Dialogues, by Jerry Brown: on Free Trade

Jerry Brown: GATT pushes short-term consumption; ignores over-consumption

In the last few years, there's been a mounting chorus call for the elimination of barriers to global trade. This is the GATT, the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs, which opposes any barrier to the movement of goods across borders. What this is calling for is energy consumption, extraction, and more and more possession of stuff--chemical, plastic, whatever--with almost no real recognition of the issues of overconsumption.

Everything seems to be moving toward more container ships, more things in them, more port expansion, more railroad cars, more trucks, more subdivisions, more garages.

Harry S Truman: 1949: Announced "The Development Decade" for global economy

Development is a race, and the rules of the race are made by influential people as part of a system that dramatically expands the gap between the rich and the poor everywhere in the world. This logic of development is rarely--if ever--challenged by "The New York Times", the White House, the G-7 summit, at major party conventions, in the mass media, or even in the schools.

Jerry Brown: Maquiladoras liberated rural women to new servitude

Jerry Brown: Global development system expands gap between rich and poor

Development is a race, and the rules of the race are made by influential people as part of a system that dramatically expands the gap between the rich and the poor everywhere in the world. This logic of development is rarely--if ever--challenged by "The New York Times", the White House, the G-7 summit, at major party conventions, in the mass media, or even in the schools.

Jerry Brown: NAFTA and GATT send jobs to Chinese & Mexican workers

"Very soon these trucks are going to be driven by cheaper workers from south of the border and you're going to be out of a job."

He understood that he was going to be hurt, eventually, by NAFTA. It hasn't happened yet, but it's pretty hard to stop the logic of that, isn't it? Why should a transport company pay somebody $12 or $13 dollars an hour, when, by just going below the border a few miles, the business can save an enormous amount of money?

Jerry Brown: Promote village economy by keeping money in community

GUEST: Yes, absolutely. Another of the really interesting things that has been happening around the world is a revival of community currencies.

BROWN: I wonder whether the state or the city could actually pay a part of their salaries in local money. For example, in many US cities a large percentage of city employees live in the suburbs. If one were to say, "We're going to pay you, in part, in currency that is only accepted within the city limits, in the community that has generated and continues to generate your livelihood."

Jerry Brown: We need people for things other than global competitiveness

The criteria has become competition. We have opened our borders for this competition. There's billions of people out there, and the dirty little secret is that a huge number of Americans are redundant and no longer needed in the social organization that is upheld by those who have their hands on the levers of management and control. I believe that's what is going on now in Washington. They're doing the only thing they know how to do, and that's try to make economic sense out of something that only can be understood in theological or human terms.