Trouble
for Workers and the Poor: Economic Globalization
and the Reshaping of American Politics
By
Benjamin I. Page
Abstract
In recent decades in the United States, even as inequalities
of income and wealth have greatly increased, redistributive programs
have tended to be curtailed. In some cases, government policies
have begun to exacerbate, rather than moderate, inequality. Since
this has occurred under both Republican and Democratic administrations,
it suggests that the politics of redistribution may have been fundamentally
transformed. Moreover, evidence from abroad indicates a shift away
from redistributive policies throughout the advanced industrial
world.
The implications of this trend and the prognosis for the future
depend upon its precise political causes. To the extent that it
has resulted from changes in contingent political forces--especially
increases in the political power of capital, concomitant losses
of power by labor, and much stronger anti-redistributive stands
by business--one can imagine a revival of redistribution, based
on increased organization, mobilization, and political struggle
by working people and the poor. Some signs of such struggle have
in fact appeared.
To the extent the trend is structural, however--based on changed
technology and such international economic factors as lower trade
barriers, extensive immigration, and increased capital mobility--he
heightened power of capital and weakness of labor are likely to
persist for a long time to come. Moreover, economic globalization
may be making it more and more difficult for governments to redistribute
income without counterproductive effects such as capital flight,
loss of export competitiveness, and increased immigration of low-income
people. Thus, economic globalization may gravely impair, or even
eliminate, the capacity and the will of nation-states to redistribute
income or wealth within their boundaries.
If this is so, remedies will be hard to come by. The logic of economic
globalization implies that only global remedies will work. It is
possible that only worldwide organization by workers, or universally
applicable treaties and agreements, could effectively check (let
alone reverse) increases in income inequality in advanced industrial
countries. But such solutions would arouse intense political opposition
and probably face conflicts of interest between workers in rich
and poor countries.
Benjamin I. Page, Department
of Political Science, Northwestern University
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