Monday 1 October 2012

[wanabidii] When Mitt Romney enjoys Cheap Labour in Pioneering of Offshore business to China



People,
 
 

When products are bought by someone, the value of the total product must be equal to people's total expenditures in buying things........If expenditure value is less yet the public continue to pay taxes in many fronts.......buying food, paying bills, paying rent, school fees, medical expenses, transportation etc., whatever is paid for tax value is included........The owner of the product gets the profit.........With Chinese Commission Agency in the scramble to Africa is different. They bribe Politicians and gets public wealth resources for free.......in the even the Chinese own the Public Wealth Resources and trade with it in the International Emerging Market........Who benefits.....??? .......Why is Romney's business action affecting world's economic imbalances.......??? It is because, Chinese/Asian Free Trading Business is not legitimately fair, favorable and is not providing a balance for checks and balances........it engages in "Intellectual Property Thieving".........and it is unacceptable and must be rejected by all......it is the reason for EuroZone collapse and is headed to throw the whole world into the 3rd World War......because of Conflicts of Interests not agreeing.........and is not providing benefits for Peace and Unity........So, it is not an African problem or the American problem; but the whole world's problem..........it is why people are angry, why there is too much hate; why the Selfish and Greedy feel they are right and victims of cirmcumstances are wrong.............

 

 

In Free Business trading, when Mitt Romney enjoys Cheap Labor in Pioneering of Offshore business to China, the Chinese in their Commission Agency agreement on the Principle of Free Trading benefit hugely.......in other-words, he gives the China Asian opportunity to take advantage to manipulate both America and Africa's Public wealth and business interest.........when people loose their jobs from business closure, their livelihood is interfered with....thereby affecting balance of GDP record information to ascertain Trading fair Value and Worthiness ..... more specifically where there is no Trading Regulations put in place to curb and protect checks and balances.......Who are disadvantaged and who suffers....??? .........In the event, is there fairness or a balance???

 

 

Goods and services theories.......Equal to comparison of value for income against what is going out from the Country......Result Determines Loses or Gains.......

 

 

Do your maths on Pythegorum Theorem…….and you will get the answer……..

 

 

Then we will come back to Kibaki, why his report to the UN on education agenda to public is a failed mission, health plan for public is false, security and sustained projects for poverty eradication are not compatible and therefore not legitimate…., and why his poverty eradication strategy report is all wrong…….Then what do we have as Focus for Way Forward…….to avoid looming Civil Conflict of interest in Kenya………..The reason why Drug peddling is in the rise, why insecurity in Kenya is a cancer, why child porn and prostitution with trafficking is a pandemic, why human organs is a lucrative business of the Rich in Kenya; why Land Conflict will never end without change of guards in leadership, why Coalition Government has failed because nothing is working and Poverty has reached sky limits and is an explosion.

 


Judy Miriga
Diaspora Spokesperson
Executive Director
Confederation Council Foundation for Africa Inc.,
USA
http://socioeconomicforum50.blogspot.com
 
 
 
 
Check it out........

Fair Trade is Unfair; In Praise of Cheap Labor; Are Bad Jobs at Bad Wages Better than No Jobs at All? Are Paul Krugman and Mitt Romney On the Same Page?


Are bad jobs at bad wages better than no jobs at all? Should the US demand third world economies pay "living wages"? If so, and if countries don't oblige, should the US impose tariffs so the US does not lose jobs to such countries.

Moral Outrage Over Free Trade

This is what I think....

Moral outrage is common among the opponents of globalization--of the transfer of technology and capital from high-wage to low-wage countries and the resulting growth of labor-intensive Third World exports. These critics take it as a given that anyone with a good word for this process is naive or corrupt and, in either case, a de facto agent of global capital in its oppression of workers here and abroad.

But matters are not that simple, and the moral lines are not that clear. In fact, let me make a counter-accusation: The lofty moral tone of the opponents of globalization is possible only because they have chosen not to think their position through. While fat-cat capitalists might benefit from globalization, the biggest beneficiaries are, yes, Third World workers.

