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It's looking like, possibly (hopefully), the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) talks between the U.S. and Europe may be falling apart. According to a BBC article, the French Minister of trade is saying that the trade talks "are likely to grind to a halt".
The French minister, who threatened to leave talks last year, said Europe was offering a lot with little in return. It comes a day after Greenpeace leaked documents from the talks. The environmental group released 248 pages of classified documents, which it said showed how EU standards on public health risked being undermined by the major free-trade agreement.
So, in my opinion, the French (and Greenpeace) deserve a toast (and not with a California red). Now all we have to do is do the same with the TPP!
This is what the trade 'deals' mean for our future if not defeated.
takyon: Also at Foreign Policy, The New York Times .
Previously: TTIP Documents Leaked
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 04 2016, @03:19AM
Innovation and community are what built up the standard of living. Capital ownership has gone far out of touch with the common person and now applies to ideas and geometric shapes.
Cool story, bro, but that's not true. It's not securities and branding (for key examples of your two concepts) that are damaging common peoples' standard of living, but labor competition with the developing world and a very damaging reaction to that threat by the developed world.
Chinese stuff gets shinier because production moved there. Not because they have little to no regulations for worker and environmental safety. If it weren't for the greedy capital owners, those factories would have remained where they began, and it was a lack of international regulations that allowed the shift.
Yes, we could have always made things significantly worse by not allowing businesses to move their capital to more economically vigorous parts of the world. But that's not going to improve your standard of living. It'll merely hurt the standard of living of everyone involved. Those sickly developed world factories would still still fail and the Chinese will still build their industry, but we would now be missing the huge value increase of the current trade.
It's worth noting that way back in 1950, the only developed world countries were the US and a few allies (Canada, Australia, etc), due to the fall out from the Second World War and the growing destruction of communism. It was only because the US decided to aggressively build up Western Europe with the Marshall plan and defense treaties like NATO, rather than protect US industries from European competition, that Europe has mostly a developed world standard of living in the first place and the EU exists.
To summarize that history. Back in the 1950s, Europe was in the same position as China is now, a poor region exporting what it could to the US and other untouched parts of the world. Then in the 1970s, it was Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea who exported to the US, Europe, etc. Now, it's the turn of the Chinese and Indians. Soon, it will be the turn of South America, Middle East, Indonesia, and Africa. At that point, who's left to threaten Europe's standard of living? We ignore a lot of history when we blame China or "capital-owners" for Europe's current failings. The very same trade which you claim threatens Europe's current standard of living, created it in the first place.
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Wednesday May 04 2016, @08:47PM
Are there natural resources to raise the standard of living in those countries? I doubt it. Unless the world commits to a serious R&D drive like the one during WWII.
But you are right that the world quite recently there only existed a few industrialized countries. I would be tempted to say that around 1980 this was still the case.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 04 2016, @11:54PM
Are there natural resources to raise the standard of living in those countries?
Of course there are. And we're already in the process of doing it.
Unless the world commits to a serious R&D drive like the one during WWII.
You mean the few percent of global GDP that is already being spent? We're already burning a lot of resources on R&D.