I don't have a PhD. in economics but I can still figure that it's not efficient to ship subsidized cotton half way around the world so it they can take advantage of sweatshop labor to increase profits, forcing workers to toil in outrageous conditions to manufacture cheap goods, before before shipping them half way around the world, again through complicated distribution systems.
It doesn't take a genius to realize that they're shipping jobs overseas to countries that don't protect their workers so that they can use globalization to force local workers to compete with the workers in the most oppressive parts of the world, driving down wages in both the third world and locally.
Another incredibly simple principle that mainstream economists routinely ignore is the fact that in order to maintain a strong economy we have to have a planet that's capable of sustaining life, which we've taken for granted for thousands of years; however, thanks to the growing amount of pollution and Climate Change over the past two centuries it's increasingly obvious that it's a matter of time where we destroy our environment and the ability of sustain life if we keep going.
If we're shipping merchandise half way around the world to be processed before shipping it back this is incredibly inefficient, and it contributes much more to epidemic levels of environmental destruction. with local control of economies, including local manufacturing then we have much more opportunities to reserve local jobs and increase efficiencies that have been eliminated in the globalized economy, including factory direct options that have been virtually eliminated except when used for false advertising purposes.
When it comes to both labor, environmental protection, and numerous other social issues, including education, violence prevention, democratic participation, etc. there's an enormous amount of evidence to indicate that local economies are far more effective at looking out for the best interests of people at the local level and in third world countries.
There are numerous studies showing that locally owned businesses invest significantly more in local communities, often contributing to local charities and helping solve local social problems. Communities with more locally owned businesses have less violence, on average, better health lower poverty and stronger democratic participation, among other things. Some of these studies are listed below; however if any claim that I make aren't backed up they can easily be confirmed through a relatively quick search.
One of the biggest problems of "free trade" policies pushed by corporations with overwhelming help from establishment politicians in both parties is the threat to democracy, preventing countries around the world from protecting workers rights or the local environment. there have been numerous examples where large corporations have used trade agreements to sue local governments for preventing them from protecting their own environment or forcing them to allow drilling for oil or enable energy projects because they violate trade agreements. Trade agreements have also been used to create "export processing zones" or "economic zones" where workers don't have the same protections as other parts of the world or that can be used to avoid paying taxes to support local or international communities as reported in "The Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein.
Trade and immigration laws are also used to provide cheap labor from undocumented workers that have few if any rights, so corporations can force them to work in outrageous conditions, often doing farm work abroad and importing the produce, or using illegal immigrants to work on domestic farms. However, when they prosecute someone for this it's almost never the corporations making massive profits off human trafficking, instead they prosecute the illegal immigrants. Many of these immigrants are forced to flee their own countries due to oppressive conditions, partly as a result of foreign policy and trade policies designed to prop up dictators abroad.
For dozens if not over a hundred years our foreign policy, controlled by elites with ties to large corporations, has been designed to help maximize profits protecting corporate interests often overthrowing democratic governments like Iran, Guatemala, and Chile, all of which the United States government now admits that hey supported coups, although it took them decades to make this admission and Honduras which also had a coup in 2009 that the United States hasn't admitted to yet, despite the evidence and many other examples. The media partially never reminds the public of these coups, only disclosing them briefly in low profile locations, ensuring that most people are unaware of them. However in academic journals, non-fiction books, or alternative media outlets they're reported more widely.
The mainstream media has tried to argue that Trump's recent alleged deal to get Mexico to enforce immigration laws in return for not increasing tariffs at least temporarily is unrelated to trade, however trade, foreign police, immigration and democracy or lack of it are all intertwined. This deal may be bad, but not because trade isn't related to immigration. They're various ways to suppress wages for working class people. And of course, it has also been reported that Mexico Agreed to Take Border Actions Months Before Trump Announced Tariff Deal 06/08/2019
This policy does more to suppress the rights of immigrants fleeing from oppressive governments supported by United States corporations and the our government; however, it's not supported by the majority of the American people who aren't even aware of how our politicians are misleading us, since the media doesn't report it widely.
Nor do they report on some of the basic fundamentals of our economic system, which isn't a "free market" system as they claim, as I reported in Democratic-Socialism is far better than Socialized-Capitalism. It's an oligarchy system, with a small number of corporations controlling every sector of the economy rigging it in favor of the wealthy. Dwayne Andreas a former Archer Daniels Midland executive admitted it when he said "The competitor is our friend, and the customer is our enemy," and "There isn't one grain of anything in the world that is sold in a free market. The only place you see a free market is in the speeches of politicians," and this was confirmed by various other sources.
Strong opposition to tariffs is primarily so that nothing interferes with corporations ability to force workers to compete with each other driving down wages, however this also comes at additional expenses, especially when the entire economic system is controlled by a small percentage of the public. Many consumer goods seem cheaper, however the quality has been slowly going down over decades so many products have to be replaced four or five times as often as they used to. Sneakers that used to last two years before falling apart began falling apart in under six months until a few years ago when there was backlash from consumer, partly restoring quality, jeans, toasters, coffee makers refrigerators and many other items still only last a fraction of the time they used to last.
