Don’t try to tell this to the buggy-whip union crowd here on FR. They will be here in full force any minute to loudly decry Walter Williams as an idiot who doesn’t know anything about economics.
..and then there’s the half-educated who parrot ceteris paribus models as if it tells everything about real world conditions when economists going back to Alfred Marshall knew it’s not the case.
What has been eliminating American manufacturing employment is global labor arbitrage something that simpletons ignore.
Dont bother arguing with them either.
They are immune to facts like Williams’s.
Milton Friedman, on a tour of China, was shown a building site where a gigantic excavation was being done by hundreds of workers using shovels.
He suggested, "You know, if you brought in a couple of backhoes and bulldozers, this could be completed in a week" and the reply was "That's true, but we could not handle the resulting unemployment."
To which Friedman responded "Well, if it's unemployment you are concerned about, you should throw away the shovels and give them all spoons."
We have a spoon brigade here on FR and it's a lot bigger and more aggressive than it used to be.
Funny that you should be mention buggy-whips when outsourcing causes technological regression in the states that practices it. Anyone notice the quality of most of our goods are declining or the costs in things like cars is increasing at an alarming rate?
The problem with economists is their inability to connect how the world works or make accurate predictions.
For example technological innovation has always been driven by the need to reduce labor costs. Thus high wages are required in order to increase our our productivity enhancing developments. On the other hand exporting jobs to low wage factors reduce technological development by reducing the need to save money on labor. This slows tech development and reduces quality.
It wasn't an accident that the industrial revolution got started shortly after the black death wiped out half of Europe and causes huge wage increases that forced people to spend money on machines to reduce labor prices. Economists are all agree on this fact. However, they're unable to connect that same phenomenon to how outsourcing works against improving productivity. All these see is the money coming in and not the hidden loss from tech developments or the costs in human lives when people can't find work.
The buggy whip analogy is stupid, like free Traders. Buggy whips are useless items the last time I checked ford Focus and other cars are still viable products.
And I grew around his articles. He is wrong about tariffs causing the Great Depression. He is a bought off hack. The US built historic growth around tariffs. That is undeniable history.
Walter Williams needs to crack open an American History book.
Trade is about price AND quality. Slaves make poor quality such as the Antebellum blacksmith, because slaves cannot personally grow and advance. The foreign garbage products of poor quality has gotten tiresome. Call it foreign trade, but trash is trash.
Economics says that the obvious is not. You must look elsewhere for truth.
Your neighbor is a slave chained to his lemonade stand. The price is right. Will you drink the lemonade??
The lemonade is likely to be poor quality urine. Drink up. Slaves do not personally grow, so they make bad products, such as U.S. pets dying or poor health eating Chinese pet food.
For free trade to succeed requires all parties subject to a free Constitution, such as, the USA.