Krugman on My Recent Commentary

Well, not really. But Paul Krugman's note on the Delphi bankruptcy, plus the continuing erosion of real income and the broken health care gear in the economy, echoes the central point: ordinary American prosperity: home ownership, class mobility, health and education, is under assault.

And here, to me, is the crux of the matter:

What if neither education nor health care reform is enough to end the wage squeeze? That's the possibility that makes free-trade liberals like me very nervous, because at that point protectionism enters the picture. When corporate executives say that they have to cut wages to meet foreign competition, workers have every right to ask why we don't cut the foreign competition instead.

I hope we don't have to go there. But denial is not an option. America's working middle class has been eroding for a generation, and it may be about to wash away completely. Something must be done.

Are you listening, Tom Friedman? If globalization makes the economic lives of most people in the U.S. worse, if lengthens hours and rips up the environment and it cuts out the ability of middle class - let alone poor- parents to secure health care or improve the lives of their kids; if higher education, which also can no longer guarantee a decent salary, becomes a luxury item, globalization is worse than useless, and U.S. will get domestic pressure to withdraw from its global free trade agreements. (It won't anytime soon, but you see where this might be going), The pressure will be increased as fuel and transportation costs continue to rise dramatically, which I would assume would cut into the efficiency of globalized production.