Instead of spending money on quality or fair pay for workers they're spending it shipping goods all around the world through complex distributions systems with corporations taking a cut every step of the way. And if workers were paid more they would have more money to spend creating a higher quality of life for almost every one, except those profiting off of sweat shop labor!
Not only are large industries controlled by a small number of oligarchies, but so is the mass media enabling them to repeat the same propaganda over and over again as if it's unchallenged, even misrepresenting many of the economists that have been cited to found our current economic system, including Adam Smith. This includes the economists that got us out of the great depression which was caused by extreme economic practices, which we've returned to causing the collapse of 2008 and now leading to more problems as the largest corporations were bailed out without helping working class people.
Current economists or media pundits don't remind the public that the great depression was caused by massive surpasses that were a result of government incentives to increase production during the first World War, guaranteeing payments for food, then when they no longer needed large surpluses to feed Europe, farmers couldn't get paid as much as it cost to produce food so they had to implement controls to prevent surpluses. the free market simply didn't work without some planning, despite all the propaganda from media pundits.
However since then whatever controls were put in place were designed to consolidate into a small number of oligarchs virtually eliminating antitrust regulations or enforcement over the last several decades.
Our current system is controlled by the wealthy for the benefit of the wealthy; only those that are approved by these people can present their views to the vast majority of the public. This means that quality of life for working class people isn't a factor unless it's necessary to increase profits for the wealthy!
Another incredibly simple principle that should show that the current system isn't working is that it simply doesn't provide job opportunities they pretend to or other social necessities like paying a living wage, reducing or eliminating homelessness, increasing home ownership, reasonable educational opportunities for everyone, and a chance to rise up the economic latter. a dirty little secret is that they keep people in the lower classes because the wealthy need them to do menial chores that they don't want to do for little or no wages!
Contrary to the impression the mass media gives the public a permanently growing economy has never been a possibility, and rational economists know it; however the coverage they provide doesn't including the most rational economists at all, only ones interested in rigging the economy for the wealthy. the best economic research isn't completely suppressed, but it's never mentioned in traditional media so only those that take the initiative to find it or are pointed in the right direction by people at the grassroots would know about it. Even Adam Smith predicted that the economy couldn't possibly grow forever, as reported in the following article:
Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy
For centuries, economists have considered a transition from a growing economy to a stable one, from classical economists like Adam Smith down to present-day ecological economists. Adam Smith is famous for the ideas in his book The Wealth of Nations. A central theme of the book is the desirable consequences of each person pursuing self interests in the marketplace. He theorized and observed that people trading in open markets leads to production of the right quantities of commodities, division of labor, increasing wages, and an upward spiral of economic growth. But Smith recognized a limit to economic growth. He predicted that in the long run, population growth would push wages down, natural resources would become increasingly scarce, and division of labor would approach the limits of its effectiveness. He even predicted 200 years as the longest period of growth, followed by population stability.
John Stuart Mill, pioneer of economics and gifted philosopher, developed the idea of the steady state economy in the mid-19th century. He believed that after a period of growth, the economy would reach a stationary state, characterized by constant population and stocks of capital. His words eloquently describe the positive nature of such an economic system:
"It is scarcely necessary to remark that a stationary condition of capital and population implies no stationary state of human improvement. There would be as much scope as ever for all kinds of mental culture, and moral and social progress; as much room for improving the Art of Living and much more likelihood of its being improved, when minds cease to be engrossed by the art of getting on."
John Maynard Keynes, the most influential economist of the twentieth century, also considered the day when society could focus on ends (happiness and well-being, for example) rather than means (economic growth and individual pursuit of profit). He wrote:
"…that avarice is a vice, that the exaction of usury is a misdemeanour, and the love of money is detestable… We shall once more value ends above means and prefer the good to the useful."
and
"The day is not far off when the economic problem will take the back seat where it belongs, and the arena of the heart and the head will be occupied or reoccupied, by our real problems – the problems of life and of human relations, of creation and behavior and religion." Complete article
For centuries, economists have considered a transition from a growing economy to a stable one, from classical economists like Adam Smith down to present-day ecological economists. Adam Smith is famous for the ideas in his book The Wealth of Nations. A central theme of the book is the desirable consequences of each person pursuing self interests in the marketplace. He theorized and observed that people trading in open markets leads to production of the right quantities of commodities, division of labor, increasing wages, and an upward spiral of economic growth. But Smith recognized a limit to economic growth. He predicted that in the long run, population growth would push wages down, natural resources would become increasingly scarce, and division of labor would approach the limits of its effectiveness. He even predicted 200 years as the longest period of growth, followed by population stability.
