new materials on the Chase-Dunn/Barendse et al. and other debates

Read these interesting research materials (interesting does not necessarily
mean, I or anyone else would or does endorse them)

The conservative Anthony Harrigan quite interestingly says:

Here and there one finds students of the world economy who warn of another
enormous economic crisis with grim implications for First World societies
and political institutions. One of these far-sighted economic observers is
Sir James Goldsmith, the Franco-British financier. Two years ago, he began
to voice ominous warnings. He said that in the case of Western Europe, with
some 20 percent unemployed, "the critical mass is here for implosion and
social upheaval and political instability on a global scale." He predicted
that the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 will pale into insignificance when
compared to this upheaval. And the situation in Western Europe has worsened
since he issued that warning.
Now the United States hasn't this kind of unemployment problem, except in
its inner cities. The overall unemployment rate for the nation as a whole
has risen a bit, but underemployment has risen on a colossal scale. Millions
of Americans have jobs that don't provide sufficient income to support a
family - even with husband and wife working. And many of these millions
don't have the benefits associated with the good jobs that existed in the
decades after World War II.
Dr. Edward M. Lutwak of the Center for Strategic and International Studies
in Washington has analyzed this problem. Dr. Lutwak has observed:
        The problem in question is the unprecedented sense of personal
economic insecurity that has rather suddenly become the central phenomenon
of life in America, not only for the notoriously endangered species of
corporate middle managers, prime targets of today's fashionable downsizing
and re-engineering, but for virtually all working Americans except tenured
civil servants - whose security is duly resented.
The reasons for the economic insecurity felt by millions of Americans are
numerous and complex. A key element is exploding technology which has made
many jobs as out-of-date as buggy-making. And this has made much employment
temporary in nature, thereby endangering working people and their families
who don't have advanced technical skills or the education to obtain such.
But there are other powerful forces at work: and these forces have a
tremendous bearing on Europeans as well as Americans. These forces cause the
displacement of European and American-made goods, wipe out jobs on both
sides of the Atlantic, and produce the most terrible anxieties, as well as
threatening, as Kevin Phillips has written, to cause the near descent of
Europe and North America into Third World status.
It is important to reflect on the words of Sir James Goldsmith. In an
article published in The Washington Times, November 27, 1994, Sir James
said:
        During the past few years 4 billion people have suddenly entered the
world economy. They include the populations of China, India, Vietnam,
Bangladesh and the countries that were part of the Soviet empire, among
others. These populations are growing fast. In 35 years, that 4 billion is
forecast to expand to more than 6.5 billion. The nations where those 4
billion live have very high levels of unemployment and those people who do
find jobs offer their labor for a tiny fraction of the pay earned by workers
in the developed world. That means that new entrants into the world economy
are in direct competition with the work forces of developed countries.
This is a situation unprecedented in the history of the older industrial
countries. China, for example, is directed in large measure at capturing the
domestic markets of the Western countries and, thereby, acquiring hard
Western currencies for their own purposes - for a massive military buildup
in the case of China. Simultaneously, therefore, the Western countries are
losing their internal markets on which their peoples depend and are
financing new foreign military challenges. Europeans, chiefly the French,
are increasingly mindful of this threat. But the United States is fixated on
Third World countries as trading partners, not as a developing military
threat. This kind of fixation is nothing new. Fifteen years ago, the great
business interests of the United States were desperate and determined to
sell the most advanced technological equipment to the Soviet Union -
products such as super-computers and ball bearings for missile
installations. 

Read, whoever can read, these lines and in between them:

http://hdc-www.harvard.edu/cfia/olin/pubs/no7.htm

http://www.csis.org/

http://www.csis.org/ee/

http://www.csis.org/gt2005/country.html

http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usassi/ssipubs/catalogs/westeur.htm

http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usassi/ssipubs/pubs98/natoafter/natoafter.htm

http://www.multimedia.calpoly.edu/libarts/mriedlsp/Publications/GSA99/GSA99.
html

http://www.mankind.org/harrigan.203.html

http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/000203/bin.html

http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/000204/it.html

http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/000204/cx.html

http://www.adl.org/

Kind regards


Arno Tausch