The Wrath of the Free Market God

From TocqueDeville at Daily Kos, excerpts:

In perhaps the most comprehensive such study to date, Scorecard on Globalization 1980-2000, Mark Weisbrot, Dean Baker and other researchers at the Center for Economic and Policy Research documented that economic growth, rates of improvement in life expectancy, child mortality, education levels and literacy all have declined in the era of global corporatization (1980-2000) compared to the years 1960-1980

[. . . ]

The Scorecard findings include:

*Slower economic growth for countries at all income levels
*A negative growth rate for the poorest countries
*For moderately wealthy countries, income growth declined
from 100% increase per capita between 1960-1980 to a 21%
increase in the last two decades
*Reduced progress in education as evidenced by declining school
enrollment rates and literacy. Slower growth in domestic
spending correlates to decreased educational spending
*An overall slowdown in reducing infant and child mortality and
in improving overall life expectancy (this is not necessarily an
indicator of policy failure--it could be a natural flattening of
progress curve).

[. . .]

Of all the outcomes of Globalization, none is more dangerous than the subversion of democracy

[. . .]

The GATS Article VI.4 says that governments have a duty to hold "a balance between two potentially conflicting priorities: promoting trade expansion versus protecting the regulatory rights of governments." But who determines this balance between democratically enacted regulation and the promotion of trade expansion? The democratically elected legislature? The democratically elected president?
No.

A mysterious entity called the GATS Disputes Panel decides where the balance is drawn.

Read the rest of the article here. Anyone should now be able to recognize that international trade agreements (such as GAT, NAFTA, FTAA, etc.), among other things, attempt to prevent America's soveriegn right to deterimine for herself through a democratic process whether she wishes to oversee her own ports or whether she has to relinquish that authority to a terrorist state because of these trade agreements. Either this is the beginning of the end of so-called "globalization/free-trade" or its the beginning of the end of the United States as a beacon of freedom, prosperity and democracy. Little good ever came from this globalization, excepting the richest getting richer, which is by no means enough good to sacrifice both democracy and prosperity. Enough's enough. Take back the country from the wealthy corrupt bastards!