John Stuart Mill, pioneer of economics and gifted philosopher, developed the idea of the steady state economy in the mid-19th century. He believed that after a period of growth, the economy would reach a stationary state, characterized by constant population and stocks of capital. His words eloquently describe the positive nature of such an economic system:
"It is scarcely necessary to remark that a stationary condition of capital and population implies no stationary state of human improvement. There would be as much scope as ever for all kinds of mental culture, and moral and social progress; as much room for improving the Art of Living and much more likelihood of its being improved, when minds cease to be engrossed by the art of getting on."
John Maynard Keynes, the most influential economist of the twentieth century, also considered the day when society could focus on ends (happiness and well-being, for example) rather than means (economic growth and individual pursuit of profit). He wrote:
"…that avarice is a vice, that the exaction of usury is a misdemeanour, and the love of money is detestable… We shall once more value ends above means and prefer the good to the useful."
and
"The day is not far off when the economic problem will take the back seat where it belongs, and the arena of the heart and the head will be occupied or reoccupied, by our real problems – the problems of life and of human relations, of creation and behavior and religion." Complete article
With a steady state economy controlled at the local level it enables people to participate in the decisions made to ensure that other concerns besides profits for wealthy are taken into consideration. It also prevents international events or corrupt politicians from disrupting the economy eliminating jobs with petty arguments over tariffs used to enforce bigoted immigration laws.
Some of the problems with a permanently growing economy was also pointed out by Bill McKibben who cited Bob Costanza comparing the belief in an economy that can grow forever to the belief in a perpetual motion machine that allegedly provides free energy, which is one of the most absurd scientific claims imaginable. In "Deep Economy" he describes how quality of life can be as important if not much more important than economic growth which can only be maintained for a limited time, even if that time does expand for decades.
Bill McKibben "Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future" 2007
Well, it’s true that not many of us make our livings as farmers anymore (maybe not enough of us do, as we shall see). But it’s also true that, first thing in the morning, before we go to work in the software design cubicle (or the economics department), most of us prefer to eat breakfast. It’s nice to have microelectronics; it’s necessary to have lunch. If global warming “only” damages agriculture, the rest may not matter much. It’s as if the doctor said, “True, your heart is shot—but look at those six-pack abs!”
The creeping recognition that economics, even in its ever growing mathematical sophistication, had become abstracted from the actual planet we inhabit has spurred the steady development of an increasingly impressive new school of ecological economics. As far back as the 1960s, economists like Kenneth Boulding were at work on what he termed “the economics of the coming spaceship earth. . . . The closed earth of the future requires economic principles that are entirely different from the open ‘cowboy’ economy of the past.”40 (He managed to summarize the basic problem in a short chunk of doggerel: “One principle that is an ecological upsetter / Is that if anything is good, then more of it is better, / And this misunderstanding sets us very, very wrong / For no relation in the world is linear for long.”) In the 1970s, a World Bank economist named Herman Daly published a collection titled Toward a Steady State Economy that actually began to nose around the question whether perpetual growth was possible. And by the 1980s, Daly, with the help of a young professor named Bob Costanza, had formed the Society of Ecological Economics.
Costanza is, in certain ways, the opposite of someone like Larry Summers. From his office at the University of Vermont, where he runs the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics, he’s become the loudest voice of an unconventional economic wisdom. He’s had to shout to make himself heard, but it’s getting easier—ecological economics seems to be on the verge of breaking through into the mainstream.
Costanza began his education as an engineer, and then an architect; by the time he earned his Ph.D. at the University of Florida, he’d switched to systems ecology. “But I’d also recognized that everything that was happening was being driven by economics,” he recalled, “so I took economics courses—in fact, I talked them into letting me take economics as my foreign language.” He specialized in energy flows across systems; and his first important paper, published in Science, established that the embedded energy in a final product (the amount of power it took, say, to mine the ore for the car, and grow the food for the automakers, and so on) correlated pretty closely with its final value. Which, if you think about it, raises some difficult questions for the theory of eternal expansion. Or, as he put it, “the universally appealing notion of unlimited economic growth with reduced energy consumption must be put firmly to rest beside the equally appealing but impossible idea of perpetual motion.”41
Since then, Costanza has been at least on the periphery of most of the important advances in ecological economics. In 1997, for instance, he joined with twelve coauthors to publish a paper in Nature that for the first time tried to set an economic value on “ecosystem services,” such as pollination and decomposition, that had always been counted as free. (Their estimate of the worth of these services was $33 trillion annually, far larger than the human economy taken all together.) He and many others have also developed the theoretical tools to explain how important it is to “get prices right”—for instance, to make the cost of a gallon of gasoline reflect the actual damage its production and use do to the environment. (By some estimates, gasoline would cost $7 or $8 a gallon, and the SUV would never have been invented.) Such strategies have led to clever new markets—there is now a trade in permits to emit sulfur and nitrogen, for instance, and as a result utilities have managed to reduce those pollutants quite dramatically and inexpensively. Few economists speak as easily of clean air or clean water as “externalities” as they once did: the essential logic of accounting for costs is slowly spreading. Complete article
Well, it’s true that not many of us make our livings as farmers anymore (maybe not enough of us do, as we shall see). But it’s also true that, first thing in the morning, before we go to work in the software design cubicle (or the economics department), most of us prefer to eat breakfast. It’s nice to have microelectronics; it’s necessary to have lunch. If global warming “only” damages agriculture, the rest may not matter much. It’s as if the doctor said, “True, your heart is shot—but look at those six-pack abs!”
