Gene Sperling: "[trade adjustment] assistance is the pre-nup of public policy"

Live from Yearly Kos - Panel: What it Means to be a Progressive in a Global Economy with Thea Lee, Chief Economists, AFL-CIO, Austan Goolsbee, professor of economics at the University of Chicago graduate school of business and Gene Sperling, senior fellow for economic policy at the Council on Foreign Relations and the Center for American Progress and moderated by Andrei Cherney, founder and co-editor of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas.

As you may have guessed at first both Sperling and Goolsbee sputtered off the talking point that globalization is inevitable (WRONG/BESIDE THE POINT: of course we could change the rules if the political will existed) and that technology has at least been a cause of the economic insecurities workers in this country feel - and the cause of the loss of jobs, etc. Sperling said that we can not ignore the huge productivity gains and consumer benefits (click to read about the Center for Economic and Policy Research's research that proves the losses in wages far outweigh the gains).

Goolsbee and Sperling insisted that we must shift the focus to what to do now about the inevitable globalization. Some ideas: universal healthcare, energy independence which will drive down gas costs and trade adjustment assistance (though Sperling said he would not instruct a presidential candidate to talk about this first - because it's the equivalent to the "pre-nup of public policy" and to workers it's "a great idea for what I do after I lose my job and am scared to death").

But when the questioning started these guys were just out of answers. Sperling said apologetically that he admits "the final word was not in on globalization." Goolsbee, when asked about the investment rules, shrunk in his seat and said that "this really backfired." Sperling added that progressives should be against international agreements that undermine our domestic environmental and health policies.

Goolsbee continued, "when domestic regulations are challenged on a widescale" in trade tribunals and the US loses, "that will be the end [of these provisions in trade agreements]."

You heard it from him. Tell a friend, tell your elected officials - don't keep making more NAFTA-style agreements that contain these expanded investor rights provisions that even according to NAFTA-advocates have "really backfired."

More about this breakthrough panel and more panels at Yearly Kos to come...