Posted on 11/10/2007 10:03:26 AM PST by 1rudeboy
Daniel Griswold directs the Cato Institute's Center for Trade Policy Studies and authored the new study, "Trading Up: How Expanding Trade Has Delivered Better Jobs and Higher Living Standards for American Workers," available at freetrade.org.
President Bush urged Congress yesterday to pass four pending trade agreements, telling a White House audience that open markets boost economic growth, raise standards of living by creating higher-paying jobs and deliver more choice and better prices for consumers. Despite claims to the contrary by populist opponents of trade expansion, the president has the facts and decades of experience on his side.
Critics of trade counter that real wages have stagnated while the middle class has been squeezed by a loss of jobs to low-wage competitors such as China and Mexico. Democrats in Congress point to those anxieties to justify their opposition to any meaningful trade-expanding legislation — including pending free trade accords with South Korea and Colombia and renewal of presidential trade-promotion authority.
Like so many assumptions about trade, the belief that more global competition has somehow lowered the living standards of the average American worker and family is just a myth.
The critics have it all wrong: The middle class isn't disappearing — it's moving up.
The Census reports that the share of U.S. households earning $35,000 to $75,000 a year (in '06 dollars) — roughly, the middle class — has indeed shrunk slightly over the last decade, from 34 percent to 33 percent. But so, too, has the share earning less than $35,000 — from 40 percent to 37 percent.
It's the share of households earning more than $75,000 that's jumped — from 26 percent to 30 percent.
Trade has helped America transform itself into a middle-class service economy. Yes, the country's lost a net 3.3 million manufacturing jobs . . .
(Excerpt) Read more at freetrade.org ...
lol
Movin' On Up (A Treasury study refutes populist hokum about "income inequality.") [Free Republic]The entire, unexcerpted piece is worth a read.
Read-through my link above, and shed those tears you are so fond of shedding.
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