The creeping recognition that economics, even in its ever growing mathematical sophistication, had become abstracted from the actual planet we inhabit has spurred the steady development of an increasingly impressive new school of ecological economics. As far back as the 1960s, economists like Kenneth Boulding were at work on what he termed “the economics of the coming spaceship earth. . . . The closed earth of the future requires economic principles that are entirely different from the open ‘cowboy’ economy of the past.”40 (He managed to summarize the basic problem in a short chunk of doggerel: “One principle that is an ecological upsetter / Is that if anything is good, then more of it is better, / And this misunderstanding sets us very, very wrong / For no relation in the world is linear for long.”) In the 1970s, a World Bank economist named Herman Daly published a collection titled Toward a Steady State Economy that actually began to nose around the question whether perpetual growth was possible. And by the 1980s, Daly, with the help of a young professor named Bob Costanza, had formed the Society of Ecological Economics.
Costanza is, in certain ways, the opposite of someone like Larry Summers. From his office at the University of Vermont, where he runs the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics, he’s become the loudest voice of an unconventional economic wisdom. He’s had to shout to make himself heard, but it’s getting easier—ecological economics seems to be on the verge of breaking through into the mainstream.
Costanza began his education as an engineer, and then an architect; by the time he earned his Ph.D. at the University of Florida, he’d switched to systems ecology. “But I’d also recognized that everything that was happening was being driven by economics,” he recalled, “so I took economics courses—in fact, I talked them into letting me take economics as my foreign language.” He specialized in energy flows across systems; and his first important paper, published in Science, established that the embedded energy in a final product (the amount of power it took, say, to mine the ore for the car, and grow the food for the automakers, and so on) correlated pretty closely with its final value. Which, if you think about it, raises some difficult questions for the theory of eternal expansion. Or, as he put it, “the universally appealing notion of unlimited economic growth with reduced energy consumption must be put firmly to rest beside the equally appealing but impossible idea of perpetual motion.”41
Since then, Costanza has been at least on the periphery of most of the important advances in ecological economics. In 1997, for instance, he joined with twelve coauthors to publish a paper in Nature that for the first time tried to set an economic value on “ecosystem services,” such as pollination and decomposition, that had always been counted as free. (Their estimate of the worth of these services was $33 trillion annually, far larger than the human economy taken all together.) He and many others have also developed the theoretical tools to explain how important it is to “get prices right”—for instance, to make the cost of a gallon of gasoline reflect the actual damage its production and use do to the environment. (By some estimates, gasoline would cost $7 or $8 a gallon, and the SUV would never have been invented.) Such strategies have led to clever new markets—there is now a trade in permits to emit sulfur and nitrogen, for instance, and as a result utilities have managed to reduce those pollutants quite dramatically and inexpensively. Few economists speak as easily of clean air or clean water as “externalities” as they once did: the essential logic of accounting for costs is slowly spreading. Complete article
McKibben and Costanza both agree that the cost of business should also include negative externalities like destruction of the environment or poor health as a result of environmental destruction. A carbon tax should be a no brainer to reduce this and prevent wealthy people from profiting off of polluting and killing working class people. This is especially important with growing threat from Climate Change! If we want to solve this problem before it's too late we need to take advantage of every method to reduce use of energy, including renewable energies, but the most important thing to do is reduce massive amounts of waste shipping things all around the world in an incredibly inefficient manner!
Charles Tolbert etal. describe how locally owned businesses are more concerned with the best interests of their own community, so cities are far less likely to turn into slums in the following study:
Civic Community in Small-Town America January 2002 Charles M. Tolbert II
Civic Community and Local Capitalism
Locally oriented production firms are likely to contribute to the civic culture because the owners and managers are socially and financially invested in the community (Mills and Ulmer 1946; Piore and Sabel 1984). In part, this local orientation is due to aspects of organizational form associated with size. Small firms usually have less formalized bureaucratic structures and lack the high degree of specialization and compartmentalization associated with their larger, Fordist counterparts (Edwards 1979). A small number of employees precludes a complex division of labor and allows—even requires— informality and mixing of roles. Owners and managers mix and work freely with production workers, creating bridging networks within the workplaces. Without rationalized rules for hiring, new employees often are found through kinship and friendship ties; these practices are advantageous to local residents and maintain employment opportunities for the community.
