Daggett,
So little coherence of thought in your argument I could also fill a bookshelf.

You said “Basic rights such as the right to work .. are being taken away from us by this Government” This is called hyperbole, the gov’t has no intention of taking away the ‘right to work’. Your attempt to link Mike Davis’ Marxist theories on slums with Australian reality is ridiculous.

Reading Mike Davis is what you call ‘looking hard’ is it?

I agree there is historically low unemployment. But I’m not sure that the ABS would appreciate you calling their figures ‘a fiddle’. Also Australia is not an economic basket case.. Australia is the third-best country in which to live according to a UN report. They calculated this using the human development index which measured a nation's wellbeing by rating figures for per-capita income, educational levels, health care and life expectancy. That was published in the Age newspaper.
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/07/15/1089694487321.html

You said “most of the jobs on offer are low-skill, casualised with low rates of pay and little career prospects” That’s rubbish. Just a quick glance in any newspaper will show you how many jobs there are for skilled people out there. It’s most of them. The way in which people want to work is changing. Today a large number of people don’t want to work in the same company for 40 years, as their parents did.

China’s air quality is their business. I can guarantee you that most Chinese people are much more interested in development and growth, like the west in the 19th/20th centuries.

How do you explain the growing middle classes in China, India, Russia etc

You said “It is because of the existence of so many desperately poor people in these countries that they are able to pay factory workers so little”
What you neglect is that they have jobs, which they didn’t have before, and they are usually being paid at many times the average weekly wage of their home countries. This foreign capital, which comes into the country, is helping create middle classes in the third world

Paul.L,

I can see that you have managed to skillfully create an impression of having refuted my arguments when, in fact, you have avoided addressing any one of them.

I didn't attempt to "link to link Mike Davis' Marxist theories on slums with Australian reality". I was refuting your nonsense argument that "Free trade has the potential to bring the third world out of poverty." The evidence cited in "Planet of Slums" shows precisely the reverse. One billion human beings are now slum dwellers living on the edge of sprawling megopolises with no economic role to play in society.

Did you get that Paul.L?

One thousand million human beings are living in slums with no economic role whatsoever.

Many had previously worked sustainably with great skill farming their own land. Instead, they are now unemployed. They are unemployed because the mechanisation of agriculture, unsustainably dependant upon fossil fuels and fossil-fuel-derived fertilisers and pesticides, has driven these people from their land.

You state: "they have jobs, which they didn't have before, and they are usually being paid at many times the average weekly wage of their home countries."

That's paternalistic nonsense as I have shown above.

The figures concocted by economists, whose job it is to paint globalisation in the most favourable possible light, which 'prove' that sweat-shop workers earn 'many times' more than they could have earned as farmers usually don't place value on many commodities produced and exchanged in rural economies without the use of money. I suspect, as in Australia, the figures would also fail to take into account many of the overheads that are necessary for urban workers to survive that would not be necessary for farmers - rent, transport, fast food, work gear etc, etc.

Paul.L, if we accept that a person who works for only one hour per week is 'employed', then the ABS figures are not a fiddle, but I suspect that most would beg to differ.

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Obviously there are plenty of job vacancies for skilled workers, but what possible use are they to those who don't have those skills and who don't have the opportunities to train because of John Howard's cut backs to spending on vocational training, or the fact that very few companies provide on the job training to entry level employees any more?

Paul.L I suspect a lot of Chinese want to live and want a future and that is probably more important to them than achieving first world levels of affluence. In any case, if the rampant growth of the Chinese economy threatens to destroy the planet that we all share then I consider that it is our business.

Being the third most desirable country in the world in which to live doesn't mean that the Australian economy is not a basket case. It is a basket case because it has little manufacturing capability left. Instead our economy is driven either by digging up non-renewable raw materials or by flogging Australian real estate to the rest of the world, neither of which can be sustained in the longer term. If this trend continues it is unlikely that our status as a desirable country in which to live will endure.

To other forum users:

My apologies for my part in having lead the discussion off topic.