Workers in those shirt and sneaker factories are, inevitably, paid very little and expected to endure terrible working conditions. I say "inevitably" because their employers are not in business for their (or their workers') health; they pay as little as possible, and that minimum is determined by the other opportunities available to workers. And these are still extremely poor countries, where living on a garbage heap is attractive compared with the alternatives.

And yet, wherever the new export industries have grown, there has been measurable improvement in the lives of ordinary people. Partly this is because a growing industry must offer a somewhat higher wage than workers could get elsewhere in order to get them to move. More importantly, however, the growth of manufacturing--and of the penumbra of other jobs that the new export sector creates--has a ripple effect throughout the economy. The pressure on the land becomes less intense, so rural wages rise; the pool of unemployed urban dwellers always anxious for work shrinks, so factories start to compete with each other for workers, and urban wages also begin to rise. Where the process has gone on long enough--say, in South Korea or Taiwan--average wages start to approach what an American teen-ager can earn at McDonald's. And eventually people are no longer eager to live on garbage dumps.

The benefits of export-led economic growth to the mass of people in the newly industrializing economies are not a matter of conjecture. A country like Indonesia is still so poor that progress can be measured in terms of how much the average person gets to eat; since 1970, per capita intake has risen from less than 2,100 to more than 2,800 calories a day. A shocking one-third of young children are still malnourished--but in 1975, the fraction was more than half. Similar improvements can be seen throughout the Pacific Rim, and even in places like Bangladesh.

Why, then, the outrage of my correspondents? Why does the image of an Indonesian sewing sneakers for 60 cents an hour evoke so much more feeling than the image of another Indonesian earning the equivalent of 30 cents an hour trying to feed his family on a tiny plot of land--or of a Filipino scavenging on a garbage heap?

The main answer, I think, is a sort of fastidiousness. Unlike the starving subsistence farmer, the women and children in the sneaker factory are working at slave wages for our benefit--and this makes us feel unclean. And so there are self-righteous demands for international labor standards: We should not, the opponents of globalization insist, be willing to buy those sneakers and shirts unless the people who make them receive decent wages and work under decent conditions.

This sounds only fair--but is it? Let's think through the consequences.

First of all, even if we could assure the workers in Third World export industries of higher wages and better working conditions, this would do nothing for the peasants, day laborers, scavengers, and so on who make up the bulk of these countries' populations. At best, forcing developing countries to adhere to our labor standards would create a privileged labor aristocracy, leaving the poor majority no better off.

And it might not even do that. The advantages of established First World industries are still formidable. The only reason developing countries have been able to compete with those industries is their ability to offer employers cheap labor. Deny them that ability, and you might well deny them the prospect of continuing industrial growth, even reverse the growth that has been achieved. And since export-oriented growth, for all its injustice, has been a huge boon for the workers in those nations, anything that curtails that growth is very much against their interests. A policy of good jobs in principle, but no jobs in practice, might assuage our consciences, but it is no favor to its alleged beneficiaries.

You may say that the wretched of the earth should not be forced to serve as hewers of wood, drawers of water, and sewers of sneakers for the affluent. But what is the alternative? Should they be helped with foreign aid?

And as long as you have no realistic alternative to industrialization based on low wages, to oppose it means that you are willing to deny desperately poor people the best chance they have of progress for the sake of what amounts to an aesthetic standard--that is, the fact that you don't like the idea of workers being paid a pittance to supply rich Westerners with fashion items.

In short, my correspondents are not entitled to their self-righteousness. They have not thought the matter through. And when the hopes of hundreds of millions are at stake, thinking things through is not just good intellectual practice. It is a moral duty.

Purposeful Plagiarism to Make a Point

By the way, I need to point out that everything written above following "This is what I think...." was not written by me (but it does reflect my exact beliefs).

