[video=youtube_share;CS-x5SlcPPM]http://youtu.be/CS-x5SlcPPM[/video] So called "Free Trade" Agreements (FTA's) are designed to limit the threat of democracy to US corporate and power interests and are neocolonial in nature. Specifically, FTA's are primarily designed to "lock [governments] into pro-market reforms" - one of the benefits being, "a more efficient employment of the productive forces of the world", i.e. slave labor. One of the principal tenets for maintaining and extending this system was explained as follows:
the dmca was a bought and paid for law, did you know if ford put a digital lock on your cars hood, you could not open it, and if you did you would be violating the DMCA
TPP will not be passed in 2014. Japan will not touch certain exports plus both Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have come out against fast-track. They (the politicians) will wait until next year to make a big PR push for the TPP, meanwhile the lobbyists, trade officials and "industry representatives" will continue to write the agreement in secret and keep trying to bully other countries at trade negotiations. The best (and really, only) thing people can do is convince their reps that voting for the TPP will be electoral poison for them in any case, and that if they decide to support it after 2014 then we will respond by wiping the slate clean of all TPP-ers in the Senate and House in 2016.
The TPP undermines our superficial democratic functions of government. People are cheering for Obama's initiatives to raise the minimum wage even though none of that will matter with the TPP. The central banks will have veto and legislative power over the Congress. More people will have to settle for minimum wage jobs when their middle class wage jobs are shipped to Vietnam. That's why commentators on MSNBC are focusing on the wrong economic issues. None of that will matter.
Actually, it's probably worse than that. The Conservative agenda includes eliminating the minimum wage, eliminating unemployment insurance, eliminating most welfare, eliminating unions, and so forth. What would that lead to? An interesting book just came through the catalog of my discount bookseller which I am reading now, German, Lindsey and John Rees (2012) A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF LONDON, London: Verso. Once feudalism was replaced so that businesses had almost absolute power in the United Kingdom, wages were so low that workers didn't have quite enough to eat, so were quite unhealthy. As a result, there were massive riots and attempts at revolution decade after decade. In addition, the United Kingdom didn't do very well. So that is probably the end point in America if current trends continue. That is not the intelligent thing for top executives and major shareholders to be aiming for, however. Economists are now trying to tell them that, but to date, they haven't been listening. If wages are drastically decreased, then ordinary people won't have enough money to buy most of the goods and services that corporations can produce, so sales by corporations will decrease. That will cause many of then, via negative economies of scale, to go bankrupt, and will cause a massive shrinkage of the corporations which survive. That will drastically decrease the incomes and assets of the wealthy. Billionaires will be reduced to millionaires, even if their investments were in corporations which survived. Many millionaires will fall to the level of ordinary people. And there will be frequent and dangerous riots. That is what will happen if the Conservative agenda is adopted. To date, the top executives and major shareholders are blind to this, however. There is something wrong with their thinking at the moment? It is true that the economy is very complex, and it is difficult to think about it in an intelligent way. It is easier to just say that corporations should have their way, and not consider the details. Perhaps that is the reason the wealthy are unable to understand what the economists are saying. The ideas the economists are working with are difficult, so the wealty don't try to understand them, which would require much study and much thinking. Thus, my major point is that we need to figure out what to do with the economy that will be beneficial to everyone, figure that out in a clear and advanced way, and somehow, teach the wealthy what really is possible. I think we have a couple of choices. One would be a seriously improved socialism, but I don't see how that could be achieved without serious political problems and economic disruption. The other possibility would be some kind of Assisted Free Enterprise which would be intelligently designed to provide a good standard of living for everyone, even the poorest individuals and families. The key part of this would be "intelligently designed".
I wouldn't call it a "conservative agenda". It's a corporatist agenda with the banks leading the way. Real conservatives don't believe corporations should control the government. Free markets; yes. Crony capitalism; no. I don't agree with their ideology which would inevitably lead to corporate tyranny but their is a difference between conservatives and corporatists for which the leadership of both parties subscribe. The ideology of the "Washington consensus" as explained by Mike Lofgren, a former congressional staff member who served on both the House and Senate budget committees:
That part of the real conservatives you are talking about at the moment have almost no chance of being politically successful. In practice, the corporations have more power than voters now because they have so much cash flow that it is easy for them to bribe as many government officials as they need to get what they want. In America, they use campaign contributions (legal bribes) and highly paid jobs for officials after they leave office, and sometimes to relatives as well. I actually don't know how many conservatives not in public view agree with you, and how many go along with what the corporations are saying. However, however many there are who agree with you, they are not being at all successful. As a result, corporate lobbyists even write large chunks of bills which are passed by Congress. Major bills now tend to be hundreds of pages long, and it is easy for corporate lobbyists to include fine print to get what they want. Often, they insert language the evening before a vote, so most Congresspersons don't even know what they are voting for. An example was when the drug benefit for seniors was passed. I was on an AARP message board at the time, and the President of the AARP told us what happened. She and some others went to Congress to try to make sure that the drug bill would be of adequate quality. She said that when they got there, it was a nightmare. She and the other AARP officers couldn't do anything. The drug industry lobbyists were controlling the process, and they wiped the floor with the AARP officers. In the end, the drug benefit helped some Medicare recipients, but it wasn't really helpful to many of them. However, it did include provisions that weren't explained to the public that increased the amount of money being paid to the drug companies by a large percentage. So what was called a drug benefit when the bill passed, really benefited the drug companies more than the seniors due to the small print that had been inserted into the bill.