The point where it was still somewhat 'on topic' was when I wrote that our political rulers have in fact 'overthrown' 'western society' by having dishonestly and undemocratically thrust their neo-liberal economic and social agenda down our throats in the past decades causing poverty approaching third world levels to be a reality for many ordinary Australians today. So, to justify giving police-state powers to the same extremists who have brought this about on the grounds that they are necessary to prevent our society from being overthrown by other Islamic extremists, seems disingenuous to me.

Notwithstanding the figures provided by hired-gun economists, needless poverty and economic insecurity are real and for at least a large minority of Australians today, and many of the rest who enjoy some illusion of material prosperity often overlook how hard and how long they are working for that prosperity and how expensive are many things which used to free. (I have written more on this at http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=3737#12173)

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The relatively small numbers against whom the 'anti-terrorist' legislation is enacted is beside the point. It is the principal and the precedent that it establishes. The FBI's abuse of powers with its CoIntelPro program in the 1960's and 1970's against decent ordinary law-abiding American citizens who wanted to stop the bloody destructive slaughter in Vietnam or fight for equality for African American citizens demonstrates how these sorts of powers can be abused.

If one examines similar police state measures employed against unionists today to prevent activities, many of which have only recently become criminalised, against international labour and human rights conventions, it is obvious that this issue is of concern to many more than just a small handful of Islamic extremists in our midst.

What are you a Luddite. Whoever developed the wheel must have put thousands of people who dragged things out of work. Should we have banned him? We can’t go back to the pre-industrialised world even if we wanted too.

Real free trade allows farmers from all over the world to compete without tariff protection. This gives the third world especially, a competitive advantage.

Please explain the massive increases in middle classes all over the third world. That is one reason why so many people are flocking to the cities. Citing a Marxist analyst to back up your arguments is not proof. Its only evidence of bias.

You state: "they have jobs, which they didn't have before, and they are usually being paid at many times the average weekly wage of their home countries." That's paternalistic nonsense as I have shown above”

You didn’t show anything above, you quoted a Marxist who has not the slightest semblance of consensus for his claims. You are saying that the industrial revolution drove these people off their farms. If you have no money to buy food, you don't leave your farm. Its not cheaper for them to buy food. Those people who leave the land are looking for more than a subsistence living. The cities, rightly or wrongly, are seen as a way to get ahead. Your glamorising of their previous lives is typical of the left. The noble savage etc.

“figures concocted by economists” OK so economists are part of a global conspiracy. Is that right.

“the figures would also fail to take into account many of the overheads that are necessary for urban workers to survive”

What you are talking about is purchasing power. The ability to afford the things you need or want. Clearly the purchasing power of many in the third world has improved. That we have emerging middle classes in third world countries that previously never had any is proof of that.

Con’t

You said “Obviously there are plenty of job vacancies for skilled workers,” This is in direct conflict with what you said above “ Nevertheless, most of the jobs on offer are low-skill, casualised with low rates of pay and little career prospect.” Which is it? When there are lots of vacancies for skilled people that are unfilled, it starts becoming economically viable for companies to train their own people. The gov’t should definitely be helping upskill people and whilst their record isn’t the best, I am sure Rudd will improve this when he gets his opportunity.

You said” I suspect a lot of Chinese want to live and want a future and that is probably more important to them than achieving first world levels of affluence. In any case, if the rampant growth of the Chinese economy threatens to destroy the planet that we all share then I consider that it is our business.”
You are making a lot of assumptions there. First I don’t think you’ll find many Chinese who believe your assertion that they can’t have life, a future and first world levels of affluence. They just don’t see it your way. Many others worldwide also don’t. As for the Chinese destroying the planet. Again that is your assumption. Climate change scientist have no firm idea what effects global warming will have. There are plenty of hysterics like Al Gore you can quote, but reputable scientists don’t agree on what the effects will be.

You said” . It is a basket case because it has little manufacturing capability left. Instead our economy is driven either by digging up non-renewable raw materials or by flogging Australian real estate to the rest of the world” That is garbage 8.4% of our GDP is production and mining. Manufacturing is11.2%,
http://www.economist.com/countries/Australia/profile.cfm?folder=Profile-Economic%20Structure
Its only manufacturing exports which lags resources