Believe it or not, Paul Krugman wrote that, and here is the link: In Praise of Cheap Labor.

Mind to Mush

Paul Krugman won his Nobel Prize for trade, and in terms of trade, I agree with everything above he said. In fact, there is nothing at all in the article I would disagree with.

At some point since he wrote that, his mind turned to complete mush. Now he is in agreement with Mitt Romney about the need for the US to raise tariffs on China.

All [Freely Entered] Trade is Good!

The fact of the matter is all [freely entered] trade is good. It has to be. For there to be trade, both buyer and seller get something they want at a price they agree on.

However, assume for a second that is not true.

Assume China or whoever is willingly selling us good "too cheap". Who benefits from that? Why the American consumer of course.

Would "Fair Trade" Bring Back Jobs?

Unfortunately, Krugman and Mitt Romney alike would rather the cost of underwear, auto parts, toys, shoes, etc. cost double what they cost, in the foolish belief it would bring back US jobs.

Well it won't. Manufacturing would simply move jobs from China to Vietnam or other places unless the US is willing to start a trade war with the world.

Assuming Romney-sponsored tariffs worked (they wouldn't) and even assuming the jobs returned (that wouldn't happen either), would the tradeoff be worth it?

The answer is of course not. A protected few union workers might benefit, but the cost of everything would skyrocket. Those on fixed income and those in non-protected jobs would be hammered. Unemployment would soar.

And that is looking on the bright side. The jobs would not come home, even if the manufacturing itself did. The first reason is robots, and the second reason is a too cheap cost of money.

Blame the Fed

Flip-flop the order if you like. In a yield starved world with Bernanke pushing down interest rates, the cost of money is ridiculously cheap (assuming of course businesses can find a legitimate use for it).

And what better use is there for money at 1% than for manufacturers to buy robots to replace humans, especially when Krugman and Romney are united in driving up the cost of labor?

I have written about robots before. Here are parts one and two of a recent set of posts I did.

  1. Robots to Rule the World? Taking All Jobs? Replace Women?
  2. Part II - Robots to Rule the World? Taking All Jobs? Replace Women?

Now consider another article that just came my way: This Robot Could Transform Manufacturing.

Please read that article at your leisure. The point is tariffs are not going to bring jobs back to the US, at least jobs by living, breathing human beings.

Rather all tariffs will do is slow global trade and raise costs on everyone.

Krugman and Romney in Same Boat

No one will benefit from a trade war, except perhaps a miniscule percentage of union workers. Everyone else will lose big time.

This is exactly why Romney should be a champion of free trade. Instead he agrees with the new "conscious of a liberal" Paul Krugman who somehow forgot everything he ever knew about the benefits of free trade.

Fair Trade is Unfair

The unions howl they want "fair trade". Fair to whom? The answer is fair to their self-interests, damn the enormous costs to everyone else.

Romney should see that, but he doesn't. Alternatively he does, and is pandering for votes. So which is it?

Here is a key question of the day: Does Mitt Romney Really "Know Better" Than the Silly Things He Says?

You tell me. I don't know if Romney believes the foolish things he says or not.

What I do know is Romney and Krugman are now in the same boat in regards to tariffs on China and both of them are completely wrong.

Addendum:

I modified the line "All Trade is Good!" to "All Freely Entered Trade is Good!". It should have been clear from the context, but when I said "All Trade is Good!" I was talking about "freely entered" trade. If someone forces you to sell your cow for $10 and you do not want to, that is not "free trade".

Wage and price controls are not "free trade" and either. Sure enough, someone brought up slave trade in an email.