Further, owners and managers of small firms frequently are active participants in the community’s civic affairs. In the various service and business clubs, organizations, and associations, small businesspeople establish and maintain networks of local contacts and supporters (Mills and Ulmer 1946). Because they are citizens of the community, they develop strong local ties to place. As a result of their strong and enduring community ties, they may be less likely to pull out of the community during an economic downturn, and more likely to support and lead local nonprofit institutions.
A local orientation is particularly instrumental for the selfemployed. For many of these individuals, job and firm are coterminous, and the lines between ownership and employment are blurred. Often the decision to shift from wage work to self-employment is motivated by pressures to leave the local community. Self-employment becomes a mechanism for maintaining and strengthening ties to place; thus it represents a strong form of local orientation.
Local orientation, however, is not the only reason why small producers are likely to remain in a community. Small business owners and the self-employed rely on one another for support and information. These networks allow small producers to capture economies of scale that enable them to compete effectively with larger firms (Piore and Sabel 1984). Networks of small businesspersons are “place-based” and not readily transferable to other communities; small producers remain tied to locality. Because the networks themselves are embedded in local community institutions, they maintain and strengthen shared values and local community identity. Complete article
Civic Community and Local Capitalism
Locally oriented production firms are likely to contribute to the civic culture because the owners and managers are socially and financially invested in the community (Mills and Ulmer 1946; Piore and Sabel 1984). In part, this local orientation is due to aspects of organizational form associated with size. Small firms usually have less formalized bureaucratic structures and lack the high degree of specialization and compartmentalization associated with their larger, Fordist counterparts (Edwards 1979). A small number of employees precludes a complex division of labor and allows—even requires— informality and mixing of roles. Owners and managers mix and work freely with production workers, creating bridging networks within the workplaces. Without rationalized rules for hiring, new employees often are found through kinship and friendship ties; these practices are advantageous to local residents and maintain employment opportunities for the community.
Further, owners and managers of small firms frequently are active participants in the community’s civic affairs. In the various service and business clubs, organizations, and associations, small businesspeople establish and maintain networks of local contacts and supporters (Mills and Ulmer 1946). Because they are citizens of the community, they develop strong local ties to place. As a result of their strong and enduring community ties, they may be less likely to pull out of the community during an economic downturn, and more likely to support and lead local nonprofit institutions.
A local orientation is particularly instrumental for the selfemployed. For many of these individuals, job and firm are coterminous, and the lines between ownership and employment are blurred. Often the decision to shift from wage work to self-employment is motivated by pressures to leave the local community. Self-employment becomes a mechanism for maintaining and strengthening ties to place; thus it represents a strong form of local orientation.
Local orientation, however, is not the only reason why small producers are likely to remain in a community. Small business owners and the self-employed rely on one another for support and information. These networks allow small producers to capture economies of scale that enable them to compete effectively with larger firms (Piore and Sabel 1984). Networks of small businesspersons are “place-based” and not readily transferable to other communities; small producers remain tied to locality. Because the networks themselves are embedded in local community institutions, they maintain and strengthen shared values and local community identity. Complete article
These small local firms would also be better at addressing quality control problems with consumer goods if they're manufactured locally and there are problems with them, ranging from trivial problems with packaging that have been gradually getting worse, where cans don't open properly or packets of seasoning that don't rip open easily unless you yank at it then they might spill all of a sudden, or larger problems like defective merchandise that is made in large volumes before being shipped half way around the world, which includes food poisoning, chests of drawers that fall over onto kids, or defective toilet seats. A family member once bought a cheap toilet seat manufactured in China with a small piece that was broken in the package, which means that they shipped this product half way around the world before she bought it only to return it to the store where it would be thrown away. Even if it hadn't broken before we opened the package this was so cheesy that it would have broken within a few years so we would have had to replace it again, which is now standard operating procedure.
Another major problem is centralized authoritarian control of the economic system, which we now have leads to more economic inequality and poverty, as a result of suppressed wages and people from wealthy communities getting better education, enabling them to get jobs in the media, advertising, public relations, political pundits, legal establishment, and other jobs that are designed to control the economy which also pay much better than working class people get.
