Some Good News From Mr. Krugman, if for no other reason than to taunt the neocons who froth at every word he writes. I also offer Paul Krugman because he's a fine wordsmith who makes sense to me, but then I am definitely not an economist.
[Yet] I keep coming back to the big good news of the past 25 years: in a world with more or less free trade, development is possible. We are not, it turns out, condemned to live forever on a planet where only a small minority of the global population has a decent standard of living.
Will this good news continue? Growing tensions over world trade worry me. The steady trickle of U.S. protectionist moves, against everything from steel to Chinese bras, hasn't yet become a torrent. But there's a definite sense that the grown-ups have left the building.
What's particularly striking is the contempt this administration has for the rules. I was on the staff of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Reagan administration (those were nonpolitical jobs back then); one thing I remember was that if the experts said a proposed trade restriction violated international trade law, that was that. By contrast, just about every protectionist step taken by the Bush administration has been clearly in violation. And if the major economic powers stop honoring the rules that preserve open global markets, the chances of future development in poor nations will be much reduced.
But none of this cancels the fact that over the past 25 years more people have seen greater material progress than ever before in history. That's something to celebrate.
