General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Please help me out. The term-du-jour now seems to "neoliberal" [View all]ctaylors6
(693 posts)" The reason people are resistant to [the free-trade] argument is because global elites have been inattentive to the issues of wages, incomes, and opportunity for ordinary people. If youre selling globalization and saying its great, even though each year, not just in the United States but across the advanced economy, youre seeing more and more of a winner-take-all economy, where not just the top 1 percent, but the top 0.01 percent, are getting a larger and larger share, then, yes, its going to be pretty hard to make the argument that Dont worry, this is great for you.
The issue is not resentment or class warfare or that somehow we want to level everybody down rather than lift everybody up. The issue is that, if in fact automation and globalization do have a tendency to create vast wealth and opportunity for a very small, highly skilled set of people and have a tendency to create a larger and larger group of folks who feel redundant in the economy, and if you dont pay attention to that, then people will rightly resist. They will understandably say, I am not getting a good deal here.