General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Both China and India are Amazing Stories of Poverty Reduction... We Should Stop Demonizing Them [View all]pampango
(24,692 posts)encourage global poverty reduction while at the same time promoting employment and income equality at home. To summarize it: Our economic problems are not caused by "others" but by actions that "we" have done to ourselves - repeatedly cutting taxes for the rich, weakening our unions, slashing our safety net, deregulating to the point of absurdity, etc.
Countries that have not cut taxes for the rich, weakened unions, slashed safety nets and recklessly deregulated have weathered the Great Recession relatively much better than Americans have with stronger economies and more equality, even though they trade with "poor" countries at a much higher level than we do.
http://billmoyers.com/episode/on-winner-take-all-politics/
In Europe they explicitly trade more with the Third World as a part of their global development strategy designed to help the poorest. Over the last 20 years it has been successful, as the UN's statistics show, while domestic economies in these progressive countries have continued to provide good jobs and fair pay despite the global recession (which was caused by the US' financial industry, not by poor Third World workers).