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Paul Blustein on Economics of Trade--WashPost 2/26/04
[This is an important issue, little understood, that is becoming central to the current political campaign, but is being debated without an understanding of how the world of trade has changed. The basic principles of international trade, explained first by David Ricardo in the early 19th Century, are still believed to be relevant by most mainstream economists. What Roberts, with his revisionist positions, is arguing is that those basic principles no longer apply in the same way. Ricardo's theory was based on an assumption that the basic factors of production in his era--land, labor, capital, natural resources--did not move from country to country. Today's world is totally different, together with an added factor of production (technology), as these factors move around the world freely. Workers (and this article focuses mostly on jobs) don't necessarily move, but their labor is hired by companies that are supposedly national but are really multinational (or global), e.g., Indian computer programers working for Microsoft. Capital gets invested where it produces the best returns, not where it originates. Technology moves freely everywhere. The only thing that doesn't move, as in Ricardo's day, is land, and that is probably the least important factor of production in modern (not Third World) economies. Our leading economists need to begin thinking "out of the box," that is, beyond traditional economic theory.] ECONOMIST'S CHALLENGE PUZZLES FREE-TRADE BELIEVERS By Paul Blustein Washington Post February 26, 2004 If economists could condemn members of their profession for heresy, Paul Craig Roberts would probably be a candidate for excommunication. Few tenets, after all, are so widely shared among economics PhDs as the belief in the positive impact of free trade. Yet Roberts is publicly challenging that precept, and making waves doing so at a time when trade has leapt to the forefront of the nation's political debate. Roberts, a former assistant secretary of the Treasury for economic policy in the Reagan administration, co-authored an op-ed article in the New York Times last month with Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) in which they contended that the case for free trade "is undermined by the changes now evident in the modern global economy." Thanks to the movement of American jobs overseas, including well-paying jobs for engineers and computer programmers, "the United States will be a Third World country in 20 years," Roberts said at a Brookings Institution forum, according to a transcript of the event. ( Read more... ) |
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Radek Sikorski: Poles, Spaniards, Thais . . .
Radek Sikorski: Poles, Spaniards, Thais . . . ---------------- National Review (02/23/04) Poles, Spaniards, Thais . . . By Radek Sikorski "Please fasten your seatbelts and point your machine guns out of the plane," requested the stewardess matter-of-factly. She was charged with the safety of our Kuwait-bound Boeing 757, which was taking off from snow-bound Wroclaw. This was the city, once known by its German name of Breslau, that famously stood up to the Red Army almost as long as Berlin did. You can still see a swath of destruction in the middle of town, where an airport was carved out so that the Nazi Gauleiter could flee in time. The night before, I had stayed in a hotel that Hitler once patronized; from a balcony under my window, he saluted adoring crowds. Poland has produced more history than can be consumed locally--so now we were going outside our borders to make it. I had joined 147 soldiers in fresh uniforms, on their way to relieve the first echelon of a 2,600-man Polish brigade in an international division of 9,500 troops, operating under Polish command, in the Central South sector of Iraq. The unit is perhaps as pure a manifestation of a "coalition of the willing" as we are ever likely to see: a group of countries that backed their words with action, without waiting for another U.N. resolution. ( Read more... ) |
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Rod Paige's mistake
TO: Distinguished Recipients FM: John Whitbeck Transmitted below is a very brief New York Times editorial, also published in the International Herald Tribune. I wish to take this opportunity to express my appreciation to US Secretary of Education Rod Paige for helping to make my point. Rod Paige's mistake NYT Thursday, February 26, 2004 Rod Paige, the U.S. education secretary, made a staggeringly stupid comment this week, comparing the largest U.S. teachers' union to a "terrorist organization" because it opposes many elements of the two-year-old No Child Left Behind Act. This is the latest in a series of missteps by Paige. |
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NYT Editorial: "Rod Paige's Mistake"
TO: Distinguished Recipients FM: John Whitbeck Transmitted below is a very brief New York Times editorial, also published in the International Herald Tribune. I wish to take this opportunity to express my appreciation to US Secretary of Education Rod Paige for helping to make my point.
 Rod Paige, the U.S. education secretary, made a staggeringly stupid comment this week, comparing the largest U.S. teachers' union to a "terrorist organization" because it opposes many elements of the two-year-old No Child Left Behind Act. This is the latest in a series of missteps by Paige. President George W. Bush promised to make education a centerpiece of his domestic agenda. Yet he chose as his education secretary someone who seems incapable of representing that policy or putting it in place. If the president wishes to succeed, he will need a far more composed and capable secretary of education. Paige has been repeatedly criticized by Congress for failing to administer the education act properly. Paige made his "terrorist" remark at a gathering of governors at the White House, just before the president stepped up his re-election campaign. The statement, for which Paige later apologized, has given the union, the National Education Association, reams of free publicity and energized its effort to topple No Child Left Behind, which holds public schools accountable for closing the achievement gap between rich and poor children. The list of Paige's errors is long. Last year he said he preferred to have a child in Christian schools and suggested that Christians were morally superior to others. His "terrorist" remark has exhausted his credibility and disqualified him as a spokesman for national education policy. |
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Richard Perle resigns from Defense Advisory Board
Was it voluntary, or was he pushed? I would hope the latter. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dy The text of his resignation letter is found here. http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashing On March 28th 2003 Bill Moyers held the following interview with Chuck Lewis, head of the non-partisan Center for Public Integrity in Washington. This was 10 days or so following Perle's resignation as Chairman of the Defense Policy Board. http://www.alternet.org/print.html?Stor For those unfamiliar with it, the web site for the Center for Public Integrity is http://www.publicintegrity.org/dta Regards, John |
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