Meet the Zippies: Exporting American jobs

Lou Dobbs is BBB's Media hero
My Media hero is CNN's Lou Dobbs. For over a year, Dobbs has been reporting every night on the "exporting of America jobs." His consistent reporting has finally caught the attention of the Democrat presidential candidates and other Media. Finally, everyone is paying attention to what is happening to the economy in America.

LOU DOBBS ROCKS!

'Exporting America'

Here is a list of companies we've confirmed are "Exporting America." These are U.S. companies either sending American jobs overseas, or choosing to employ cheap overseas labor, instead of American workers.
Click here for a list of companies:

http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/lou.dobbs.tonight/popups/exporting.america/frameset.exclude.html

Lou Dobbs site:
http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/lou.dobbs.tonight/

I was gonna post this, SO thought of Gautam when I read it...

Globalization with a human face
Globalization with a human face
THE GUARDIAN
Tuesday February 24, 2004

Economics professor Jagdish Bhagwati argues that globalisation has a positive effect. But he is not a typical rightwing neo-liberal, says Salil Tripathi.

Like any good professor, Jagdish Bhagwati likes to see what his students read. When he saw them carrying his Columbia University colleague Joseph Stiglitz's Globalisation and its Discontents, Mr Bhagwati felt it was time to react, particularly as he believed Mr Stiglitz's critique was less about globalisation and more about the International Monetary Fund.
The result is a new book, In Defence of Globalisation, a follow-up to The Wind of the Hundred Days: How Washington Mismanaged Globalisation. Later this week, Mr Bhagwati will present his views on globalisation at a debate at the London School of Economics.

Mr Bhagwati believes globalisation must be managed to let its positive impact emerge. He is convinced that the removal of trade restrictions has a benign impact and has opposed the inclusion of labour or environmental concerns in trade discussions.

To the unwary, Mr Bhagwati may appear to be an unreconstructed neo-liberal who does not care for the poor. True, he has written pioneering economic treatises on trade theory, and has been an adviser on globalisation to the director-general of the General Agreement on Tariff and Trade (Gatt), forerunner of today's World Trade Organisation (WTO), as well as to the UN.

That is because he has seen open systems work, he says, pointing to China (since 1979) and India (since 1991) which have lifted millions out of absolute poverty.

But this does not make Mr Bhagwati a laissez-faire capitalist. His commitment to social justice is firm. He is highly critical of large companies that erect barriers to protect their dominance. He has challenged the intellectual property regime and taken on drug manufacturers for trying to convert the WTO into a "royalty collection agency".

Globalisation should be managed to "reinforce and ensure" its benign effects, he says. To achieve this, he would tax skilled workers who leave developing countries to work overseas, and he would encourage NGOs to continue acting as watchdogs and blow the whistle when big companies behave badly. He does not like child labour, but he would prefer to see a solution come from the International Labour Organisation, not the WTO.

Ideological purists get exasperated by this: Robert Kuttner, co-editor of US political journal the American Prospect, once said: "His departures from laissez-faire economics make him inconsistent. Why does he oppose the standard view on intellectual property rights? All this is rooted in a real concern for the third world, but does not in the end make him a high theorist."

Mr Bhagwati would probably see that as a compliment. He sees himself as "a public nuisance", rather than a free trader or a neo-liberal, as he once told the New York Times. At a time of growing western concern about outsourcing, Mr Bhagwati advocates not only greater outsourcing, but also the removal of barriers to migration.

There is an integrated philosophy running through these views, which wants to see individuals empowered to enjoy their freedoms, and relevant national and international institutions enforcing the parts of the global system that they have the expertise to run. This is neither right nor left though many mistakenly think of Mr Bhagwati as a rightwing economist.

To understand Mr Bhagwati's nuanced world view, consider his path. He was born in pre-independence India, and grew up in a poor country, surrounded by energetic, entrepreneurial people who were stymied because of the wide gap between their considerable political and limited economic freedom.

After studying in Britain and the US, he began his long and distinguished teaching career in top American universities. His pioneering work in trade theory remains the benchmark; his students include Paul Krugman and Jeffrey Frankel, both respected economists.

His enthusiasm for an unfettered market was tempered at least partly by his frequent interactions with his elder brother, Prafulchandra Bhagwati, who retired as the chief justice of the Indian supreme court in 1986, after pioneering public interest litigation. While the economist argued for greater opportunities for the poor, the judge championed free legal aid for the poor, so that they could assert their rights.

When Justice Bhagwati was at the supreme court, he defied norms by converting simple postcards from citizens into writ petitions, upbraiding government officials and departments who had failed to deliver.

Justice Bhagwati is still at it. As special representative of the high commissioner of human rights for Asia-Pacific, in 2002, after visiting refugee detention centres in Australia, he wrote a report criticising Australia's stance on asylum seekers, which he said had created "a great human tragedy" and made prisoners out of innocent people. Australia was stung by the criticism.

Over the last four decades, one through economics, the other through the law, the Bhagwati brothers have advocated greater freedom for individuals, and sought protection from larger forces - be they the state, large corporations, special interest groups, or simply those with power - with the end goal of a better quality of life. To achieve this, they have sought clearer rules applied fairly.

They have done it without getting shoehorned into any ideologically-driven position, because the world is not binary, black and white, left or right. Nor have they opted for cynical pragmatism; their ideas are backed by intellectual force. No wonder the purists - on the left, and the right - are frustrated.
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· Salil Tripathi, a London-based writer, was regional economics correspondent at Far Eastern Economic Review in Singapore in the 1990s

after centuries of being ruled - it is our turn to rule the world

Gautam
Gautam, I think India was very smart to do this in her own self-interest. Its sad that it has to be a win-lose rather than a win-win transaction.
I hope in the long run it will be a win-win, but the interim will be very difficult.

BBB

What is an "American" job?

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