Saw this on cnn how true do you think it is

[MarkBarbieri]

Wow, what was I thinking. Yes, yes, yes, sending all those jobs overseas is SUCH a wonderful thing for our country.

Yes, let's support a company that wants to run a ship 3 miles off the coast of CA so they can bring in foreign labor, bypass tax laws, environmental concerns, immigration problems, etc... What, it will only amount to 600 IT jobs from the American job market. No big deal, this is great for the country.

Levi Strauss, Osh Gosh, all gone. Great for America! Dell and just about every other support service, all outsourced. Where is the problem? I guess we have none.

Hershey slowly moving out of the country. Oh, great for global trade!!!

Next time you take a jab at those unemployment figures, you might want to ask yourself why they're at this record high. You might also want to dig in a bit for some advice from our founding fathers. I have little doubt they're constantly turning in their graves. They offered us wisdom, but we know more than they ever did, right? They said, imports should NEVER exceed exports if you want to continue the American way of life. But I guess they were too ignorant to know what they were talking about.

Why blame free trade, which we have been increasingly doing for the recent downturn in employment? We had record low unemployment quite recently and our trade practices have not change substantially since then.

If I recall, the last time we tried substantially restricting free trade to boost our domestic economy was with the Smoot-Hawley Tarriff Act of 1930. It was passed despite an unprecedented 1,000 economists writing to the President asking him to veto it. The result was, as the economists predicted, not a boost to domestic employment but just the opposite.

I don't really know what the founding fathers, experts in government not economics, felt about international trade. Describing them as ignorant is actually pretty fair, given that they don't have the advantage of the 200 additional years of research and study in economics that we have. I do know that it was about that time that Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and David Hume first started explaining why free trade was so beneficial.

As for imports exceeding exports, I started to write an explanation showing that trade with other nations always balances once you include investment flows into the equation, but I found this article that explains it much better.

Most people seem to intuitively understand that they are better off with trade. They know that they could grow all their own food, build their own shelter, and supply their own energy, but they would be living very poorly if they did so. By focusing on the areas where they have comparative advantage with their neighbors, they can live much better. Their city could survive without trading with neighboring cities, producing everything for itself. Of course, virtually no one thinks their city would be better off for that. The same concept applies to states. Any of our states could survive on its own, but each state is better because of trade amongst the states. Rich states like Connecticut are not worse off for doing business with poorer states like Mississippi. The same principal is universal and does not stop at national boundaries.

I believe that because of free trade, we benefit from the ingenuity and labor of not just 300 million Americans. Instead, we benefit from the combined brainpower and effort of billions of people around the world. I think that we and they are much better off because we work together.

 

[Carly_Roach]

I believe that because of free trade, we benefit from the ingenuity and labor of not just 300 million Americans. Instead, we benefit from the combined brainpower and effort of billions of people around the world. I think that we and they are much better off because we work together.

I suspect that once you lose your job to outsourcing, your attitude will probably change. I've seen it many times before. Until that happens, I'll probably just nod at your data and theories and wait. There's really no point in arguing.

I will say this, though: I don't subscribe to what you're putting out there because real life experience has taught me the hard lesson in what happens when manufacturing goes away and jobs are outsourced to another country. Unemployment in Michigan has been in the double-digits for about a decade now.

 

[MarkBarbieri]

I suspect that once you lose your job to outsourcing, your attitude will probably change. I've seen it many times before.

No. I already understand that while the country is much better off with free trade, there are individuals that are worse off. If I'm one of them, I won't suddenly forget or ignore economic reality. I'll move on and contribute where I have a comparative advantage. I was on the losing end of capitalism earlier in my life. The experience didn't make me a socialist.

There's really no point in arguing.

That's something that we can probably agree on. I doubt that either of us will convince the other of anything important. I'm just happy to have had the chance to present the notion that, as unpopular as free trade is with people in the US these days, it is a good thing for our country. My biggest fear in these economic times is that too many people will forget that and we'll make another mistake like Smoot-Hawley.

I will say this, though: I don't subscribe to what you're putting out there because real life experience has taught me the hard lesson in what happens when manufacturing goes away and jobs are outsourced to another country. Unemployment in Michigan has been in the double-digits for about a decade now.

I don't believe that a person can learn about a subject as complex as international trade based on the micro view of their own life experience. I don't disagree that Michigan has suffered enormously, but at the same time, other states have significantly increased their manufacturing output in the very same industries that have been fleeing Michigan. In my view, Michigan needs to determine why they are not chosen for new and expanding businesses and fix those problems.

 

[Colleen27]

There is a well-established and increasingly systematic stigma against blue collar work. A skilled tradesman can easily outearn many college grads (I see it first-hand because DH & his sis compare notes - until the housing crash and the accompanying slowdown in construction, my Masters-degreed SIL had never out-earned DH, a licensed builder), but our entire educational system is pushing college for all.

In my state, just to earn a diploma you have to satisfy the typical recommended courseload for admission into a semi-selective school, and it has all but eliminated vo-tech programs. There's just not room in the school day to fit in 4 years of all the core academics plus language and arts requirements and still offer technical classes to students interested in a non-college path. I have no doubt that we'd be better served by a system that allows for both college-bound and trades-bound paths, but right now all the popular sentiment and political momentum is all about "higher standards" and an "educated populace", as though if we have enough teachers and doctors, we'll no longer need plumbers or mechanics. And ironically, some of the vocational programs that have been crowded out by the new requirements are in the fields we need most - health care, early childhood education, etc.