All the people in the media come from the same class of wealthy college educated people, and many of them routinely go back and forth to the political establishment, or they invite pundits including economists that are well paid but support a fiscal ideology rigged heavily in favor of the wealthy, whether it's by shipping jobs overseas union busting, an unequal justice system, or many other issues. Economists like Richard Wolff and Juliet Schor or activists like Bill McKibben are practically never welcome on the mainstream media to explain many of the problems with our economic system, so the majority of the public only hears one side of the issue. But in the academic world or alternative media there's much better research explaining the problems with economic inequality and how it contributes to higher crime, racism, or lower health and quality of life, destruction of the environment including the following study by Wesley Peterson, which shows that the wealthy are leading contributors to many of problems for the poor while they get the majority of the benefits:
Is Economic Inequality Really a Problem? October 2017 E. Wesley F. Peterson
Inequality and Social and Environmental Ills
Wilkinson and Pickett (2009) document correlations between inequality and a wide range of social ills including crime, murder rates, teenage pregnancy, family conflict, obesity, poor health, and social mobility. Although they recognize that correlation is not the same as causality, their conclusions seem to blur this distinction. When Leigh et al. (2009) looked more deeply at the correlation between poor health outcomes and inequality, they were unable to find strong evidence of causality and the same is likely to be true for correlations between inequality and crime or teenage pregnancy rates. Nevertheless, even if it cannot be shown that economic inequality is the prime causal factor behind these problems, there is clearly a strong association and it is likely that it is a contributing factor. Other scholars have investigated the link between inequality and particular sets of problems and much of this work does support the idea that inequality contributes to social and environmental problems. The research reported by Payne (2017) focuses on the effect of inequality on various behaviors some of which do, in fact, lead to crime, violence and conflict. Troutt (2013) argues that inequality is at the root of discrimination in U.S. housing markets and unequal support for public education that have the effect of cutting off avenues out of poverty and economic inequality. He argues that those who are relatively affluent worry that mixing with those at the lower end of the income distribution will threaten their property values and diminish the quality of their schools. Residential sorting in the United States, often driven by racial discrimination, has resulted in enormous spatial inequality. Because public schools are financed primarily from local property taxes, school quality varies with the wealth of the neighborhood in which the school is located. Troutt (2013, p. 216) agrees with other scholars who see U.S. educational and housing policies as tightly connected and driven by a reverence for local control with the result that schools and neighborhoods remain segregated by both economic class and race.
There are two ways environmental concerns are linked to economic inequality. First, greater inequality leads to more environmental degradation because high-income individuals often benefit from polluting activities and have the political power to shield these activities from government regulation (Boyce 2017; Stiglitz 2013; Sayer 2016). Downey (2015) argues that organizations and institutions controlled by high-income elites are the primary causes of current environmental crises ranging from declines in biodiversity and soil fertility to growing global pollution. Baek and Gweisah (2013) find that a more equal distribution of income in the United States would lead to improved environmental quality. The second way that environmental degradation is tied to inequality is through its impacts on people with limited means. Andersson and Agrawal (2011) find that rising inequality has a negative impact on the protection of common property resources such as forests in Asia, Africa, and Latin America as a result of the actions of low-income families. Those at the bottom of the income distribution may find that they have little choice but to move into environmentally fragile areas where their activities can lead to environmental damage. Hsiang et al. (2017) show that the effects of climate change are worse in parts of the United States where incomes are lowest. The environmental justice movement has drawn particular attention to the fact that ethnic and racial minorities in the United States often live and work in locations afflicted by pollution and toxic waste (Skelton and Miller 2016). In both low- and high-income countries the effects of such phenomena as air and water pollution and climate change fall most heavily on the least well off. As noted in The Economist (2017):
The rich are disproportionate contributors to the carbon emissions that power climate change. It is cruel and perverse, therefore, that the costs of warming should be disproportionately borne by the poor. And it is both insult and injury that the wealthy are more mobile in the face of climate-induced hardship, and more effective at limiting the mobility of others. The strains this injustice places on the social fabric might well lead to woes more damaging than rising temperatures themselves. (p. 66) Complete article PDF
Inequality and Social and Environmental Ills
Wilkinson and Pickett (2009) document correlations between inequality and a wide range of social ills including crime, murder rates, teenage pregnancy, family conflict, obesity, poor health, and social mobility. Although they recognize that correlation is not the same as causality, their conclusions seem to blur this distinction. When Leigh et al. (2009) looked more deeply at the correlation between poor health outcomes and inequality, they were unable to find strong evidence of causality and the same is likely to be true for correlations between inequality and crime or teenage pregnancy rates. Nevertheless, even if it cannot be shown that economic inequality is the prime causal factor behind these problems, there is clearly a strong association and it is likely that it is a contributing factor. Other scholars have investigated the link between inequality and particular sets of problems and much of this work does support the idea that inequality contributes to social and environmental problems. The research reported by Payne (2017) focuses on the effect of inequality on various behaviors some of which do, in fact, lead to crime, violence and conflict. Troutt (2013) argues that inequality is at the root of discrimination in U.S. housing markets and unequal support for public education that have the effect of cutting off avenues out of poverty and economic inequality. He argues that those who are relatively affluent worry that mixing with those at the lower end of the income distribution will threaten their property values and diminish the quality of their schools. Residential sorting in the United States, often driven by racial discrimination, has resulted in enormous spatial inequality. Because public schools are financed primarily from local property taxes, school quality varies with the wealth of the neighborhood in which the school is located. Troutt (2013, p. 216) agrees with other scholars who see U.S. educational and housing policies as tightly connected and driven by a reverence for local control with the result that schools and neighborhoods remain segregated by both economic class and race.
