Another Look At The WTO's Homepage

Protectionism (keeping people employed at decent wages), is expensive; it raises prices (that people earning a decent wage can generally afford). The WTO's global system lowers trade barriers through (corporate invitation-only) negotiation and applies the principle of transnational hooey. The result is reduced cost of production (because employees will come with a low pricetag) and reduced prices of finished goods and services, and ultimately a lower standard of living, and a lot of officially unnoticed corporate-induced poverty.

There are plenty of studies showing just what the impacts of protectionism and of "freer" trade are. Here are a few figures from countries with a high standard living, where people have traditionally been paid good wages. There is no baseline shown with these figures, so there is absolutely nothing you can compare them to without doing some research on your own.

Food Is "Cheaper" (inferior, shoddy, shabby, worthless)
When you protect your agriculture (your food is better.), the cost of your food goes up (price controls help keep family farms afloat)- by an estimated $1 per year for a
family of four in the European Union; by the equivalent of a .51% tax on food in Japan; by $.003 in the United States to support the sugar industry (not that sugar is a vital nutrient or anything.) in one year.

Undercutting agriculture is a complex, fun undertaking. Governments are still debating the role that agri-conglomerate control plays in a range of issues from food and job security to environmental "protection". Hey, lets face it; we at the WTO don't give a shit about these issues that affect your daily lives, and the planet as a whole. We just want as much $$$$$$ as we can get.

WTO members are now reducing the subsidies (which have been keeping local,
non-corporate agriculture alive) and trade barriers that are the worst offenders.
They have agreed to start new negotiations to purge what's left of independent
family farms at the turn of the century.

You know, some of you might think that we're just a bunch of heartless bastards,
and you'd be right. We'd like to feel sorry that you're on the verge of losing your
family farms, some of which have been in your families for a couple hundred years,
but quite frankly, we just don't have it in us. Sorry that you've had to start selling it off to developers and huge agri-bussiness conglomerates. You know, that gas station that's going to open at the *new* corner of Moline Martin Road and Country View Boulevard is going to be hiring, $5.75/hr with no benefits, sometime in April or May. That's when you would have started planting, right?