fair treatment, and above all, peace and prosperity.&lt;p&gt;When making $30k with absolutely zero hope of real increases in Atlanta being a warehouse worker for an industry that&amp;#x27;s disappearing, the same person would burn all those things down, I would have said to get $10k more per year. Today I would say, getting an extra year at $30k is enough to justify the burnings.&lt;p&gt;We should think a bit more about Maslow&amp;#x27;s hierarchy. If you can&amp;#x27;t give people a decent living first, they will revolt if you try to &amp;quot;make them matter&amp;quot; or try to reach these lofty goals. You might think that wage improvements don&amp;#x27;t matter if we don&amp;#x27;t fix the climate, but the exact opposite is true.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not making the point that the climate isn&amp;#x27;t worth saving, racism doesn&amp;#x27;t need solving if we can&amp;#x27;t fix poverty and &amp;quot;underemployment&amp;quot;. I&amp;#x27;m saying that we won&amp;#x27;t succeed unless we fix that ... first.&lt;p&gt;Globalism produces beautiful iPads. But global average wage is $2k ... not per month. Per year. If you&amp;#x27;re average, working in a non-booming industry, and of course most people are exactly that, that is a terrifying prospect. The sad part is ... yes killing globalization will make us all worse off, in terms of the country&amp;#x27;s GDP. But it will lessen the gap between the 1% and the 99% (note that 2% is $97k per year, and as such anyone working in the Bay Area in IT is likely at least in the top 2%). Of course, mostly by making the 0.1% - 50% a LOT worse off (that&amp;#x27;s anyone making less than about 2.6 million per year and more than $56k. Even in the Bay Area, that&amp;#x27;s probably C-level wages).</text></comment>
<story><title>Populism and the Economics of Globalization [pdf]</title><url>https://drodrik.scholar.harvard.edu/files/dani-rodrik/files/populism_and_the_economics_of_globalization.pdf</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>clavalle</author><text>The trouble with economic globalization is that we assumed that markets work and work well all over the world. That there would be an inevitable stable middle class built from the sheer power of market forces.&lt;p&gt;It turns out that those in power around the world have every incentive to keep the gains to themselves and keep their population desperate -- desperate people have to weigh their economic decisions against their physical well-being and continued existence and play the game not to gain power but not to lose everything.  And our answer in the US seemed to be that the market is always right; if parity can&amp;#x27;t be achieved by lifting the poor around the world up to a near-US level of middle class, then it must be reached by pushing the middle class in the US down to desperation level and reducing our overhead to compete on a world stage where other leaders in power can more easily ignore the negative externalities that they push on their population.&lt;p&gt;It was, in a word, stupid.&lt;p&gt;It is too easy for the wealthy of the greater world to ignore the problems they create at home by being &amp;#x27;citizens of the world&amp;#x27;.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t agree with Trump on much but I do agree that relying upon the market to fix all ills hasn&amp;#x27;t worked.  We need to flex the economic muscle we have and tie trade to political reforms or find a way to bypass the powers that be and pull up the people directly. Otherwise, we are stuck in a race to the bottom.</text></comment>