Customer Reviews

The Race To The Bottom: Why A Worldwide Worker Surplus And Uncontrolled Free Trade Are Sinking American Living Standards

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book details the depressing details of globalization, and debunks the promises of free trade, like Mexico being a huge market(it isn't), most workers that lose their factory jobs would get new and improved high tech jobs(they haven't), and we'll do the high tech stuff and the Third World will do the low tech(not true). We are living in an age where business can relocate almost anywhere. Our corporations are dumping our highest paying jobs overseas and/or importing Third World workers to do them (like Indian programmers). The result is a slowly sinking standard of living. Between mass immigration and globalization it appears we may be at the beginning of a new age of poverty.
For "fun" scroll down to the first review of the book, down to the guy that gave it one star (apparently after reading only part of chapter one). Print it out and keep it with this book. After you read the book, re-read his review and then see if you can answer the question: What planet are the globalists living on?
This just in: According to NPR, one of the last textile factories in the US closed on October 22, 2002. It was a fancy high-end shirt factory in Maine. It had been in business for decades. The women there worked so fast that their hands were just a blur. Not fast enough apparently, as they couldn't compete with the sweat shops of the Third World. (NPR said "foreign competition") Some of the women had worked there for twenty years and cried when they left. I seem to remember the globablists saying that foreigners only took jobs Americans didn't want. Perhaps those women were just crying tears of joy.

Tonelson describes in detail why the current trade system, aka globalization, will cause the purchasing power of the US population to go down the drain. (Yes, the book is written with a US bias, but it applies equally to Europeans). It describes a type of trade where factories (even sophisticated ones) are shipped off to China, Mexico, Malaysia... only to see US/European labor displaced by a torrent of cheap imports. Further aggravating the downward spiral in the standard of living of Americans/Europeans are the massive immigration flows - more cheap labor to compete for the dwindling manufacturing jobs. There is a chapter on the asymmetric type of trade that is worthwhile reading; it describes how countries like Korea do everything to build sophisticated industries with the intent of exporting primarily to the US, but at the same time do everything to impede US imports (except the capital goods necessary to build the original factories). The implications of the lopsided trade are catastrophic for all involved - US, Europe, Japan and the Asian tigers.
The consequences of globalization are massive and detrimental to US and Europe, and this requires an informed debate on the issues. This book is an important document that analyzes some of the reasons that globalization is detrimental to your health. The book nicely skirts "econospeak" - the type of analysis that causes brain damage. It makes its points backed up by data - it refers to the real world!!
On the downside: the book suffers from a wee bit of repetition - I guess the editor got lazy. The few graphs in the book discuss identical points with slightly changed data - this is on the less than useful side.
All in all, I read the book, and was happy I did so.

I found this work to be significant in that the title and the content described clearly the global trade dynamic which we find our selves in today. I'd heard George Gilder a few years back tell a gathering of telecomm executives that they were caught up in this very dynamic; many of them have already lost that race and are no longer with us.

Mr. Tonelson's research is clearly evident in this book. He has done the heavy lifting(analysis)needed to make considered and substantiated statements about something a complex as the impact of global trade on our quality of life in this country.

I recently read "The Lexus and the Olive Tree" by Thomas Friedman and thought it a good counterpoint to "The Race To The Bottom."

"The Race To The Bottom" is richer in the numbers and is focused on us, while "The Lexus and the Olive Tree" is the more subjective and places the subject in a global and human context.

I highly recommend both books, however if you want solid facts before solid impressions, I'd say read "Race To The Bottom" first to get a good sense of "what." Then read "The Lexus And The Olive Tree" to figure out the "why" of it all.

My thanks to both authors.

I have ready many books about globalization and its effects, but Alan Tonelson's "The Race to the Bottom: Why a Worldwide Worker Surplus and Uncontrolled Free Trade are Sinking American Living Standards" is the ONLY book to explain the truth behind globalization. If the US public understood just simple facts, like the difference between producer goods and consumer goods, it would be clear why the US has the most massive trade deficit in history; and the US public would demand that congress act to stop the fast track legislation given to the president. (This is being carried out now by Bush, but was negotiated under Clinton. In other words, both parties are complicit in the destruction of the US middle class.)

As Tonelson says, "Current globalization policies have plunged the great majority of U.S. workers into a great worldwide race to the bottom, into a no-win scramble for work and livelihoods with hundreds of millions of their already impoverished counterparts across the globe. In addition, by sapping the earnings power of U.S. consumers, who are almost single-handedly propping up the world economy despite their sagging earnings, continuing this race could all too easily bring the global financial house of cards tumbling down."

Tonelson doesn't merely make a statement like this, he proves it with expert economic analysis that he explains clearly to the lay public.

Read this book and act on it, before the U.S. middle-class is further eroded.

