The expendables
Subtitle: how the middle class got screwed by globalization
By: Jeff Rubin
Publisher: Random House Canada
Published: 2020
Place of publication: Toronto
Language: eng
ISBN-13: 9781925938487; 9780735279407
Copyright date: 2020
Subjects: Middle class; Economic conditions; Globalization; Equality; BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Economic Conditions
Description: "Union membership has collapsed. Full-time employment is beginning to look like a quaint idea from the distant past. If it seems that the middle class is in retreat around the developed world, it is. Former CIBC World Markets Chief Economist Jeff Rubin argues that all this was foreseeable back when Canada, the United States and Mexico first started talking free trade. Labour argued then that manufacturing jobs would move to Mexico. Free-trade advocates disagreed. Today, Canadian and American factories sit idle. More steel is used to make bottlecaps than cars. Meanwhile, Mexico has become one of the world's biggest automotive exporters. And it's not just NAFTA. Cheap oil, low interest rates, global deregulation and tax policies that benefit the rich all have the same effect: the erosion of the middle class. Growing global inequality is a problem of our own making, Rubin argues. And solving it won't be easy if we draw on the same ideas about capital and labour, right and left, that led us to this cliff. Articulating a vision that dovetails with the ideas of both Naomi Klein and Donald Trump, The Expendables is an exhilaratingly fresh perspective that is at once humane and irascible, fearless and rigorous, and most importantly, timely. GDP is growing, the stock market is up and unemployment is down, but the surprise of the book is that even the good news is good for only one percent of us."--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.
Table of contents: title: Foreword: Then and Now; title: Introduction; title: Chapter 1: The New Populism; title: Chapter 2: Changing the Rules; title: Chapter 3: Today's Worker: I Ain't No Fortunate One; title: Chapter 4: Left Behind; title: Chapter 5: Greater Global Equity (for the Rich); title: Chapter 6: The New Economy: Non-Inclusive Growth; title: Chapter 7: Globalization and the Digital Revolution; title: Chapter 8: Duelling Giants: The Trade War with China; title: Chapter 9: Tariff Man; title: Chapter 10: Maybe What's Good for American Workers Isn't Good for GM; title: Chapter 11: From Free Trade to Managed Trade: The US-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement; title: Chapter 12: Keeping China Away from America's Back Door; title: Chapter 13: Making China Great Again; title: Chapter 14: On the Move; title: Chapter 15: Déjà Vu; title: Afterword: Will the Pandemic Bury Globalization?; title: Acknowledgements; title: Notes; title: About the Author.