Detroit faces the guillotine... blue collar workers told to agree to the further erosion of their standard of living... the Midwestern states see that it's the coasts that count... the banking industry's record donations to the Democratic Party paying off handsomely... unions get the shaft....
Time was, the South was not the economic model for the nation. Workers in the North have had it bad, but since Reconstruction, the South has been the anti-union, cheap labor, owner-friendly place to locate businesses. And with all its growth, the South lags behind other regions in median family income and education, while having a strong lead in obesity and incarceration rates.
Now it's to be the model for worker's rights and remunerations. Brilliant politics, brilliant economics...
At the same time, there's this to be said: globalization has the effect of moving toward a more equitable world economy through Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage. One result of this is a decline in living standards among the wealthier countries as increased competition for resources and jobs raise the living standards of poorer nations. This is compounded by a lack of investment in human and physical infrastructure, a problem that the United States has excelled at over the past 25 years. In that sense, the right-of-center ideology that has dominated American politics and still plays too large a role in the Obama administration is in keeping with the spirit of globalization, and hastens the general trend downward.
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