Ralph talks to renowned economist, Dean Baker, about the state of “free trade” in the era of Trump; and original Nader’s Raider, Robert Fellmeth, joins us to advocate for a group of people who have virtually no say in the political process, children.
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July 8, 2017
Dean Baker is an economist widely recognized for being one of the first to have predicted the crash of the U.S. housing bubble as early as five years before it actually happened. He is the co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington DC, which seeks to make economic issues accessible to the general public in order to promote meaningful debate on those issues. Dr. Baker is one of the leading critics of the so-called “free-trade” deals like NAFTA and the TPP and is the author of several books, including Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy were structured to Make the Rich Richer.
“We still have all sorts of barriers that make it extremely difficult for… a foreign trained doctor – even trained to very high standards… to practice in the United States. So we protect to a large extent our most highly paid workers. It was only the manufacturing workers, the less highly paid, less educated workers that were quite deliberately put in competition with their low-paid counterparts in the developing world.” Economist Dean Baker on the contradictions of “Free Trade”
After helping Ralph investigate the Federal Trade Commission as one of those original “Nader’s Raiders,” Robert Fellmeth became an attorney for the Center for the Study of Responsive Law, Ralph’s office in DC. In 1980, as a University of San Diego Law School faculty member, he founded that school’s Center for Public Interest Law . He is also the founder of the Children’s Advocacy Institute, one of the nation’s premiere academic, research, and advocacy organizations working to improve the lives of all children and youth, with special emphasis on reforming the child protection and foster care systems and improving outcomes for youth aging out of foster care.
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I am embarrassed that I have bought a lot from Amazon over the years, but no more. Their robotic Customer DIS-Service was the last straw. When Amazon first opened, if I had a problem with a purchase or etc, I was able to reach a responsive human on the first try. Then it became the THIRD try, ie, the first couple of emails were obviously answered by a machine which hadn’t read the details of what I wrote. But a couple of months ago, I needed a simple $21 gift card refund for a product that was never shipped. It took me SEVENTEEN attempts (emails, phone calls, even snail mail which was returned unopened) before I reached a human who was able to process that refund. Frightening! Obviously, most consumers would have given up. So, this is yet another way Bezos is ripping us off. It took this experience to shake me out of my trance, whew.