How prescient of Sir James Goldsmith – predicting the world within which we now live. And to see the denials of the administration spokesperson would almost be funny, if it wasn’t so tragic! Here is the video of Goldsmith’s interview. It’s really interesting to watch!
What’s funny is that he’s been right on so many things (2m 05s), yet they keep trying to dismiss him when he warns of the dangers of this new Free Trade agreement called GATT!
They talk about NAFTA being a major success, yet it has only been in place for a couple months at that time!
The logic Sir. Goldsmith makes the point that Corporations will ship all their jobs overseas because they can employ 47 people in Vietnam or the Philippines, for the cost of 1 American! (4m 15s)
Laura Tyson, the Chairman of the US President’s Council of Economic Advisers, actually believes that Corporations will use the PROFITS they make from employing SOME people overseas and they HIRE MORE people back in the US with those extra profits! (16m 30s) HAH! How wrong she was! And it only makes common sense what Sir Goldsmith is saying.
Some great quotes from the interview:
“The economy is there to serve the fundamental needs of society, which are prosperity, stability and contentment… If you have a situation whereby the economy grows but you create poverty and unemployment and you destabilise society, you’re in trouble.” —Sir James Goldsmith to Charlie Rose, 1994
…..
Goldsmith laid out in simple terms the dangers of what he saw as unfettered globalisation, warning of the perils of NAFTA, GATT and the merging of sovereign European nations into the EU. He predicted that the only possible beneficiaries of unbridled global free trade would be the major multinational corporations who would have free rein to roam the globe in pursuit of the cheapest labor:“The top 100 companies account for one-third of all foreign direct investment. Now, how do they operate? They’re no longer linked to the United States or to France or to Britain. They operate by farming out their production to whatever country produces most cheaply, where they can get the biggest return on capital and pay the lowest part to labour.”
This is exactly what has been happening in the Western world and will continue to happen when Corporate Profits are put above the well-being of the people. Today, 21 years after this interview, we find ourselves in the exact same situation with a couple more “Free Trade” agreements being negotiated in secret by our government which will give corporations even more power, the power to actually sue and bypass regulations enacted by the people if those regulations could hurt the potential profits of the corporations.
Sounds crazy right? The new treaties are called TTP and TTIP.