And protect inefficiently high standard of living for the workers. If the same work can be done 10 times cheaper in some Third World country why American worker should not lower his standard of living appropriately?
The problem is that to have the same standard of living as worker in the Third World American worker would still have to pay much more as costs are higher in US.
Can you offer any proof that removing barriers to trade has reduced the standard of living for American workers?
If the same work can be done 10 times cheaper in some Third World country why American worker should not lower his standard of living appropriately?
The reason our standard of living continues to increase is because we continually increase our productivity. You won't find an explanation of this process in any poetry. This is the stuff best left up to those who understand business and economics. Bruce Bartlett is one such individual:
Manufacturers are not concerned about hourly wage rates, but unit labor costs - how much the labor costs to manufacture a given product. If a U.S. worker earns five times as much and is five times as productive as a Mexican worker making one-fifth as much and producing one-fifth as much, the workers are exactly equal from the point of view of the producer.
The best measure of comparative productivity levels is real GDP per employed person. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2002 the United States continued to lead the world in this category.
To believe that American workers have to lower their standard of living to compete with third-world labor would require that you ignore all the evidence to the contrary. Real wages and employment continue to increase - much to the dismay of those who want a problem to exist so they can justify further government control over the economy.
The wage arbitrage argument just doesn't hold up under scrutiny. Over the past 50 years, real wages have tripled because productivity has increased eight-fold.