I find it interesting that many of the super rich such as Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and George Soros have championed reducing the income gap. Still I agree among the Dem field I wouldn't vote for Edwards. If you want to help the American worker protectionism isn't the way to go. Sitting here in Singapore a country that was piss poor 40 years ago an aggressive trading policy and developing competive industries is how you lift up standards of living.
with all due respect you can't compare singapore to the united states of today. aggressive free trade works better when you have a small city state with a highly educated work force and a one party system... that being said i think protectionism like nationalism are a thing of the past. welcome to the new world. its a global village for real and the world is flat. however that doesn't mean you open your land for goods to be shipped in from a dollar a day countries.
True there are a lot of differences but closing one's markets to outside competition on any scale is bad longterm. Yes Singapore is a very small country but consider how many small countries have tried to seal off there markets and suffered terribly. At the sametime look at how many large countries like the PRC and India tried to close off their markets and ended up developing uncompetive and backwards industries. Singapore's per capita income now exceeds the US and Singapore has for years been outsourcing manufacturing and also bringing in foreign labor as Singaporean wage rates are no longer competitive. Instead of bellyaching about protecting non-competitive industries they've aggressively been pushing education and innovation. Maybe a Singaporean policy would be difficult to push on a US wide level but certainly within Edward's own state of North Carolina they could develop programs to create a more competitive business environment and instead of trying to preserve a non-competitive textile industry create new industries. At the same time the US could learn a lot about the Singapore's social safety net and progressive taxation policies that have practically wiped out poverty, created a stable multi-ethnic society (and yes even with many devout Muslims).
