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Title: The Race to the Bottom: Why a Worldwide Worker Surplus and Uncontrolled Free Trade are Sinking American Living Standards by Alan Tonelson ISBN: 0-8133-4024-1 Publisher: Westview Press Pub. Date: 04 September, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $17.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (9 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: Fails to deliver on it's shock-value title.
Comment: "The Race To The Bottom" fails to deliver on it's shock-value title.
Author Tonelson provides considerable detail that demonstrate the
increase in job exports from US, yet still concludes that "of the
1990s, manufacturing wages ... grew ... 2.9 percent after adjusting for inflation" - pg. XIII. It was GREW, not shrank.
On page 48: "large influxes of legal and illegal imigrants into the United States have forced many of America's loweset income workers into a race to the bottom of the wage scale". Note that the AVERAGE worker is in fair shape. Finally, on page 137: "The race to the bottom is only the worst and most important symptom, not the cause, of the global economy's problems."
The main thrust of the facts presented betray the book's title:
that dispite the truth that job export has had a deflationary
effect on US wages, those wage losses have been minimal. The facts presented would better name a book "downward wage pressure" - but of course that title would not sell many books.
Not a waste of time, but by itself this book paints an incomplete
picture. "The Dollar Crises" by Richard Duncan is better, and with "Tommorrow's Gold" by Marc Faber fill the most of void. Add
"Globalizaation and It's Discontents" by Joseph Stiglitz and a
much clearer view is created of the crazy world economy that we
must deal with.
Rating: 5
Summary: Frightening
Comment: This book details the depressing details of globalization, and debunks the promises of free trade, like Mexico being a huge market(it isn't), most workers that lose their factory jobs would get new and improved high tech jobs(they haven't), and we'll do the high tech stuff and the Third World will do the low tech(not true). We are living in an age where business can relocate almost anywhere. Our corporations are dumping our highest paying jobs overseas and/or importing Third World workers to do them (like Indian programmers). The result is a slowly sinking standard of living. Between mass immigration and globalization it appears we may be at the beginning of a new age of poverty.
For "fun" scroll down to the first review of the book, down to the guy that gave it one star (apparently after reading only part of chapter one). Print it out and keep it with this book. After you read the book, re-read his review and then see if you can answer the question: What planet are the globalists living on?
This just in: According to NPR, one of the last textile factories in the US closed on October 22, 2002. It was a fancy high-end shirt factory in Maine. It had been in business for decades. The women there worked so fast that their hands were just a blur. Not fast enough apparently, as they couldn't compete with the sweat shops of the Third World. (NPR said "foreign competition") Some of the women had worked there for twenty years and cried when they left. I seem to remember the globablists saying that foreigners only took jobs Americans didn't want. Perhaps those women were just crying tears of joy.
Rating: 5
Summary: Facts First And Feelings Second
Comment: I found this work to be significant in that the title and the content described clearly the global trade dynamic which we find our selves in today. I'd heard George Gilder a few years back tell a gathering of telecomm executives that they were caught up in this very dynamic; many of them have already lost that race and are no longer with us.
Mr. Tonelson's research is clearly evident in this book. He has done the heavy lifting(analysis)needed to make considered and substantiated statements about something a complex as the impact of global trade on our quality of life in this country.
I recently read "The Lexus and the Olive Tree" by Thomas Friedman and thought it a good counterpoint to "The Race To The Bottom."
"The Race To The Bottom" is richer in the numbers and is focused on us, while "The Lexus and the Olive Tree" is the more subjective and places the subject in a global and human context.
I highly recommend both books, however if you want solid facts before solid impressions, I'd say read "Race To The Bottom" first to get a good sense of "what." Then read "The Lexus And The Olive Tree" to figure out the "why" of it all.
My thanks to both authors.
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