China's iPad Workers and Global Economic Democracy

Just as the Eurozone lacks democractic legitimacy, the world economy faces the same democratic deficit.

This is not solely, or even mainly, a political matter: it is the absence of economic democracy that is at the heart of the problem.

China's iPad workers are at the sharp end of the global dystopia: their suffering helps to build China's rise to world power on the back of what are, in essence, China's mercantilist policies - which played a key role in the 2008 credit crunch and following recession in the West.    [NYT]

The need for global economic democracy is undeniable, but the 'one percent' will fight tooth and nail to prevent any such development.

The takeover of Greece and Italy by corporate technocrats confirms that the line of travel is to move further and further from political democracy, pace the recent suggestion that an EU 'budget commissioner' should be placed in heart of the Athens government.    [BBC]

(Perhaps the Bundeswehr could also patrol the streets of Athens in a riot prevention role?)

That the nationalist response to global inequalities would play a part in preventing any moves towards global economic democracy is also due to the manner in which - in Britain for example - the corporate press plays the 'BNP card' in encouraging the indigenous population to see inward migration as a threat - which it is.

But not the way people are taught to think.

Migrants are also victims of the destablizing nature of globalization in their own home countries.

Furthermore, migration plays a key role in keeping wages flat.

Corporate capital's need for a 'reserve army' is an unspoken demand, which government is complicit in supplying.

This is the core problem.

Better - from the point of view of the "1 per cent" - that people should target migrants rather than the real target: sociopathic banksters, sociopathic multi-national corporations, and their lackeys in government.    [CS]    [DH]

We can now see the true cost of globalisation

A growing body of research suggests that yawning inequality isn't just a moral and political question – it's an economic one.

The credit bubble of the past two decades helped consumers in the US and Europe to prop up their quality of life in the face of the relentless decline in real wages; but that conjuring trick only works for a while, and the resulting legacy of debt will now take many years to work off.

So as the plight of workers in faraway places reveals the true cost of cut-price consumer gadgets, it's also clear that workers everywhere have been losing out.

It would be wrong to think that the answer is to retreat inwards, and return – even if we could – to a closed-border economy.

But it must no longer be a taboo to question whether raw globalisation brings the benefits that were promised.

Domestically, a host of tax and benefit changes could help redress the balance for those who have lost out in the race towards an outsourced, privatised, winner-takes-all world economy.

The OECD suggested heavier taxes on properties, pension contributions and mortgage interest payments for the rich as ways of reducing inequality while boosting growth by persuading the rich to invest their money wisely instead of parking it in Park Lane penthouses, for example.

Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor and unlikely radical, has suggested that forcing rich investors like him to pay the same tax rate as his secretary might also help ...

SweetBirdOfTruth
29 January 2012 1:41AM

Fantastic article, possibly the best leader column I've read in the Observer.

Globalisation has clearly failed the vast majority of the global population.

Look past the propaganda about the emerging Indian middle class and recognise that they represent a tiny fraction in a country which still allows hundreds of millions to live in absolute poverty.

If ten million Indians in a country of one billion have prospered while the rest have been left behind, this provides a revealing microcosm of the effects of globalisation, and why the Occupiers' rhetoric of the 99% is gaining traction.

Meanwhile, there are 5 million unemployed in Spain, 25% youth unemployment in the UK, and Greece and Portugal are on the verge of social disaster,

The United States has a debt of $10 trillion, much of it generated by fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the interests of oil companies and Halliburton, which showed its gratitude to the American taxpayer by shifting its corporate base to Dubai.

It's not surprising with this level of taxpayer generosity that the US has more billionaires than ever, and the Republican pretender to the Presidency "earns" $25m in investment income and pays tax at 15%.

The UK is ransacking the NHS and sticking 750000 public sector workers on the dole because it has a debt of £1trillion.

But the million-pound bonuses continue to flow in the City, the spiritual home of globalisation and all its crimes.

And Vincent Tchenguiz is putting up for sale his portfolio of groundrents which represent 1% of the UK's entire housing stock for around £3Bn.

That's right - a single man owns 1% of the land in this country. Tchenguiz is an Iraqi Jew educated in France and the City. It's unlikely that he'll be domiciled in the UK for tax purposes when the time comes for him to pay his dues.

Another poster boy for globalisation.

Meanwhile, the IMF reported in 2010 that tax havens hold around $18trillion in offshored wealth, enough to clear the national debts of the West and remove the need for austerity.

Globalisation has been a fantastic policy for the 1%.

Obs  29 Jan 2012

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