There are two ways environmental concerns are linked to economic inequality. First, greater inequality leads to more environmental degradation because high-income individuals often benefit from polluting activities and have the political power to shield these activities from government regulation (Boyce 2017; Stiglitz 2013; Sayer 2016). Downey (2015) argues that organizations and institutions controlled by high-income elites are the primary causes of current environmental crises ranging from declines in biodiversity and soil fertility to growing global pollution. Baek and Gweisah (2013) find that a more equal distribution of income in the United States would lead to improved environmental quality. The second way that environmental degradation is tied to inequality is through its impacts on people with limited means. Andersson and Agrawal (2011) find that rising inequality has a negative impact on the protection of common property resources such as forests in Asia, Africa, and Latin America as a result of the actions of low-income families. Those at the bottom of the income distribution may find that they have little choice but to move into environmentally fragile areas where their activities can lead to environmental damage. Hsiang et al. (2017) show that the effects of climate change are worse in parts of the United States where incomes are lowest. The environmental justice movement has drawn particular attention to the fact that ethnic and racial minorities in the United States often live and work in locations afflicted by pollution and toxic waste (Skelton and Miller 2016). In both low- and high-income countries the effects of such phenomena as air and water pollution and climate change fall most heavily on the least well off. As noted in The Economist (2017):
The rich are disproportionate contributors to the carbon emissions that power climate change. It is cruel and perverse, therefore, that the costs of warming should be disproportionately borne by the poor. And it is both insult and injury that the wealthy are more mobile in the face of climate-induced hardship, and more effective at limiting the mobility of others. The strains this injustice places on the social fabric might well lead to woes more damaging than rising temperatures themselves. (p. 66) Complete article PDF
Wesley Peterson presents many arguments from both sides of the argument, including many that don't seem to believe that economic inequality is a problem at all. These are presumably people benefiting from it that might even be inclined to finance propaganda disguised as research to justify epidemic levels of income inequality. Yet he still recognizes that it's a problem that needs to be addressed. Another argument from the Cato Institute listed below claims there are Five Myths about Economic Inequality in America which are utterly absurd, and any person with rational thinking skills can see through this propaganda. Wesley Peterson seems to accept William Watson's claim that winning the lottery is a fair way that contributes to income inequality; however, even though it's not related to local economies most of the time, a review of the lottery and how it correlates with crime and other social problems, and that it shifts tax burdens to the poor should raise major doubts about Watson's claims.
A few basic principles should also indicate that many of the causes of income inequality are a major reason for some of these social ills, and that many of the wealthiest people really don't earn their money, under the current system, they rig the economy in their favor so they get the majority of the benefits while others do all the work. A few simple examples include considering how certain jobs improve the quality of life for people and how well they pay, even though many of them aren't highly skilled or require advanced education. Growing food or stocking shelves are necessary jobs to make the economy work, yet the people that do this work get minimum wage barely getting enough to survive often being forced to go on welfare, even when they work full time. However college educated jobs like advertising pays much better, but they create a false impression of products and don't do much if anything to improve the quality of life.
One of the most extreme examples as described in Bob Ortega's book "In Sam We Trust" is Kathie Lee Gifford clothing line where she collected three percent of the retail value of the clothes sold using her name while the workers that made the clothes got less than one percent and were forced to work in outrageous conditions. Trying to argue that this is a justifiable distribution of wealth would require an enormous amount of spin and distraction, which is exactly what high paid advertisers, economists, media pundits do. Mostly the way they justify this is by simple refusing to report on it!
In most cases tariffs aren't necessarily the most effective way to protect local economies; a carbon tax might be far more effective since it discourages more shipping than necessary, while protecting the environment at the same time. However, when some countries are becoming more competitive by oppressing workers rights, destroying either their own or other peoples environment to produce good, or if the government subsidizes production to drive prices down to get an unfair advantage, then tariffs are a reasonable way to protect workers, the environment, or prevent unfair trade practices.
In most cases the shipping expenses should make it far more efficient to buy locally manufactured food, and in a reasonable economic system other policies could be put in place protecting factory direct stores, which were eliminated by oligarchy practices. One of the biggest problems is simply that lobbyists paid for by large corporations make all the decisions and they clearly rig things in their own favor.
Lawmakers have no qualms about "protectionism" if it protects their campaign donors, which is what the vast majority of our trade policies are designed to do. One of the most blatant and outrageous examples of that is The Jones Act, the obscure 1920 shipping regulation strangling Puerto Rico, explained 10/09/2017 which is contrary to their alleged "free trade" agenda, although it doesn't involve tariffs. Instead it requires good from one american port going to another American port to be shipped by american ships. This adds a modest expense to most of us but it protects American jobs, although the biggest beneficiary is the owners for American shipbuilders. But it's a much bigger expense for Puerto Rico due to their geographical location.
