= new reply since forum marked as read
at McDonnalds ....
I bet that'll have voters showing up droves to pull the lever for Democrats.
I've read it all now. 
Texas Observer / By Melissa del Bosque
The difficult and dangerous working conditions that Rosa and at least 1.3 million other Mexican workers endure were supposed to get better. They didn't.
Photo Credit: Alan Pogue
December 11, 2013 |
.... On this night, Feb. 19, 2011, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong, a premonition that perhaps she shouldn’t go. But she needed the money. It was the final shift in her six-day workweek, and if she missed a day, the factory would dock her 300 pesos. She couldn’t afford to lose that kind of money. Her family already struggled to survive on the 1,300 pesos (about $100) a week she earned. Unable to shake the bad feeling, she’d already missed her bus, and now she’d have to pay for a taxi. But the thought of losing 300 pesos was worse. She had to go. Rosa kissed her six children goodnight and set out across town.
In the Mexican border city of Reynosa, the hundreds of maquiladoras that produce everything from car parts to flat-screen televisions run day and night—365 days a year—to feed global demand. Rosa worked from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. at a factory called HD Electronics in a sprawling maquiladora park near the international bridge that links Reynosa, an industrial city of 600,000, to Pharr, Texas. Like the 90,000 or more workers in Reynosa, the 38-year-old Rosa depended on these factories for her livelihood. In the 11 years since she moved to the city, she had welded circuitry for Asian and European cell phone companies, assembled tubing for medical IV units to be shipped over the border to the United States, and worked on a production line assembling air conditioners for General Motors.
This was her second month at HD Electronics, a South Korean firm that had moved to Reynosa in 2006 to produce the metal backing for flat-screen televisions made by another South Korean firm, LG Electronics—a $49 billion corporation. LG also has a plant in Reynosa and could scarcely keep up with the North American demand for its plasma and LCD televisions.
At HD Electronics, Rosa operated a 200-ton hydraulic stamping press. Every night, six days a week, she fed the massive machine thin aluminum sheets. The machine ran all day, every day. Each time the press closed it sounded like a giant hammer striking metal: thwack, thwack, thwack. The metal sheets emerged pierced and molded into shape for each model and size of television. At the factory, 20 women, including Rosa, worked the presses to make the pieces for the smaller televisions. Nearby were 10 larger presses, each of which took two men to operate, to make backings for the giant-screen models.
Full Article: http://www.alternet.org/labor/after-20-years-nafta-thanks-nafta-what-happened-mexican-factory-workers-rosa-moreno?akid=11305.44541.10ylde&rd=1&src=newsletter939436&t=21
NAFTA Is Starving Mexico
Thu Oct 20th 2011, 09:40 AM
By Laura Carlsen, October 20, 2011
"Since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) became the law of the land, millions of Mexicans have joined the ranks of the hungry. Malnutrition is highest among the country’s farm families, who used to produce enough food to feed the nation.
As the blood-spattered violence of the drug war takes over the headlines, many Mexican men, women, and children confront the slow and silent violence of starvation. The latest reports show that the number of people living in “food poverty” (the inability to purchase the basic food basket) rose from 18 million in 2008 to 20 million by late 2010.
About one-fifth of Mexican children currently suffer from malnutrition. An innovative measurement applied by the National Institute for Nutrition registers a daily count of 728,909 malnourished children under five for October 18, 2011. Government statistics report that 25 percent of the population does not have access to basic food."
Full article: http://www.fpif.org/articles/nafta_is_starving_mexico
Millions of Mexican farmers and their families forced by NAFTA to the cities to work in dangerous conditions for low wages. That's not fair or free trade - it's relocating and decimating the lives of whole populations to further enrich those factory owners and the 1% corporations that benefit from these ugly deals.
And makes me angry. That bullshit agreement. 
Something tells me you'd be up in arms if Americans were working for the same wages that NAFTA has brought to the third world. Oh wait. They're under the poverty line because you are either unable or unwilling to pressure your fearless leader to reinstate Glass-Steagall and regulate the plutocrats.
A standing ovation for your erroneously principled OP.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/01/recent-history-in-one-chart/
It is certainly true that the global poor started from an extremely low level of income. I'm not sure how you get someone who is at an extremely low level of income to say a Western level of income in just a few years. The graph shows that progress has been made though much remains to be done.
The incomes gains of much of the global poor over the past 25 years is a good thing. What would make it better is if it came at expense of the global 1%, not from the Western middle class.
Agreed. The income gains of the poorest 70% may have nothing to to with trade (free or otherwise). If that is the case it is important that we understand what did cause the gains (or what combination of factors), so that we do not short-circuit those gains in the future.
One point is that FDR believed that promoting international trade after WWII was key to spreading prosperity. He may have been wrong about that but it is not outside the realm of possibility that he was right.
