I Can't Stand Lou Dobbs
He may be a bloodless demogogue... but he's a demogogue nonetheless.
It's not that an unapologetic bias is a bad thing. But the man is just as obviously using his platform on CNN to urge a political movement onwards as Bill O'Reilly, but doesn't seem to get half so much as notice as such. As a newsman, one of his primary efforts of the moment is to persuade Americans to take a particular stance on a current political issue. I can't say this is a bad thing.
But to the extent that he goes on night after night and tries to mislead Americans on an important topic, he's as much a nuisance as anyone else. His voice is certainly louder than most print op/ed columnists - and since the majority of Republican commentators couldn't defend the case for liberalisation of trade against a Marxist with a butterknife - largely unanswered...
1 Comments:
I'm not sure what you're saying here -- the two links, from CNN and from The Economist, don't deal with the whole issue and don't necessarily directly rebut each other.
The CNN article is right in that int'l trade and outsourcing offers externalities -- the fact that (from the Economist's article) the costs may be more than the benefits, or vice versa, doesn't change the fact that this isn't something that has a simple "market equilibrium" solution.
The fact that there are benefits to offshoring is undebatable. The fact that there are costs is, as well, undebatable.
The externalization/exportation of low-wage jobs and of environmental problems is dramatic. Coca-Cola has been charged with various atrocities in Columbia against union leaders; to assume all of these are incorrect, or coincidental, strains the imagination I think. Labor standards are much lower in countries we export labor to, as a rule. Besides which, the argument that we're helping them develop seems belied by the fact of the disarticulated/dual economy model (first enunciated by Alain de Janvry, I believe), and by the fact that those countries whose GDPs have risen rapidly have seen average income increase, but not so much of an increase in median incomes, quality of life for the bottom classes, or reduction of inequality (in many if not most places, inequality has gone up). Besides de Janvry, see also work by Arturo Escobar and Eduardo Galeano for starters.
None of this is on Dobbs', or anyone else in mainstream's radar, of course.
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