Speaking of which, forced collective bargaining, forced union membership, and union rules that apply to the general population are all forms of slavery and should be abolished. For details, please see Paul Krugman, Stephen Colbert, Bill Maher, others, Ignore Extortion, Bribery, Coercion, and Slavery; No One Should Own Yo

Read more at http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2012/09/fair-trade-is-unfair-in-praise-of-cheap.html#buDrHe8WSUcXSwpo.99
 
 
 
 
 
 
Why governments intervene in international business

by Jesse Vorton

Created on: June 26, 2010 Last Updated: July 09, 2010
Governments often impose restrictions on free trade for three reasons: political, economic, or cultural, or some combination of the three. On occasion, nations intervene in trade when they provide support to their domestic business' exporting activities. Further, governments may intervene during tougher economic times, when workers lobby their government to reduce imports, at a time when they feel they will be laid off work, or worse their positions get eliminated.
Political Motives: Most commonly suited to this category is that government officials often make trade oriented decisions based on their personal and their political party's motives. The main political motives responsible for government intervention in international trade include:
+Protecting Jobs: China Lucky Film had to compete with a much more dominant Kodak for a larger share of the photographic film market in China. Fearing the annihilation of China Lucky Film, the Chinese government then offered to CLF $240 million in cash and low interest loans, and further initiated a ban of joint ventures in film manufacturing within the country.
+To Preserve National Security: Industries essential to a nations security will often find themselves in assistance of government funding; this is true for both imports and exports.
+Responding to other nations' unfair trade practices: Many economists would agree that free trade is not fair, when one country is actively seeking to protect their own industries, i.e. by instituting reasonably sized tariffs and quotas.
+Gaining influence over other nations: Those governments of larger and more dominant nations often establish trade relations with smaller nations' to gain influence over the latter. For example, the United States has obtained over the last century strong trading relationships with those countries in South America and North America as well the Caribbean, who in which are strongly dependent on the business provided by the U.S. A disruption in political relationships could inadvertently decrease economic activity between the US and one of their trading partners.
Economic Motives: the most common economic motives for government intervention in trade are:
+To Protect Infant Industries: Infant organizations need government protection from international competition during their developmental phases until they become sufficiently competitive globally. The reasons why this is important because the business needs time through growth and maturity to acquire the knowledge necessary to become more innovative, and efficient, thus increasingly the likelihood of becoming a more competitive force in the market.
+To Pursue Strategic Trade Policy: This argument often suggests that strategic trade policy can lead to increased levels of national income. Firms should see greater profits generated when they begin to reap first-mover advantages, further solidifying their position in their markets globally.
Cultural Motives: Often nations are restricting trade on goods and services as to reach a cultural objective; the most common is the protection of the nation's national identity. An unwanted cultural influence in a country can cause great concern from the citizens, resulting in the government having at times to block certain imports deemed cultural offensive from getting into the country. A perfect example is that in Canada, 35 percent of all music aired on Canadian radio stations must be music played by Canadian artists.
Should governments restrict or promote trade? As the aforementioned would illustrate, government intervention is most commonly found to satisfy those motives of government. Although only one argument was presented here, it is quite clear that government intervention offers job security to those nations domestic workers.
 
 

Free Trade Vs. Fair Trade

From the Archives
Posted on October 26, 2005
Previously filed under: Trade

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS ARTICLE IS FROM 2005. VISIT OUR HOMEPAGE FOR NEW CONTENT.
Fair traders and free traders have a surprising amount of common ground. Both camps are concerned with global justice, poverty alleviation and global prosperity.
Free trade refers to a general openness to exchange goods and information between and among nations with few-to-no barriers-to-trade. Fair trade refers to exchanges, the terms of which meet the demands of justice.

Proponents of fair trade argue that exchanges between developed nations and lesser developed countries (LDCs) occur along uneven terms, and should be made more equitable. The Fair Trade Federation's Annual Report describes the fair trade movement as "a global network of producers, traders, marketers, advocates and consumers focused on building equitable trading relationships between consumers and the world's most economically
disadvantaged artisans and farmers."

Fair trade organizations, such as the Fair Trade Federation and the International Federation for Alternative Trade maintain that fair trade practices alleviate poverty, enhance gender equity, improve working conditions, the environment, and distributive justice.

