Posted on 10/08/2004 5:33:37 AM PDT by OESY
With markets at last recovering from the turn-of-the-century crash and the attacks of September 11, it is an opportune time to debate America's future in a rapidly changing world economy. America's establishment of liberal economists and media pundits, however, are joining in a cramped new nationalism that jeopardizes the future of American technology and prosperity. Like reactionary jingoes of the past, they are priming John Kerry with the delusional view that the U.S. and its workers are somehow victims of global trade and capital movements....
In a popular image, "Benedict Arnold CEOs" are seen to be offshoring factories and outsourcing jobs. Once-prestigious economists such as Paul Samuelson and once-responsible analysts such as Paul Krugman and once-sensible financial pundits such as Lou Dobbs are adducing twisted new theories of how free trade is no longer a win-win proposition. The alleged victims of expanding trade and globalization run from low-wage American workers to Third World environments, from aging American software engineers to overall U.S. competitiveness. Mr. Kerry is showing a disturbing receptivity to this alarming turn among his economic allies and advisers.
With international trade expanding as a share of global GDP, these pundits want to revisit and politicize all trade compacts in order to incorporate favored rules for ecological and labor policy, presumably lowering the permitted exhalations of carbon dioxide by low wage workers abroad. They want to revive the entirely spurious issue of dumping, a system of price traps and controls used only against foreign rivals outperforming U.S. companies, usually using U.S. components.
...These proposals... reflect the continuing bankruptcy of demand-side economics. Empirically, the supply-side engine of global growth revived by President Bush with crucial tax rate reductions has outperformed all other countries. To adopt some panicky austerity regime now would crash our competitiveness without achieving any significant benefit....
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Mr. Gilder is correct.
Agreed! bttt!
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