And, while it is indisputable that the global economy is increasing some aspects of income inequality, it is doing so at an ever-higher level. That is, the top one percent may be gaining the most, but the overall situation is better for almost everyone. During this century, those on the lower end of the economic scale have seen much bigger jumps in life span, education, standards of living, health care quality, job safety, increased leisure time, increased leisure activities, and so on than those on the top have. This is not to say that free trade will solve all the world's ills or even that the WTO is necessarily a good idea. Through the last generation, developing nations with open, WTO-style trade policies have enjoyed, on average, three times as much economic growth as those with closed systems.
Many problems remain in the open-trade nations, including problems of inequality.
And it is precisely because free-market economics has created an American society in which fewer than ever before are illiterate or exhausted from debilitating physical labor that vast numbers of people are now in a position to learn the details of WTO decisions, dislike those details, and express themselves. Except for the broken windows, the Battle for Seattle is cause to celebrate. Earlier this year, Gregg Easterbrook made the comprehensive case for being optimistic about America . The world betrays Rwanda, again. Alan Ehrenhalt mourns the House of Lords, sort of.