Guys Who Can Pronounce 'Schadenfruede'

Terri at I Think ^(Link) Therefore I Err links to an article in Der Spiegel that might be the worst article ever. Who else could marry smug Eurotrash socialism with dimwitted American populism? "We've combed the whole world to come up with the worst economic advice!" (It sounds better in German).

The article is dated January 8, 2008, so the Washington correspondent can reference the Democratic primary and have a perfect tie-in for economic nonsense.

Just in time for the recession and widespread layoffs many economists fear the American economy could face this spring, the presidential campaign has suddenly found its new hot-button issue: the dark side of globalization. The mortgage crisis, declining real wages and the fear that companies could even accelerate their outsourcing activities in a recession have relegated explosions in Iraq to the role of political background noise.

Huh? No Abu Ghraib? Well, we're talking NAFTA, specifically the theft of a bunch of good jobs assembling televisions in Tennessee to a plant in Juarez. Juarez, we are to believe was some sort of lovely, desert paradise until NAFTA.

In the United States, the city has come to symbolize a system of international trade that benefits only a few and harms the overwhelming majority, a system as detrimental to the wages of American workers as it is to moral standards.

Nein, danke, Herr Steingart, I seriously doubt many people think of Juarez as a "symbol of international trade." I'm thinking that "smelly, scary, dirty border town" would poll substantively higher.

Seriously, I went to school in New Mexico and financed one semester by driving to Juarez and smuggling back some not-quite-legal-in-the-US-yet tequila. Good stuff with a worm and all. This was more than a decade before NAFTA, and you will trust me that Juarez was a scary place. I got shot at once. Even doing the tourista parts several years later in daylight disturbed me. Sorry to contradict the good folks at the Ciudad Chamber of Commerce, but I'd suggest you pay the extra $100 and go a little further on to Puerto Vallarta or Acapulco or somewhere.

To Der Spiegel, poverty in America is caused by our past devotion to free trade. And poverty in Mexico is the fault of, well, not to put too fine a point on it, George W. Bush. Who is compared to a famous German Totalitarian Tyrant (nope, not that one):

The border crossing, in its coarseness, is reminiscent of the East German side of the former border between the two Germanys, except that the face on wall posters is that of George W. Bush and not of the former East German leader Erich Honecker.

Of course, the real problem with America and Mexico is that we have not embraced GDR Socialism:

The gap between rich and poor has grown by leaps and bounds in America, far more so than in countries like Germany. One-fifth of Americans earn more than half of all wages and salaries. Ten percent of the population owns 70 percent of all assets. This is what presidential candidate John Edwards calls the "two Americas."

Trade bad. America bad. Das ist alles.

Economics and Markets Posted by jk at July 30, 2008 2:52 PM