Are you suggesting that even if everyone of the unemployed were put to work there would be no more work to be done? There's always more work, the only question as to whether or not it will be done is if the person wanting it done can agree on a price with a person willing to do it. This falls under the realm of Bastiat's 'unseen'.
True but you are suggesting the government had nothing to do with the situation and it had much to do with it. While it is not designed to cause pain, it is not designed use our tax dollars to finance other countries to put us out of work and it is not designed to use our tax dollars to finance the moving offshore of American companies to put us out of work.
None of which has anything to do with free trade. I'll stand alongside you in arguing against government largesse. Government handouts are not free trade.
When the light bulb was invented - it didn't move the work offshore - it remained here so the candlemakers could perhaps learn to make light bulbs. Big difference.
Do you think that was a one for one swap of jobs, or that it should have been? Cost savings may result in worker dislocation, but the vast array of consumers who now save money by using lightbulbs over candles have more disposable income. In any marketplace change of preference you can undoubtably find a disatisfied producer who no longer meets market demands. Is he more important than the multitudes who no longer chose his product, for whatever reason? Is he entitled to their money, even when they have better alternatives? Is your glass always half empty?
That sounds so good. Now once again, you have to do something that someone can pay money for, that means those people also have to have jobs and disposable income. This is not a shifting of jobs, this is an elimination of jobs in America. That is the difference.
It is good, because it allows the marketplace to adapt to reflect the desires of the participants. If capital and labor are misallocated to more expensive production process making those processes cheaper frees up both labor and capital. It is precisely because of our heavy specialization of labor, irrespective of borders, that we can employ so many people at such high, real rates of income. Americans continue to lead the world in per capita income because we allow the marketplace to continually refine and increase productivity. Japan's staunch poltical defense of the status quo with regard to capital and labor allocation is chief among it's reasons for a stagnant economy. Why bring those conditions here?
Now that sounds good also, but you see what if those neighbors do not have the money to pay for your services or goods and if those service jobs are already filled by someone else (millions of foreign workers, for example).
Again, we will never run out of work in want of being done. The only difference is how the resolution of that work is attained. We can ignore it and try to lock politically favored enterprises and laborers at their present rates and stagnate the process of generating capital and increasing wealth, or we can allow the market to reflect the desires of both consumers and laborers freely, as we have done in attaining a standard of living that is the envy of the world. I'm for the latter - which requires freedom.
Now are you saying that all this great standard of living we have in this country is all due to foreign trade? Don't think so. Remember when we made TV, washers/dryers, refrigerators, all those luxuries? WEll, guess what, people could afford them then. I haven't seen a reduction in price. I have seen the price of items rise drastically. Just looked at a new stove - $500 to $800 for just a normal electric stove. Now our salaries have not quadrupled in the last 15 years (since I last bought a stove and they were made in USA), but the price of stoves have.
Price comparisons are almost useless because the effect of government induced currency inflation affects all goods differently. Also worth noting is that the goods themselves aren't comparable, but lets give it a whirl since you brought it up. In 1955 Motorola made a 19" color TV that 'only' cost $995. Per capita personal income in 1955 was a whopping $1,881. Today you can walk out of Wal-Mart with a 20" flat screen color TV (with remote of course) for under $200. Per capita personal income is currently ~$36,000. Should we continue to play this game with all the products you mentioned?
What we are attempting to get across to you is someone, somewhere, has to be making money at some time. WE can't just reach into the sky and pull it out. To do that we have to have a product or service that someone, showhere, somehow has the money to buy. You never say what kind of jobs you think will be available - it is always the 'one my neighbors want' - now what will that be in light of the fact your neighbor may and probably will be either out of work - or seriously strapped for the monies to pay you.
Your nightmare scenario is unplausible because the shifts are not all at once. We won't wake up and find 150 million jobs left the country and everyone is out of work. People losing and finding new work is a constant process. There's no advantage in taking a snapshot and trying to weild law to bend mankind forever to that image of preferences. As particular demands shift, the marketplace shifts in response to them. A recession, where aggregate job loss tends to exceed job creation, is a response to loose credit policies, where capital has been misallocated and the marketplace begins to correct. I don't tell you what the jobs are that will be created because it's impossible to know. If my grandfather had been told upon the birth of his grandson that the boy wouldn't work on a farm, but would one day manage computer network's increasing the productivity of scores of people, he could only ask you, "what is a computer network?" The notion that you, or I, or any individual can 'see' what the market will produce next is the folly that doomed the USSR. Let go of that notion. The marketplace exists to fulfill the desires of the participants. Let it work, and we'll see what they want soon enough...
So what we have is not free trade. So why all this argument about the benefits of free trade. It is a theory - nothing else. Certainly not what we are experiencing today.
In the candle and buggy whip analogy - the jobs did not just go away. The candle makers could work for light bulb companies and the buggy whip people could work for auto workers and other could find jobs int he economy because it was still there. The light bulb and auto manufactures didn't open their factories in Mexico - they did it right here in the gold old US of A, thereby creating jobs.
Food, shelter and clothing is very expensive in America - it has not become cheaper, well cheaper, but not more econimical. It will not be as easy to just sell apples to pay the bills as they did in the depression or the miscellaneous jobs my grandfather did to feed three families through the depression. We can't all plant a little garden to help feed us or barter with our neighbors who have a cow. You see the government didn't take 50% of what he made.
Yes a TV in l955 was expensive. That's not a really good example as they were just coming out and in five years they were reasonable. Now I was really thinking of more recent years when we people had more disposable income. Some things are cheaper - not the necessities.
As for the half empty glass. I am pretty good at seeing things from both angles. My glass is pretty full - because I don't need much and am quite healthy for my age - but I know young families who are struggling and will not get ahead in today's situation. It is good to see the glass half full, but since it is still half full, we have to realize something happened to that other half. WE need to face reality and to stop pretending that what we are experiencing is free trade and it will all work out and everyone in the world will suddenly have middle class lifestyles. That's a fairy tale.