In his column Fast Track to Inequality in The New York Times, Bob Herbert explains it all.
The clearest explanation yet of the forces that converged over the past three decades or so to undermine the economic well-being of ordinary Americans is contained in the new book, “Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer — and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class.”
The authors, political scientists Jacob Hacker of Yale and Paul Pierson of the University of California, Berkeley, argue persuasively that the economic struggles of the middle and working classes in the U.S. since the late-1970s were not primarily the result of globalization and technological changes but rather a long series of policy changes in government that overwhelmingly favored the very rich.
Later in the column he states:
This occurred at the same time that organized labor, the most effective force fighting on behalf of the middle class and other working Americans, was caught in a devastating spiral of decline.
As if this decline wasn’t also part of the concerted effort of
over the past three decades in which big business mobilized on an enormous scale to become much more active in Washington
As part of my confirmation bias, I would like to believe that globalization, technological innovation, and free trade are not the cause of our problem. That means that I will have to read the book so that I can be armed with facts to prove that what I have always believed is correct.
Before reading this column I had already argued against Thom Hartmann’s, Book Review Exclusively for Truthout/BuzzFlash: “Free Trade Doesn’t Work: What Should Replace It and Why”
The review says that there are European nations that handle the situation better than we do. Germany and the Scandinavian countries have trade surpluses. The rest of Europe is near balance.
Then the review goes on to say that protectionism is a legitimate choice.
No evidence is presented as to how protectionism is legitimate. The review makes no connection between the successful exporters or nearly balanced countries and the use of protectionism.
Unless you explain otherwise, those countries seem to be doing quite well under the free-trade regime you say is killing us.
If there were a good case to be made for protectionism, then I suspect there would have been a hint as to why it is good in the review. None having been made, I am not enticed to read the book.