Now, I'm Into Spanking

    Yesterday, I was advocating big-time punishment. Now, I'm getting more specific--spanking is the road to take with the CAFTA 15--the so-called Democrats who voted for the Central American Free Trade Agreement. I'm still flogging the notion that labor has got to exact a price from the CAFTA 15, and I take up the cause again in the next installment of the TomPaine.com series "Working in America" with a column called "Spanking the CAFTA 15."

    What do you think?

    I did want to spend a minute or two considering the editorial on CAFTA in today's New York Times (discussed in the post below this one), in which the Times attacked this blog. The editorial does the usual nonsense, posing the debate as one between "the benefits of free trade" versus the dangers of "protectionism."

    You see, the editorial writers of The Times all went to college where they probably took an Economics 101 course which taught them about the wonders of free trade as espoused by the theoritician David Ricardo. The problem is that that free trade doesn't exist in the real world, as even some free-trade proponents admit. Global trade has nothing to do with advantages countries have over each other because one has better resources or home-grown skills than another. Global trade is about one thing: corporations, not countries, competing to see how far they can drive down wages.

    The editorial tells readers about the wonders the trade deal will bring to Central America. Funny, the Times ignores the fact that, in virtually every Central American country, there have been mass demonstrations against the deal. I just interviewed Rafael Abreu, the executive secretary of the big union in the Dominican Republic (which is part of the CAFTA deal) and he was pretty clear: the deal will only drive wages down and does very little for workers in the DR (I will bring more of that interview in the future).

    The most amazing, and I thought condescending, part of the editorial comes at the end: "Finally, Cafta will benefit the most underrepresented constituency in America: consumers, particularly the lower-income consumers who find that a 50-cent difference in the price of a T-shirt actually means something."

    It's stunning that The Times would boil down the debate to poorer people wanting a T-shirt for 50 cents less. I worked on some focus groups about peoples' feelings towards Wal-Mart more than a year ago and, guess what, people said the opposite: given the choice, they would be willing to pay a little more if they knew workers would get a slightly better wage.