By contrast, free trade proponents believe that under a system of voluntary exchange, the demands of justice are met. Although free traders hope to alleviate poverty and improve conditions around the world, they prefer measures that are less intrusive than fair traders, who regard the unfettered market as injurious to these same goals.

Free traders argue that in the long run markets will solve - that is, when permitted to come to equilibrium, both rich and poor nations will benefit. In this way, free traders hold that free trade is fair trade.




The Case for Fair Trade



The Dependency Thesis

Proponents of fair trade maintain that trade between and among nations occurs in coercive and uneven ways. Even if nations trade freely, smaller nations become increasingly reliant on richer states, whose interaction with smaller countries depletes natural resources in those countries, and slows their progress. Dependency theory has many variations, and has undergone changes over several decades.

According to the principles of fair trade, the prevailing terms of trade between rich and poor nations are unjust because prevailing market prices for the goods produced in the Third World are too low for the laborers to reap a wage reflecting their dignity.
Here are the basics. Richer, powerful nations are collectively known as the "core," while LDCs and other very poor countries are known collectively as the "periphery." Dependency theories entertain the idea that periphery states depend for their well-being on the core. The core produces more luxury goods, while the periphery specializes in basic and industrial goods. Although there are many putative mechanisms driving the dependency - some of them highly disputed even among dependency theorists - the general theme is that such a dependent relationship exists, and is ruinous to the LDCs.

F.H. Cardoso and Enzo Faletto published Dependency and Development in Latin America in 1969, the first academic statement of dependency theory. In it, Cardoso and Faletto argue that "economic development has frequently depended on favorable conditions for exports." Argentina in 1900 looked economically very similar to the United States of 1900, but Argentina's growth was severely depressed when compared to U.S. economic growth over the twentieth century. Cardoso and Faletto attribute this decline to unfavorable terms of trade relationships for Argentina.

Later versions of the dependency theory hold that governments mismanage money, while private investors regard the Third World as risky investment. So, the Third World finds itself perpetually disadvantaged. John Gray of the London School of Economics argues in False Dawn: The increased interconnection of economic activity throughout the world accentuates uneven development between different countries. It exaggerates the dependency of 'peripheral' developing states such as Mexico on investment from economies nearer the 'centre', such as the United States. Though one consequence of a more globalized economy is to overturn or weaken some hierarchical economic relationships between states - between western countries and China, for example - at the same time it strengthens some existing hierarchical relations and creates new ones.

Dependency theory ultimately maintains that the terms of trade between center and periphery nations is unbalanced and therefore unfair.

Alleviation of Poverty and Human Dignity

Fair trade advocates maintain that nations that have limited export opportunities become poorer, and hard-working individuals and their children struggle to meet basic life needs. Fairtrade.org argues that trade introduces an exploitative mechanism which impoverishes those in the Third World: "Particularly in the field of trade, our area of attention, the law of the strongest is frequently the only law. In Asia, Africa and Latin America, both male and female craftsmen and farmers know all about this. If they cannot free themselves from the grasp of the numerous middlemen and buyers, who from their position of power prescribe the lowest prices, they will remain slaves of circumstances their entire lives."

According to the principles of fair trade, the prevailing terms of trade between rich and poor nations are unjust because prevailing market prices for the goods produced in the Third World are too low for the laborers to reap a wage reflecting their dignity.

Nobel Prize winning economist Amartya Sen, in Development as Freedom notes another problem of poverty: Many of the same people who have small incomes also have deficiencies in the ability to convert those incomes to useful life pursuits. In other words, there are "unequal advantages in converting incomes into capabilities." Sen continues, "the interpersonal income inequality in the market outcomes may tend to be magnified by this 'coupling' of low incomes with handicaps in the conversion of incomes to capabilities."

Poorer nations are thereby perpetually punished even further as they are less able to efficiently use the income they accumulate. Fair trade organizations take up the project of buying products from Third World producers at supracompetitive prices - prices that exceed the equilibrium price, as a form of poverty alleviation.




