Top Heavy by Edward N Wolff Global Village or Global Pillage by Tim Costello
Buell, John
HIGH PROFITS, LOW WAGES Top Heavy A Study of the Increasing Inequality of Wealth in America Edward N.wolff Tiwntieih Century Fund Report, $9.95, global Village or Economic Reconstruction from...
...Nonetheless, when a few citizens are so wealthy they can buy their way out of widespread social problems while many others are too poor to participate effectively in social life, society loses a sense of community, of common goals and responsibilities...
...Wolff's study also effectively challenges defenses of current U.S...
...Domestic legislation on striker replacement would, for example, aid efforts to build international labor solidarity...
...A new progressive politics must be democratic in its internal organization and committed to fostering the ongoing democratization of banks, unions, and corporations...
...Global Village or Global Pillage by Jeremy Brecher and Tim Cos-tello is indeed a work about class war- not of the poor against the rich but of the rich against the poor...
...The new "free" trade agreements encourage a "race to the bottom," where governments and workers are often forced to cede bargaining power and rights within the workplace to match the lowest national standards...
...The top 1 percent of the social pyramid now holds an astounding 42 percent of all marketable wealth...
...economic policy such as that recently advanced by Michael Novak in the Wall Street Journal, ("What Wealth Gap...
...John Buell Pundits and politicians regularly celebrate the "globalization" of our economy...
...Conventional textbooks tell us that breaking down tariff barriers allows nations to specialize in what they do best...
...textile workers convened an international conference which produced an agreement to support expanded trade with nations which ensure basic human and labor rights...
...To be sure, literal economic equality is neither possible nor desirable...
...A progressive political movement, either within or outside the Democratic party, must mobilize America's millions of disenchanted voters...
...Businesses enjoy the right of instant mobility for their physical plants and iron-clad protections for their "intellectual property" while workers and their rights are nontransferable...
...Sluggish wages do translate into lower costs and higher short-term profits and savings for owners...
...These books make the need for and prospects of such a politics clearer...
...Brecher and Costello's most distinctive contribution lies in an examination of efforts by grass-roots groups to slow the incursions of multinational capital and put more radical reform on the agenda...
...These privileged modes of escape often create new problems for the rest of society at the same time as they insulate and reduce the willingness of the wealthy to contribute to society as a whole...
...For example, historically protectionist U.S...
...However, low wages also mean low purchasing power and diminished educational opportunities...
...International financial institutions should fund high-wage jobs in the development of new environmentally friendly technologies in the third world...
...Contrary to critics of economic equality, societies with great gaps in wealth and income suffer from slow rates of economic growth...
...They tell a tale of new products and prosperity...
...Without new political leadership at the national level, even the best grass-roots efforts will have limited success...
...Edward N. Wolff's Top Heavy provides a superbly detailed discussion of wealth and poverty in the United States...
...Economies of scale will then lead to rapid advances for all...
...When social critics make these arguments, they are accused of flaming the fires of class war...
...HIGH PROFITS, LOW WAGES Top Heavy A Study of the Increasing Inequality of Wealth in America Edward N.wolff Tiwntieih Century Fund Report, $9.95, global Village or Economic Reconstruction from the Bottom Up Tim Costello South End Press, $14,237 pp...
...Progressives can no longer afford the split between advocates of direct action and devotees of electoral politics...
...Nonetheless, tax-and-spend agendas will only be fully effective within a new trade and labor framework which levels the playing field between labor and management both here and throughout the world...
...Unfortunately, it is also true that this new world economy severely constrains the traditional liberal response to such problems...
...Those voters can best be reached by drawing upon the kinds of local activism undertaken by the environmental and union movements...
...International trade treaties should require union protection, a minimum wage, limitations on work hours, and environmental standards...
...Brecher and Costello recognize that job creation and taxing wealth are still important...
...But free trade's immediate effect today is to extend to capital a freedom it denies workers...
...now has the most lopsided distribution of wealth in the industrial world...
...Brecher and Costello remark: "Downward leveling is creating a lose-lose negative sum game for the majority of people in all parts of the world...
...What is the relationship of these initiatives to more conventional efforts to win elections...
...High levels of U. S. government spending can no longer serve their historic "multiplier effect" of indirectly expanding jobs and reducing inequalities.The inability of tax-and-spending policies to ameliorate inequalities created by the new trade framework has done much to give liberalism its bad reputation...
...Other worker-environmentalist coalitions have been able to spearhead successful campaigns to reform the labor and environmental practices of some multinational corporations as well as World Bank lending policies...
...Wolff's study shows that even when such dubious factors are counted, inequality has grown substantially in recent years...
...When the U. S. government builds new transit systems or hospitals, workers spend much of their new wages to buy goods from productive third-world plants where repressive business practices keep wages artificially low...
...In this global economy, it is imperative that citizens acquire a broaderunderstanding of the connection of their own interests and concerns to larger social and political causes...
...Dispute-resolution processes should be democratic, open to public participation, and backed by the power to exclude violators from the trading system...
...Once more egalitarian than many European nations, the U.S...
...Arguably, however, this new global economy has been more successful in bringing third-world inequalities home to the U.S...
...Novak argues that when nonmarketable assets such as public lands, consumer durables, and pensions were taken into consideration, the average American is much better off than he at first appears...
...than promoting equality abroad...
...In a world of low consumption and dispirited and poorly treated workers, long-term profits decrease and the incentive to invest in new technologies diminishes...
...Great inequality places strains on a society even when the income of the poor is increasing...
...The extent of these inequalities and what can be done to address them is the subject of two new works made even more timely by current Republican initiatives in Congress...
...This is supposed to encourage economic growth...
...July 11, 1995...
...John Judis and Michael Lind pointed out in the New Republic (March 27,1995) that today's economic extremes allow the wealthy to withdraw into their own "barricaded nation within a nation, a world of private neighborhoods, private schools, private police, and even private roads...
Vol. 123 • January 1996 • No. 1
