I finished Edward Gresser's Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy.
At the present moment, I can't find everything in the book that I want
to write about, so this post won't be well-documented. But I'll do the best that I can writing from memory.
In
my latest reading, Gresser presented freer trade as a path to peace in
the Middle East. According to Gresser, countries in the Middle East do
not trade much with each other, plus high unemployment in that region
encourages some in the Middle East to become terrorists. But,
according to Gresser, freer trade can foster peace by making countries
beneficial to one another, and it can also bring employment to Arab
nations. While Gresser acknowledges that Saudi Arabia is a
heavy exporter of oil, he says that only a few rich Saudi families
profit from that, but enhancing trade in other fields can employ a
broader number of people.
In either my latest reading or an
earlier reading, Gresser was continuing to argue against the notions
that protectionism helps the U.S. economy and that freer trade
encourages environmental damage. For the first notion, if I recall
correctly, Gresser contends that companies are not helping themselves or
the U.S. economy when they hold on to inefficiency and seek to protect
themselves from competition. I forget how exactly Gresser supported
this claim, but, earlier in the book, he quoted John F. Kennedy's
statement that companies seeking to dodge competition "are endangering
the profits and jobs of others...and in the long run their own economic
well-being because they will suffer from competition in the U.S.
inevitably, if not from abroad----for, in order to avoid exertion, they
accept paralysis" (Kennedy's words). In short, competition will
catch up with companies, even if they seek to avoid it. Regarding the
environment, Gresser makes the point that protectionism inhibits the
development of environmental-friendly technology by making it more
costly.
Near the end of the book, Gresser addresses the question of how to help U.S. workers who lose their jobs. Gresser says that losing one's job is especially hard in the U.S. due to a weak social safety net.
In Japan, workers don't lose their health insurance or pension when
they lose their jobs, but there are a lot of U.S. workers who lose their
health insurance once they become unemployed. I tend to agree with
Gresser that free trade can work better when it coexists with certain
leftist policies.
Overall, this was a good book. But I wish that Gresser addressed the issue of whether or not globalization pushes down the wages of U.S. workers.