In The News

Slave Labor That Shames America

Leonard Doyle January 3, 2008
The agricultural sector keeps costs low by relying on immigrant labor to harvest fruits and vegetables quickly and efficiently. Employers confront rising energy costs and consumers balk at higher prices. With a political environment that encourages public resentment over illegal immigration, many employers take advantage of the vulnerable illegal workers, reducing pay and imposing brutal work...

World's Schools Teach US A Lesson

Stacy Teicher Khadaroo December 24, 2007
US education experts suggest that the nation’s children fail to keep pace with the top international students. A globalizing economy means that today's kindergarten students will eventually compete for jobs or work on teams with peers from around the world. The challenge awaiting teachers is how to best prepare young students. While pupils in China and India achieve high scores on science...

As Immigration Debate Generates Heat, Dust Gathers on a Workable Plan

Joseph Chamie December 18, 2007
For two centuries, the US grew and flourished with the world's most open immigration policy. But with the public worried about growing illegal immigration and politicians trying to outdo one another with an anti-immigrant stance, the issue has moved from reason to rhetoric. As a topic, immigration has tripped many a politician in US election campaigns, and the 2008 presidential race is no...

The End of Globalization?

Gabor Steingart December 12, 2007
Doubts expressed out loud can spur major movements. Such doubts about globalization are emerging in the US presidential campaign, as candidates question whether free trade is a source of the nation’s wealth or economic woes. Since World War II, US presidents supported a philosophy of free trade for spreading wealth and other benefits. “America's enormous trade deficit – and that in a country...

Common Currency Caveat

Eckart Woertz December 12, 2007
The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) was established in 1981 by Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and UAE, with all agreeing to some common objectives based on their Islamic beliefs in trade, security, agriculture and investment. Plans include uniting around a common market in 2008, which will “move beyond the free movement of goods and services that has been agreed upon in the GCC customs...

The Price of Gold

Jane Danowitz December 11, 2007
An 1872 US law – designed to encourage settlement of the American West – allows mining companies to extract gold from the ground without environmental clean-up. The American West has long been settled, and most mining firms taking advantage of the law are foreign-owned, explains Jane Danowitz in a Los Angeles Times opinion essay. Most of the gold goes toward making jewelry, yet Danowitz writes...

Subsidies' Harvest of Misery

Jimmy Carter December 10, 2007
A US bill passed during the 1930s Great Depression – paying farmers for crops not grown – no longer makes sense. Instead, current US farm programs hurt the poorest people in the world and small farmers in the US, encouraging “excess production while channeling enormous government payments to the biggest producers,” argues former President Jimmy Carter in an opinion essay for the Washington Post...