Globalization and People

In "A Winning Strategy for the Democrats: Barter for Free Trade" in today's Washington Post, Steven Pearlstein makes what I thought to be an important point. He notes that while there is general agreement that globalization has helped the U.S. economy, "it has had some unpleasant side effects: insecurity about job losses, downward pressure on wages, widening inequality, and an unsustainable trade deficit."

There was even a general consensus on what needs to be done to ameliorate those effects. The prescriptions included some old ideas about balancing the federal budget, investing more in education and repealing the Bush tax cuts, and some newer ones such as universal access to health insurance, portable pensions and wage insurance. Protect people, not jobs, was the headline message in the Hamilton Project briefing paper that rejected the protectionist policies of the union left as well as the "you're-on-your-own" economics of the laissez-faire right. (italics added)