"economic anxiety" and globalization

Dani Rodrik:
"Another wrong turn came in what the United States didn’t do when it opened its economy with NAFTA, the WTO, and then the entry of China into the WTO. At some point, the United States could have done what Europe did in an earlier stage in this history when Europe became an open economy. That is to erect very generous social insurance and safety nets. The kind of insecurities and anxiety that openness to trade creates can be compensated or neutralized by having extensive social policies, and that’s what Europe managed to do.

Europe is much more open to trade in the United States. Yet to this day, trade remains uncontroversial in Europe. When you look at populism in Europe, it’s not about trade at all. It is about other things, it is about immigrants going to reduce the welfare state."

Brad DeLong:

"And this gets me to my fifth quarrel with Paul Krugman here. As I see it, the most important thing we missed about globalization was how much it required support from stable and continuous full employment."

Thomas Piketty:

"Yet over time, those parties, Piketty explains, "gradually become associated with higher education voters," which he describes as creating a system of "multiple-elite" parties where "high-education elites now vote for the 'left,' while high-income/high-wealth elites still vote for the 'right' (though less and less so)." In other words, both sides of the spectrum became parties of the elite, with no party for less educated folks or the working class.

Piketty argues that this situation "contributes to rising inequality and lack of democratic response to it," as well as the rise of populists like Trump, Marine Le Pen in France and Nigel Farage in Britain. "Without a strong egalitarian-internationalist platform, it is difficult to unite low- education, low-income voters from all origins within the same party," he writes."