Explore the Lost Worlds in Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat

Globalization and Free Trade have a history of failures back to 1956. In his book The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman calls periods in history that paved the way for Globalization and Free Trade "flatteners". Besides reversing cause and effect in many cases, he ignores the fact that Free Trade is not trade as historically practiced and defined. Trade be it Free Trade or other trading was based primarily on the trading of products. One nation traded with another nation for products they did not have. Today Free Trade includes workers as the commodities being traded. Workers are put on a world trading block to compete with one another for the same jobs. Subsequently, factories and production are moved from place to place based on the cheapest labor markets and they do not necessarily stay in place after the move to built local economies. If there are so called "flatteners", then 1956 should be a major one. This is the year the U.S. Government start sponsoring the moving of factories outside the USA. The programs were supposedly temporary to help out the Mexican and Central American economies. The programs never ended and evolved into the Maquiladora factories in Mexico which are still in place today.

In 1970, there were 120 Maquiladora factories moved to Mexico. Ten years later there were nearly 400. By 1992, prior to the passing of the NAFTA and GATT trade agreements, there were more the 2000 factories moved to Mexico. Some were coming back from Asia being moved there first. Production became portable ready to be moved again and again for the sake of cheaper labor. Everytime a factory is moved, it leaves behind burn out communities and societies. In the USA, we have miles of empty factories in our major cities and in many towns. Across the world, the same thing happens when factories come and go. Free Trade is like a dog chasing its own tail. In the USA, a working poor class was established in the process and impoverished working classes in other countries. After NAFTA was passed in 1993, the number of factories moved to Mexico quickly doubled to more the 4000. Soon after getting NAFTA passed, President Clinton had to rush billions of dollars to Mexico to save the peso. The official amount was 20 billion but many suspect the total was much more than that. History will show that it was a Democrat President and a Democrat controlled Congress that passed both NAFTA and GATT unfair trade agreements.
After the Contract with America Republicans won Congress in 1993, President Clinton called for a Lame Duck session of Congress during the Thanksgiving vacation to get GATT passed. For some reason, he did not want to wait for the Republicans to take office in the following January even though they certainly would have passed GATT. In the end, no matter what is said and done now, the turmoil following the passages of these attacks on American Workers was instigated by Democrats and not Republicans.

A massive migration of workers accelerated at the same time with millions of Mexican workers flocking to America seeking a job. Mexico reports a low unemployment rate just as the USA does but apparently, workers in Mexcio will not take the jobs there that pay about a $1 an hour. At the same time workers in America find it useless to take jobs that do not provide the basic essentials of life. Even after all this, many factories are now leaving Mexico and going to places like China for the sake of even cheaper labor and even after that, China is contracting work out to other nations that have even cheaper labor than what is available in China. There is no bottom line. The level playing field in the Flat World boils down to having an endless supply of cheaper and cheaper labor. It is indeed a race to the bottom.

At the same time, in the USA, local value added economies that added value from raw product up through about five to seven levels to the retail or end user levels are being destroyed. Local value added economies are being chopped up into pieces and sent around the world. The money spent at retail does not recyle back down to the lower levels but quickly fans out to where the products are made and where the investments reside. Some of the investment does remain in stocks but the stock market now thrives on people getting fired and not hired. There was a time in the U.S. when companies stock values grew by how many workers they hired and there were a vast multitude of companies with over 5000 workers. Today, we have States in the U.S. paying millions of dollars to foreign automobile assemblers to build their assembly factories in their States with the media proclaiming it a success when 2000 assembly workers are hired. In Indiania, each job costs about 200,000 each while close to 20,000 auto part workers lost their jobs forever because the parts now come from outside the country. Many of the parts and services made and performed outside the USA are based on destitute and even wage slave labor.

The beat goes on while elite free traders call for more of the same. People like Thomas Friedman evangelize the process but they a false prophets citing false parables about the Flat World. They ignore the basic fact that workers have no voice in the process and history tells us what happens when this is the situation. Countries also find that they must protect their interests on a world wide basis causing a new kind of colonialism with a new kind of "ism" mixing raw Capitalism with state run Communism enterprises. This all has evolved into fighting a term as our enemy. We have a war on terrorism but it is a war that confuses who the actual combatants. The military losses are significant but the collateral loss of civilians are at least ten times higher. This is the state of the Flat World in the lost worlds of Globalization and Free Trade.

While Americans are worrying about border control, the Chinese Liberation Army is rolling across the USA in the form of COSCO. COSCO is the giant shipping company owned in part by the Chinese Liberation Army. Its logo COSCO can be seen flashing at railroad stops across America on the large shipping containers bringing in the imports. There is very little security over the contents and no one seems to ask how the large overhead of this long haul shipping and packaging competes with local value added economies that built our nation. The Marshall Plan rebuilt local value added economies in Europr and Asia after World War 2. It was based on the awesome industrial might of the USA. With the Marshall Plan we were showing others how to produce this success. Today we not only ship out the golden eggs from the golden goose but we have chopped up the golden goose and sent the pieces across the world.

Sources for this information include the following.
http://tapsearch.com.flatworld
http://tapearch.com/flipflatworld
http://tapsearch.com/tapartnews (shows list of expert references )
http://www.experiencedesignernetwork.com/archives/000636.html
http://arklineart.fotopages.com
http://just-go.to/tapinworld
http://www.graphicsforums.com/public/list.asp?id=1328

And as a courtesy of Tapart News and Arkline Sports Art Collectibles enjoy many total Free web services, offers and products at
http://tapsearch.com for tons of total Free items.