Robert Kuttner's piece from the last print issue wonders why the media is stuck on a simplicistic and radical view of trade that even many ardent globalizers have abandonded.
The next president can change our trade and labor policies to rebuild the American middle class. An anxiety bordering on panic is unnerving America's economic elites as political support for "free trade" dwindles, along with declining earnings. While mainstream economists have long contended that trade had minimal effects on wages, prestigious defectors such as Alan Blinder and Paul Samuelson have lately concluded otherwise. It turns out that the popular concerns are rooted in reality.
The elite response has been divided. One the one hand, most of the regime's defenders continue to treat trade mainly as a problem of voter ignorance and politician posturing. Defenders speak as if the main goal is to preserve the current trade rules, rather than to assure that an open economy delivers broadly shared prosperity. A means has mutated into an end.
Prospect alum Kate Sheppard looks at how New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine has balanced progressive goals with a balanced budget:
Jon Corzine was up against a tough crowd this spring when he appeared before the annual New Jersey Conference of Mayors in April. It was just a few weeks after the governor proposed massive cuts to state aid for municipalities, among other drastic reductions to the state budget for 2008, and it was the first time he was in a room surrounded by the local leaders who would have to deal with the impacts of those cuts.
The president of the Conference of Mayors, Colleen Mahr, didn't give him any leeway in her opening remarks. "Our residents will feel the strain if the plan goes forward," Mahr said, turning away from the crowd and directing her comments directly at the governor, seated beside her. "Every mayor here today takes the challenges put forth by you, governor, very seriously, and as you know, we will continue to fight those that we don't agree with."
And Harold Meyerson looks at love and racism in the musical "South Pacific":
What's historically specific about "South Pacific" is its liberal moral pluck on issues of race. It followed by two years Branch Rickey's desegregation of baseball and the first state court decision to legalize interracial marriage (in California). It followed by one year President Harry Truman's order to desegregate the armed forces and, prompted by a Hubert Humphrey speech, the Democratic Party's passage of a strong civil rights plank in its platform. For the boomers in the audience, "South Pacific" offers a tableau of our parents, when very young, behaving very well.
Subscribe to our RSS feed to receive our articles as soon as they're published.
--The Editors