The Case for Free Trade



Voluntariness

Proponents of free trade argue that voluntary exchange meets the demands of justice because each party to the trade leaves the trade richer than he or she was before. Johan Norberg writes in his book In Defense of Global Capitalism: It may seem odd that the world's prosperity can be augmented by swapping things with each other, but every time you go shopping you realize, subconsciously, how exchange augments wealth. You pay a dollar for a bottle of milk because you would rather have the milk than your dollar. The shop sells it at that price because they would rather have your dollar than keep the milk. Both parties are satisfied with the deal, otherwise it would never have taken place. Both of you emerge from the transaction feeling that you have made a good exchange, your needs have been provided for.

Advocates of free trade note that parties to a transaction participate freely because it improves their own lot. This lesson applies more generally to trade among nations. If producers and consumers in world markets adopt the same producing and consuming behaviors that they do as individuals, then exchange among nations is just and wealth increasing.

Other academics have focused on the connection between open exchange and the larger program of freedoms in society. Nobel laureate Milton Friedman argues in Capitalism and Freedom that there is a very real connection between economic freedom and the political freedoms. In this way, voluntary exchange is a component of a larger bundle of freedoms in society. Friedman illustrates this view tellingly: No one who buys bread knows whether the wheat from which it is made was grown by a Communist or a Republican, by a constitutionalist or a Fascist... Instead of recognizing that the existence of the market has protected [the oppressed] from the attitudes of their fellow countrymen, [critics of free trade] mistakenly attribute the residual discrimination to the market.

Discrimination can therefore be a self-punishing choice for producers - who select workers on the basis of something other than performance - and for consumers, for whom it is costly to determine the often anonymous sources of goods and services. Voluntariness permits incentive structures that accord with fairness.

Trade Is Enriching - To Everyone

Advocates of free trade find many economists in their ranks; economists nearly unanimously support measures to increase the flow of goods between nations, and thereby to make trade freer.

Countries, like people, are more or less talented at producing various goods.

When countries specialize in producing what they are relatively more talented at producing, they can trade with other countries doing the same thing, and all participating countries can enjoy a more extensive package of total goods and services than they did before. Economists call this the Ricardian trade model, and empirical evidence appears to confirm trade's enriching effect on participating countries.

Consider two fictional countries: Here and There. Here and There each have 10 units of Labor with which to produce gin and vermouth. Here and There fought some brutish wars many decades back, but they have come to terms with each other by finding their common ground: martinis.

Laborers in Here can produce gin at a rate 10 units per hour and can produce vermouth at a rate of 1 unit per hour. Over There, where grapes are abundant, Laborers produce vermouth at 10 units per hour, but produce gin at a disappointing pace of 1 unit per hour. Let's see what happens when Here and There stubbornly refuse to cooperate and make their own martinis:

In Here, laborers are divided evenly between gin and vermouth. At the end of one hour, Here gin producers (five of them) each have made 10 units of gin for a total of 50. The other five work on vermouth, and they can come up with five units at the end of the hour. At the end of an eight-hour day, there are 40 vermouths and 400 gins. In There, laborers are divided evenly. They end up with 400 vermouths and 40 gins.

Martinis are best when they're three parts gin to one part vermouth. That means Here can make 120 martinis before running out of vermouth to add to gin, and There can make approximately 13 martinis before running out of gin.

Of course, Here will have an excess 280 gins, and There will have an excess 387 vermouths, for a possible increase of 93 martinis between Here and There per day. If they trade, Here and There can both increase its number of martinis. If they don't, those 93 extra martinis vanish as surely as today will tomorrow.

This is hardly the strongest case that can be made to Here and There to trade. Instead of domestically producing gin and vermouth and selling each other some of its excess, Here could fully employ its workers in producing gin, and There could fully employ its workers at producing vermouth. When they "specialize" in what they have a "comparative advantage" in (this is econ lingo for producing what each country is least bad at producing), both countries can increase their daily martini intake.

