The topic of his article was Toyota building a plant in Ontario instead of in Alabama which had made big financial concessions to it. He pointed to Ontario’s progressive universal health care as the reason why Toyota decided to locate there. Ontario would save It a ton of money in health care costs. And it didn’t pick Alabama because of its poorly educated workforces. Compounding that, Krugman pointed out, Alabama voted against a tax increase that would have helped to better one of the worst educational systems in America. The upshot is that Ontario won out in globalization because of its progressive social policies in education and wellfare, debunking the theory that globalization is anti progressive in social policies.

Globalization is realizing that in the long run progressive social policies are good for business.

The problem I allude to in my posting is the other side of the coin, however, which Krugman discusses — a country that is without a solid non-employer-paid healthcare system and a poorly funded educational system is at a distinct disadvantage, in two ways.

Krugman discusses the first of these disadvantages: that businesses may preferentially choose to locate in areas or countries that do have good education and healthcare systems.

There’s a second disadvantage, though, and this is what I alluded to in my post: that the condition of being *without* a well-funded educational system and lacking many basic social services makes it more difficult for the population to use the political system to obtain these things…if that makes sense.

Thus, the trouble is not that globalization and progressive social policies aren’t compatible, it is that globalization gives the political right a set of ready-made excuses for not allowing further expansion of progressive social policies by invoking the spectres of efficiency and market “freedoms.”

I intend to write a longer essay on this topic because it is obviously a critical one for American politics. But for now, hopefully comments will clarify.

term in referring to Chicago Sun-Times columnist Jay Mariotti, then kept

Dr. Boyce D. Watkins, a prominent professor at Syracuse University speaks with Wendy Williams in New York City about

drug has faded, but at a meeting of cancer researchers and doctors, hopes were high for new combinations

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family, friends and employers of their evacuation as well as their safety during and after a hurricane, online enrollment available (PRWEB Jun 1, 2006)