Today and tomorrow, leaders of the Group of 20 Nations, or G-20, are meeting in Pittsburgh for the latest in a series of meetings intended to address the global economic crisis. The global recession has shifted the nature of these conversations; neoliberal policies, though not entirely discredited by global policymakers, are at least in retreat. On the agenda are items previously considered “anti-globalization”: supporting economic stimulus packages, repealing national subsidies on fossil fuels, restraining executive pay, increasing oversight on hedge funds, and boosting the voting power of key global South economies at the International Monetary Fund.
But these global leaders still don’t get it. A few tweaks to their unjust global economic order may end the recession for some, but it will not bring about recovery for the rest of us.
Numerous people-centered proposals do exist that would provide better economic opportunities both here in the United States and abroad.
Some good ideas were detailed in The Accidental American, coauthored by ColorLines publisher Rinku Sen.
Much of what passes for globalization in today’s public discourse is actually neoliberalism, or corporate deregulation writ large. Agreements like NAFTA repeat patterns of corporate movement that created similar hardships for working people in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, only this time across the entire world. Proponents of neoliberal economics have berated Americans and others for being small-minded when they resist such corporate freedom....
The holistic answer is to create a different kind of globalization. Here, too, there are many ideas and experiments from which we can learn. We can start by creating regional agreements, not just to benefit corporations and increase trade, but also to handle governance and public welfare. The key is to ease the movement of workers while equalizing social and political conditions.
