Wherein I vastly oversimplify complex economic debates, much to your consternation

Here's a quite useful paper explaining a lot of current thought on international capital. Joy! Groan and click away if you can, but I've got a hook for you: this post is about rich people.

Intrigued? You bet your ass you are! Apparently arguments for free trade are dying because "the poor have not been borrowing from the rich to finance their investment and industrialization, instead the rich have on net been borrowing from the poor to finance their own consumption".

Wow. Who could've seen that one coming?

Fact: Rich people are scared of poor people.

Because the U.S. "offers a form of protection for capital against unanticipated political disturbances", even as American companies move abroad for cheaper labor, the people who actually make money prefer to invest in America. So, even though companies are moving abroad, America still wins! Woo! Just...not all of America...in my cynical phantasma, pretty much everyone who is not an investment banker will likely be reduced to the same Malthusian equilibrium currently enjoyed by the oh-so-cheap labor forces our companies so prize.

Now, breaking the equilibrium is relatively easy to do, but I'm not sure anyone else is up for televised fire-circle death match rituals for all twenty-year olds. An equally implausible solution has been proposed by the authors of the said paper: "governments should lower taxes and spend more". How deficit spending fixes global inequity is beyond me. I have enough trouble counting up to the $50 needed to fill my gas tank without further inflation. Better solutions: global unions (all the fun of riots, now with more capitalism!) and government investment in technical education.