Dennis Marker, author of Fifteen Steps to Corporate Feudalism: How the Rich Convinced America’s Middle Class to Eliminate Itself, is scheduled to be my guest on the July 15, 2012 episode of Exposing Faux Capitalism with Jason Erb on Oracle Broadcasting, from 1 to 3 PM Eastern.
I first heard of Dennis’ book from his June 29, 2012 interview on Charles Giuliani’s Truth Hertz show (starting in the second hour), and want to specifically delve into his research into the scam of global free trade.
Most recently, I mentioned free trade in my article, June 26, 2012: A day of important articles on LewRockwell.com, about the Gary North article:
“Put Away Your Badge, Holster Your Gun, and Stop Trying To Loot Me
Gary North’s message for right-wing protectionists.
– Referring to indirect taxes as “loot[ing]” is hyperbolic rhetoric. It is also ironic that a supposed opponent of world government would argue against constitutional and voluntary methods of taxation that serve as a bulwark against world government by promoting national borders.”
[…] 1) Dennis Marker, author of Fifteen Steps to Corporate Feudalism scheduled to be on Exposing Faux Capitalism, July 15, 2012. […]
Here is a good example of the cynical hypocrisy called ‘free trade’. It comes from 2001 (if memory serves), not long after Bush had been elected on a manifesto of free markets and free trade. At that time there was an excess of cotton being produced in the world, and thus the commodity price was low. So low in fact, that US producers were priced out of the market. Bush responded by giving them a $3bn subsidy, allowing them to dump their cotton on the market, suppressing the price below its natural level. For Mali, in west Africa, cotton was their biggest cash crop. Nearly all of their production came from small family owned enterprises, sometimes of just one field which nonetheless could comfortably support a family. With Bush’s intervention wealthy US producers could undercut these small farmers, causing widespread economic disruption and poverty. It was estimated that as a result the loss in foreign earnings that year to Mali was greater than their entire receipts from foreign aid.
Wealthy westerners’ affluent lifestyle propped up to the direct dire impoverishment of poor Third World farmers. ‘Free Trade’ in a nutshell.