Readers looking for ammunition in the ongoing battle against globalization would do well to pick up this book. It's not an unmixed triumph of analysis, but the author succeeds in putting a perspective on the results of globalization so far. His thesis is simple but devastating. Despite the media hype from politicians, economists, and other corporate types, popular perceptions are not wrong: globalization is driving down American living standards. Such sacrifices might be acceptable were there real prospects of a globally-led improvement down the road. However, Tonelson also argues that such promised benefits will fail to materialize unless real changes are made in policy currently defining global integration. It's the book's burden to carry out these claims, which, I believe, the author does with varying degrees of success. The book itself is compact and to the point, with few graphs, but sufficient statistics that are well integrated into the text, and a metculously footnoted appendix - All of which make for unencumbered reading.

Two points concerning the contents. Tonelson, like many others, gets careless in equating globalization with free trade. The two are not only conceptually distinct, but as the author himself shows, distinct in practice as well. For example, protectionist frameworks in many countries have encouraged "offsets", which amount to tradeoff schemes whereby the host country extracts concessions from foreign investors in return for project approval. Offsets have been a significant force behind "outsourcing" and the loss of good American jobs, quite apart from free-market measures such as NAFTA.Thus outsourcing as an aspect of global integration will likely drain American jobs with or without open markets. Second, Tonelson's solution to globalism's woes lies in US "unilateralism". Basically unilateralism amounts to getting tough with America's industrialized trading pardners, using domestic market access to leverage protected markets, such as Japan's. There is a well known risk here that the author unfortunately bypasses. As previous administrations have understood, a policy of unilateralism risks shattering the fragile multilateral framework kept in place for 50-odd years by US hegemony. Though trade wars are no longer certain in a nuclear age to end in shooting war, their outcome is highly uncertain and bound to loose unforeseeable consequences. Yet, Tonelson makes a strong point when he argues that the US cannot continue to act as purchaser of last resort in order to keep a harmonious framework in place. Something has to give. There is a real question implicit in a proposal like unilateralism, unaddressed in the book. Have the needs of an emerging global economy finally exhausted the era of Pax Americana, and, if so, what will take its place?

As the author of five books -- and numerous magazine articles -- concerning economics and competitiveness, I was impressed with the central arguments contained in Tonelson's book.

Although his central thesis would have been steadfastly denied prior to the now-reigning economic slump / recession, they will be taken more seriously today.

The manuscript was well-written and contains a number of observations not generally considered in the mass media. I enjoyed the book because it is non-technical and cites independent sources to substantiate its claim that globalization has not spread beneftis to Mr & Ms Average American.

julian weiss

I liked this book because it helped answer questions about why so many jobs (including high-tech jobs) are leaving the U.S. and what the repercussions are. It discusses why "free trade" isn't really free trade at all but in many cases a one-way street and who loses because of these arrangements. It was astounding to me to see the number of high-tech jobs that U.S. corporations have moved overseas. It puts a perspective on the trade question that just isn't discussed on American television. If so many other countries have the ability to perform even high-tech jobs at low wages, what does this say about the future of the U.S. worker, education and training notwithstanding? Who is in control here? The markets? Read the book and draw your own conclusions. As the Romans used to ask, "Cui bono?"

The most important task facing anyone seeking truth or understanding is to regularly challenge their basic assumptions. For many conversant with global trade issues, this book (read carefully and with an open mind) will help do just that. Tonelson admirably assembles and dissects a wealth of relevant facts and observations about how consumer, corporate, and government behavior around the world is shaping today's very dynamic global economic landscape. In so doing, he poses very substantive questions regarding some of the prevailing tenets of globalization and free trade. Moreover, the author delivers his facts and his message efficiently, using a crisp style that will be appreciated by harried readers who must regularly perform triage on their pile of must-read materials. Among other things, Tonelson focuses the spotlight on policies of international financial institutions to promote export-centric development models in developing and newly industrialized countries. Even the most ardent free-trader, with an eye on the long-term welfare of the global economy, would do well to ponder the issues this book raises about this set of policies. All in all, a concise and substantive volume that should be read by serious students or advocates in the field of international trade.

Tonelson has done an excellent job of empirically demonstrating the irreparable harm being done to the American industrial manufacturing sector, resulting from the pseudo-free trade argument that currently masquerades by the name of globalization.The entire globalization argument rests on an appeal to absolute advantage(for example,American firms should locate their factories and production facilities where labor costs are the lowest).Free trade is based on comparative advantage,not absolute advantage.American firms are free to locate production facilities in foreign countries as long as the output produced from these facilities is used to supply the foreign market.The output can't be shipped back to the home market without violating the basic rules of comparative advantage.Any requirement by a foreign country that ,in order for American firms to locate production facilities in that country,the American firms must hand over or share their technological breakthroughs,inventions,patents,or innovations involves a direct violation of the theory of trade between counties based on the existing comparative advantages that exist in both countries industries.Unfortunately,Tonelson does not spell this out clearly,although his discussions on pp.97-98 demonstate that the correct definition of comparatve advantage has been replaced by one that has no connection to the meaning of the term as used by Adam Smith or David Ricardo.I have deducted one star for this omission.

This book reads like a lot of histerical hand-wringing. It makes the point that things are going toward the bottom, over and over.
Whats missing is that the writer offers no concrete solutions.