"Why do I hate the global poor?"

 So, any time the subject of neoliberalism comes up, I get asked "why do you hate the global poor?" in rejecting "free trade" policies, so I wanted to discuss this question in more detail here.

Basically, neoliberals believe in unfettered free trade to the point of supporting open borders, blah blah blah. They believe in spreading free market capitalism far and wide, and believe the way to do this is "free trade."

Now, I'm mixed on the concept of free trade. Like Bernie Sanders once said, it's a Koch proposal. By liberalizing markets on a global level it allows the free movement of goods and services, but it also undermines a lot of left wing ideas.

Basically, as I see it, either states are subservient to markets, or markets are subservient to states. As a reformist capitalist, I generally lean toward the latter view. Neoliberalism leans toward the former. Neoliberalism allows jobs to be shipped from the US to places overseas, and leads to a lot of replacement of old school union jobs, which are then done overseas for cheap, and then are replaced by low wage service jobs here. While free trade is supposed to be a win in terms of raw GDP numbers, it's actually in part responsible for the hollowing out of many Americans' living standards over time.And while I would be okay with this, if we could just tax the rich to fund a UBI, if businesses can flee high tax states to go to low tax ones, well, that's going to be bad for us, and this model will not work. 

Neoliberalism also could lead to mass migration in, which is why I explicitly support a moderate/centrist immigration policy (I think biden is fine on the border tbqh), and support refusing to give UBI to illegal immigrants. I understand the sustainability of my ideas only work if I regulate who can come in and go out of the country. My ideas require a slightly more nationalist approach than most liberals these days seem willing to accept to work. 

Of course, I'm fine with that. I sell my ideas as the solution to america's problems. I solve stuff domestically for America's economy in this century, but that doesnt mean that everyone likes my ideas.

A lot of neolibs will snarkily try to abuse empathy by asking me "why do I hate the global poor?" The argument being that neoliberalism, while it might lead to the hollowing out of American living standards for some (although many will deny that there's ANY negative consequences), well it helps everyone in net and raises the living standards of the third world. You see, as american corporations go overseas and build factories there, where they can avoid taxes and regulations, they are creating jobs for poor people to do in the third world. And this is supposed to be great because the wealth trickles down to them. Even though they're working in factories, for <$1 an hour, in abusive conditions. 

Of course in the neoliberal's mind, this is helping them. Poverty is the natural state of humanity and we need to export capitalism to the world to make them better. Work and jobs under capitalism are the only way to conquer poverty and by not having more "job creators" making jobs in the third world, well, they're gonna stay poor forever. Therefore, anyone who opposes their ideology "hates the global poor."

Now, regular readers here would obviously see this as a bunch of "pure ideology." While capitalism has effectively raised living standards significantly across the world, it is actually a pretty horrid ideology at distributing the gains naturally. Early capitalism was especially horrid, and often considered worse than what came before. it privatized all the land and forced everyone into wage slavery where they were forced to work under horrid conditions to survive. It destroyed any and all traditional ways of life of existing outside of capitalism and forced everyone into the yoke of servitude.

We in the first world have made it better through regulations and reforms. Even then, it ain't perfect. We all know my views on that. But we've made it workable where it's not as bad as it was. Theres still progress to be made, but it's BETTER. But this neoliberal ideology, it threatens to set us backwards. What a lot of people are complaining about in recent decades where they feel like the economy no longer works for them comes down to the fact that trends that happened under the new deal stagnated and reversed, in part due to right wing policy, but in part because of a lot of jobs that were unionized and made dignified shipped overseas or automated. I know at the end of the day that jobs only exist to make rich people money, and they don't exist for the workers themselves. And I wish most would understand that. Still, for capitalism to work, it need to distribute the wealth around, either through work, or through another mechanism like UBI.

What neoliberal global capitalism does is allow businesses to pay US workers less and skip out on their taxes while they get richer and the rest of us get poorer. And these neolibs, what they do is they pit the workers of the third world against the first world. They're trying to shame first world people for being "selfish" and not being willing to accept less, because at their loss, comes the gain of those in the third world who gain jobs. Jobs jobs jobs. Everyone fights over jobs. Dear rich masters, please create work for us peasants to do. We should be grateful for the opportunity, blah blah blah. 

And basically, yeah that's it. We should accept less so the third world can modernize. basically, screw us. And then people wonder why demagogues like Trump gain popularity. 

The fact is, to be blunt, I dont hate the global poor, but I am somewhat indifferent. I'm just interested in making capitalism work in my little corner of the world. The third world, the global south, whatever you wanna call it, can figure things out for themselves. I dont support US corporations exploiting those people, and I do support liberating them from debt traps that keep them subservient to US capital, but from there, they can figure things out for themselves. What should they do? Modernize, yes, but they should also organize their workers into unions. They should implement ideas like UBI and universal healthcare. UBI might be a lot smaller there, but cost of living is well. Mathematically, it should work out similarly to here. 1/5 of the nation's income be redistributed to everyone, and then everyone has something and no one is truly poor. The capitalist engine will go on growing just like before, but other than that, they will have the same freedoms and lack of poverty any first world country with UBI would have.

In other words, my policy toward the global south is basically nonintervention and encouraging them to copy us. But all in all, they're not really my problem. I'm interested in fixing problems HERE. I can't fix the entire world. Im not even gonna try. And I know some empathy obsessed leftists will try to show how much they care about those people (while advocating for all of the wrong solutions), but all in all? Let them figure out their own path.

As far as free trade goes, I support what's called fair trade. I support trading primarily with nations of similar economic stature, in terms of taxes, regulations, and working rights, and not trading with countries that act as tax havens where corporations have free rein to avoid all taxes, regulations, and abuse their workers to death. And I see that as good both for the people here, and over there. Just like we shouldnt celebrate some crappy ghetto getting a new amazon warehouse or walmart in their vicinity to give people jobs after giving them a ton of tax breaks, we shouldnt celebrate third world countries allowing first world corporations to come in and turn people into slaves. Im not of the opinion capitalism is the only model for all time and that everyone must be subject to it. I'm fine with other countries self determining. I do think capitalism at its core is the best economic system for many countries at this point, but let's face it, it only really works for the people...if we design it to. If we just let corporations do whatever they want, capitalism is gonna be hell on earth whether it's here or in bangladesh. We are masters of our own institutions and the only way to make them work is if we design them to serve us, rather than forcing most of humanity to serve them.