What Friedman accomplishes is to show how globalism failed to be the rising economic tide that lifts all boats, lifting only those individuals and families above median income, actually hurting those below. In many places around the world, this has resulted in political changes as the newly disadvantaged become supporters of nationalism, the antidote to globalism.
The financial crisis became an economic malaise. The economic malaise created a social crisis. The social crisis generated a global political crisis. The class that had absorbed the existential blow of 2008 turned on the elite and their values. The elite, focused obsessively on their interests and ideology, failed to notice the revolt. (snip) Their challengers sensed that there was no going back and sought a completely different paradigm that appeared to be witless to the elite. But then the elite appeared brutally indifferent to any interests outside their own.Friedman - George, not Tom - is writing some of the most insightful commentary I'm seeing currently.
Free trade may benefit the economy as a whole, yet devastate a class. That class will accept lower growth to avoid the consequences of lower wages. For the pre-2008 ideology, this view is incomprehensible. But it has become the prevailing ideology of roughly half of Euro-American society.
