Pips ... well your homework seems to be getting done at a faster pace than yesterday.
One more thing to add for the anti-free trade side....... right now we are living in the USA off the growth of the middle class structure that was a product of the World Warr II and post WWII period. With everygood paying job that leaves this nation a tiny hammer chips away at that solid middle class structure. Multiply that a few million times and the tiny hammer destroys the wall. Think of the escape scene in SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION. The greatest growth in jobs in this nation over the last ten years was in lower paid service industries where benefits are poor or do not exist at all.
Project that same trend out for the next 20 years and tell me what that gives us? How many people do we need to say "welcome to Wal Mart" or "do you want fries with that order?" How many young men and women do we need in the military to create and start wars around the world?
I can give you a real life example that is not the product of some free enterprise Institute or some right wing libertarian newsletter. My father-in-law was a salt of the earth type who got along with everybody. He had an 8th grade education and probably had an IQ in the upper 80's. He served honorably in World War II and when he got out he got a job working in a warehouse that happened to be under a labor contract with the Teamsters Union. He worked hard, long hours, and earned good money. He was able to marry, have kids, get a decent house, but a new car every five years, take his family on local vacations once a year, be a productive member of his local church, and generally be a productive middle class American who could hold his head high in his neighborhood and be a credit to his nation.
What would happen to the same man if he was 18 years old today?
People such as he were in the tens of millions and helped make this nation great by building a prosperous and stable middle class.
We say that an IQ of 100 is average meaning that an equal portion of people are above that level as well as below it. When we had an agricultural based economy there was a solid place for people like my father-in-law. When we had a manufacturing based economy with unionized work places, there again was a place for people like that. What is the future of folks like that over the next few decades?
The free traders and captains of capitalism do not want to worry about such social considerations. For them, people like my father-in-law are just so much fodder for their schemes and devices to enrich themselves while the middle class erodes.
There will always be a poorer Third World nation that is willing to open itself and seduce businesses to locate there ... at least until the next pretty face comes along. We let their products come back here to be sold to Americans and Canadians and Western Europeans who are middle class. But for how long can that be sustained?