Since they're closer to many Caribbean counties or Central and South America countries so it would be far more efficient for them to deal with foreign shipping companies, perhaps even buying more foreign goods than many other American's might. Yet the Jones Act is designed to benefit the ship builders, not create an efficient trade system that works well for everyone, presumably since Puerto Rican's don't have equal representation, and even if they did most of the propaganda people used to based their votes on are paid for by campaign donors and elected officials routinely find ways to serve their interests in stead of the public's.
The bigger problem is that our entire economic system is being distorted by the media, politicians, and economists that all cater to corporate interests so a major part of the solution has to include a much more diverse media and enabling all people to hear from different views, including many that are much more rational than the ones presented by the establishment, which routinely ignores many inconvenient facts.
Other countries including those Northern Europe have far more rational economic system, although multinational corporations are trying to corrupt those as well, with less success. If they can do it, we can, perhaps even better if we stop listening to the oligarchs, and only electing candidates that they provide media coverage for!
The following are some sources or additional background information:
Local Ownership Makes Communities Healthier, Wealthier and Wiser 07/18/2012
Regulation & the Economy The Relationship & How to Improve It 09/27/2017
Green Party: Economic Justice & Sustainability
The Multiplier Effect of Local Independent Businesses 2015
Why Local First?
How a Trump decision on trade became a setback for democracy in Vietnam 10/12/2018 Freed from conditions imposed by the Obama administration to join the trade pact, Vietnam's communist government has scrapped plans to allow independent trade unions and unleashed its most severe clampdown on dissent in decades. Authorities have arrested scores of social activists, bloggers and democracy advocates, sentencing many to jail terms of 10 to 20 years.
The TPP Prioritizes the ‘Rights’ of Corporations Over Workers, the Environment, and Democracy 10/07/2015 ‘‘Corporations still have an extra-judicial process to enforce their rights. That’s not the case for labor and environmental standards.’’ By John NicholsTwitter
Getting Trade Right Fall 2015
The obscure legal system that lets corporations sue countries 06/10/2015
Fifteen years ago, Parada’s work was a minor niche even within the legal business. But since 2000, hundreds of foreign investors have sued more than half of the world’s countries, claiming damages for a wide range of government actions that they say have threatened their profits. In 2006, Ecuador cancelled an oil-exploration contract with Houston-based Occidental Petroleum; in 2012, after Occidental filed a suit before an international investment tribunal, Ecuador was ordered to pay a record $1.8bn – roughly equal to the country’s health budget for a year. (Ecuador has logged a request for the decision to be annulled.)
Parada’s first case was defending Argentina in the late 1990s against the French conglomerate Vivendi, which sued after the Argentine province of Tucuman stepped in to limit the price it charged people for water and wastewater services. Argentina eventually lost, and was ordered to pay the company more than $100m. Now, in his most high-profile case yet, Parada is part of the team defending El Salvador as it tries to fend off a multimillion-dollar suit lodged by a multinational mining company after the tiny Central American country refused to allow it to dig for gold. .......
A Century of U.S. Intervention Created the Immigration Crisis 06/20/2018
Fleeing a hell the US helped create: why Central Americans journey north 12/19/2018
Corporate Control in Agriculture
Agropoly: A handful of corporations control world food production - EcoNexus
Five Myths about Economic Inequality in America 09/07/2016 The first "myth" here, "Inequality Has Never Been Worse" may not be entirely true, as they claim; however the other four alleged "myths," including "The Rich Didn’t Earn Their Money," "The Rich Stay Rich; the Poor Stay Poor," "More Inequality Means More Poverty" and "Inequality Distorts the Political Process" are mostly if not entirely true. It wouldn't take much research to show that this is an incredibly bad argument only designed to convince people that benefit from epidemic inequality. If this argument was presented to the majority of the public, especially people with reasonable critical thinking skills that aren't inclined to blindly trust so-called experts, it would clearly backfire since their claims is so bad, regardless of how good their spin is.
The true cost of your cheap clothes: slave wages for Bangladesh factory workers 06/11/2016
Workers endured long hours, low pay at Chinese factory used by Ivanka Trump’s clothing-maker 04/25/2017
Nike Called Out for Low Wages in Asia Amid Colin Kaepernick Ad Promotion 09/06/2018
Nike and America's wage problem 05/14/2015
Snopes: Do Nike Factory Workers in Vietnam Earn 20 Cents Per Hour? 09/07/2018 Partly true, the wages were from the 1990s before being reported, since then they rose to "between $0.61 and $0.89 per hour in 2016." some reports of them working longer than the maximum of 48 hours a week are probably true but 70 to 80 hours is supposedly not typical. doing so might reduce production as they're too tired.
Banning Sweatshops Only Hurts the Poor 07/05/2015 this is an incredibly bad propaganda piece that will only convince those that want to be convinced that abusing people's rights in sweatshops are in their own best interests. I doubt if anyone that ever had to work in a sweatshop would believe any of this, and unless she's intentionally providing propaganda for a living I can't imagine why she would spin things so badly.
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