Unless expanding a country's consumption opportunities is a bad thing, free trade must be a good thing. Here will probably always have more martinis than There as long as martinis call for more gin than vermouth. But There is not likely to be upset; There unambiguously has more martinis than it would under autarchy.

But what can we make of poverty in the meantime? Trade may be enriching, but what does that mean for those that are poor and will remain poor during this process.

Professor Deepak Lal is a pioneer in the field of development economics. He remarks that "for most of history poverty has been the natural state of Man." On the encouraging side though, Lal argues, "a liberal economic order which promotes labor intensive growth can cure the age long problem of structural mass poverty."

What Is Fair Trade Anyway?

Advocates of free trade sometimes oppose fair trade on the belief that the concept is incoherent. Suppose that an initial "fair" price for a company to pay workers could be agreed upon. But would the price (or wage) be fairer if it was higher? If it was lower? If higher, workers capturing the jobs at that wage would live better. If lower, more workers could benefit from being paid that lower wage. What conditions of fairness underlie the idea of a "fair" price?
University of Rochester economist Steven E. Landsburg, author of The Armchair Economist and Slate.com columnist, writes the following story which illustrates the problem of "fair" prices: My dinner companion was passionate in her conviction that the rich pay less than their fair share of taxes. I didn't understand what she meant by "fair," so I asked a clarifying question: Suppose that Jack and Jill draw equal amounts of water from a community well. Jack's income is $10,000, of which he is taxed 10%, or $1,000, to support the well. Jill's income is $100,000, of which she is taxed 5%, or $5,000, to support the well. In which direction is that tax policy unfair?...I have thought about the issue in those terms quite a bit and am still unsure of my own answer. That's why I hesitate to pronounce judgment on the fairness of tax policies. If I can't tell what's fair in a world with two people and one well, how can I tell what's fair in a country with 250 million people and tens of thousands of government services.

Buyers and sellers self-select into and out of markets based upon their preferences, their willingness-to-pay, and the costs of production. When the market "clears," there is no excess demand or excess supply, so no resources are put into storage and no resources are still desired at the prevailing price. This outcome is efficient. Free marketers regard this optimal use of resources as fair. That is what they mean when they say that free trade is fair trade.

More importantly, if nations trade freely and therefore have no grievances about the trade, on whose behalf do we find the trade unfair? It would seem peculiar to find the trade objectionable because of another party's disagreement, where that party was unaffected by this trade.




Concluding Remarks

Fair traders and free traders have a surprising amount of common ground. Both camps are concerned with global justice, both are concerned with poverty alleviation and global prosperity. The basic problems appear to be held in common. But free traders regard voluntariness as the chief component of justice. Fair traders regard the expression of human dignity as the chief component of justice.

Free traders believe the best way to alleviate poverty in the long run is to permit freer trade while fair traders think that opening trade even further would entrench trends of rich nations becoming richer and poor nations becoming poorer. Fair traders think global prosperity cannot forget to include the immediate needs of those in the least well off group, while free traders regard such targeting as potentially dangerous.




Contributed by Jeffrey Eisenberg, former editor of aWorldConnected.org and a graduate of the University of Virginia. Reprinted with permission from A World Connected.

To read a Global Envision article about Fair Trade, see How "Fair" is Fair Trade?
 
 
 
 

--
Karibu Jukwaa la www.mwanabidii.com
Pata nafasi mpya za Kazi www.kazibongo.blogspot.com
Blogu ya Habari na Picha www.patahabari.blogspot.com
 
Kujiondoa Tuma Email kwenda
wanabidii+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com Utapata Email ya kudhibitisha ukishatuma
 
Disclaimer:
Everyone posting to this Forum bears the sole responsibility for any legal consequences of his or her postings, and hence statements and facts must be presented responsibly. Your continued membership signifies that you agree to this disclaimer and pledge to abide by our Rules and Guidelines.
 
 

0 comments:

Post a Comment