What to Expect When You’re Free Trading

New York Times ^ | January 16, 2008 | STEVEN E. LANDSBURG

[LowCountryJoe]

Rochester

IN the days before Tuesday’s Republican presidential primary in Michigan, Mitt Romney and John McCain battled over what the government owes to workers who lose their jobs because of the foreign competition unleashed by free trade. Their rhetoric differed — Mr. Romney said he would “fight for every single job,” while Mr. McCain said some jobs “are not coming back” — but their proposed policies were remarkably similar: educate and retrain the workers for new jobs.

All economists know that when American jobs are outsourced, Americans as a group are net winners. What we lose through lower wages is more than offset by what we gain through lower prices. In other words, the winners can more than afford to compensate the losers. Does that mean they ought to? Does it create a moral mandate for the taxpayer-subsidized retraining programs proposed by Mr. McCain and Mr. Romney?

Um, no. Even if you’ve just lost your job, there’s something fundamentally churlish about blaming the very phenomenon that’s elevated you above the subsistence level since the day you were born. If the world owes you compensation for enduring the downside of trade, what do you owe the world for enjoying the upside?

[Snip]

One way to think about that is to ask what your moral instincts tell you in analogous situations. Suppose, after years of buying shampoo at your local pharmacy, you discover you can order the same shampoo for less money on the Web. Do you have an obligation to compensate your pharmacist? If you move to a cheaper apartment, should you compensate your landlord? When you eat at McDonald’s, should you compensate the owners of the diner next door? Public policy should not be designed to advance moral instincts that we all reject every day of our lives.

[nicmarlo]

Didn't you get the memo? The Germans know best. /s

I got the memo. And I REJECTED it in full. I don't adhere to communism or socialism, in any form.

[scarface367]

which benefits foreign companies and countries, but not America or Americans.

How exactly am I and other Americans not benefiting from a larger selection of goods at lower prices that have resulted from trade?

[Toddsterpatriot]

EPI? LOL!

[nicmarlo]

Aw.........now you’re throwing facts into the mix.

Whaddya have to do that for???? : )

[calcowgirl]

Same old propaganda without much analysis, IMO.

[nicmarlo]

If you’ve read the articles I posted, you wouldn’t be asking that question. It’s been laid out how it’s damaging America and Americans, most especially the middle class, which has growing ever smaller as the lower class is growing ever larger.

[nicmarlo]

Calling the tag team........so soon?

[Toddsterpatriot]

You can stick YOUR “case” Toddster....I don’t give a damn about anything here but jobs....

Right, because increases in productivity are unimportant.

Hey, and don’t provide graphs and charts without a LINK.

The source is in the chart. Economagic.com

I still think you work for the darkside Todd....the REAL DARKSIDE

I still think you're a doofus. A REAL DOOFUS!

[DungeonMaster]

25 dollar an hour union janitors don’t want no stinking training for no stinking new job.

[AuntB]

See post 58. Cheap imports are subsidized by the US taxpayer, xray machines, port agents, border agents. We’re tired of paying for you to have a cheap selection of goods.

[scarface367]

Cheap imports are subsidized by the US taxpayer, xray machines, port agents, border agents. We’re tired of paying for you to have a cheap selection of goods.

How exactly?

[DungeonMaster]

Americans can compete with anyone, but they are being betrayed by these international trade agreements that are nothing but mercantalism under the guise of 'free trade'

Not a true statement.

[1rudeboy]

Is there some sort of rule against it?

[snowrip]

Sooooooo... our factories produce more, which is good, although the total production index includes foreign companies located in the US.

However, millions of manufacturing jobs have been lost and not replaced, which is bad. Real wages (for the majority of Americans, not as a static number) are down, also bad. Jobs created do not match the overall wage losses from the jobs that were lost originally, bad again, and as corporations downsize we are creating more consumers for cheaper and cheaper goods, rather than producers of expensive ones... a bad combination for the long haul. Consumer confidence is down... and so are the RE and construction markets.

The American consumer has less and less money to spend, and larger and larger amounts of debt to handle. As it is the American consumer that drives the economy rather than American corporations, how is it again that the virtues of free traitoring are saving rather than killing us?

[Toddsterpatriot]

They like to laugh at “conservatives” like you who post material from EPI.

[snowrip]

Sorry, but who has advocated stopping all imports and manufacturing every last consumer good in the US?

The only pschobabble comes from free traitors, who believe that those who want to stop exporting every manufacturing job are fools, and that those who want a rational amount of self-interest on the international markets are protectionists.

[Toddsterpatriot]

Sooooooo... our factories produce more, which is good, although the total production index includes foreign companies located in the US.

So, you don't think a foreign company in America with American workers should count as American production?

However, millions of manufacturing jobs have been lost and not replaced, which is bad.

Millions of farm jobs were lost in the last 100 years, but we grow more food than ever. Why is higher productivity bad?

Real wages (for the majority of Americans, not as a static number) are down, also bad.

Says who? EPI?

Jobs created do not match the overall wage losses from the jobs that were lost originally,

Show me.

The American consumer has less and less money to spend, and larger and larger amounts of debt to handle.

Make the consumer pay higher prices, that'll help him. LOL!

[1rudeboy]

Come off it. Your canard about customs enforcement being a “subsidy” for free trade is easily refuted by observing that it is equally important in a “protectionist” environment.

[nicmarlo]

And had I only posted from conservative sites, you’d be, as you personally have in the past, objecting to that as not being fair.

You want your cake and eat it too....just like all good little globalists.

[Mase]

I’ve posted from a liberal think tank to back up my claims that globalism and outsourcing costs American jobs

And they can be objective, right? Here are your people, nic. Are these the folks you look to for honest answers?

EPI Board

Chairman of the Board
Gerald W. McEntee
President, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees

Secretary-Treasurer
Julianne Malveaux President, Bennett College

Lawrence Mishel
President, Economic Policy Institute

Jeff Faux
Founding President/Distinguished Fellow, Economic Policy Institute

Barry Bluestone
Professor of Political Economy, Director for Urban & Regional Policy, Northeastern University

R. Thomas Buffenbarger
President, International Association of Machinists

Larry Cohen
President, Communications Workers of America

Ernesto J. Cortes, Jr.
Director, Industrial Areas Foundation—social policy think tank

Leo W. Gerard
President, United Steelworkers of America

Ron Gettelfinger
President, International United Auto Workers

Robert Kuttner
Editor, The American Prospect; author, columnist, Business Week, New Republic

Ray Marshall
LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas; former Secretary of Labor

Edward J. McElroy
President, American Federation of Teachers

Jules O. Pagano
Vice President, American Income Life Insurance Company

Bernard Rapoport
Chairman of the Board, American Income Life Insurance Company

Bruce Raynor
President, UNITE (Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees)

Robert B. Reich
Distinguished Visiting Scholar Goldman School of Public Policy UC, Berkeley; former Secretary of Labor

Andrew L. Stern
President, Service Employees International Union

Richard L. Trumka
Secretary-Treasurer, AFL-CIO