Study shows the effects of sending jobs overseas

Found this in today's NYTimes, LTTE. The original Op-Ed is here:


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/16/opinion/16landsburg.html


To the Editor:

Steven E. Landsburg suggests that displaced American workers are “churlish” to criticize free trade when their manufacturing jobs (and millions others) are sent overseas. It’s his view that “what we lose through lower wages is more than offset by what we gain through lower prices.”

This is not what we found in a study released last year that looked at the impact of trade-related market distortions across 10 United States industries from steel and shrimp to furniture, cement and raspberries.

We discovered that there is, on average, a 50-to-1 economic advantage in keeping jobs in the United States through penalties on illegally subsidized or dumped imports. Any slight increase in consumer prices was more than offset by the economic activity that wages, business and profits contributed to the economy.

And so, despite Mr. Landsburg’s attitude that workers should just get over it, the correct course for the country and its workers should be to strengthen domestic manufacturing, enforce fair trade laws and, with those steps, allow more Americans to share in the benefits of the global economy.

To do otherwise is to court continuous borrowing from overseas and encourage the market-distorting practices that are now roiling world markets.

Scott Paul
Director, Alliance for American Manufacturing
Washington, Jan. 16, 2008

I think this is really interesting.

This is the most important issue.

The globalization of profit-making at the expense of most living human beings is the biggest practical and moral issue on earth.

:hi:

Thanks for the K &R.

:hi:

K&R
:kick:

That is so outrageous I don't see how Landsburg could believe it as he was writing it. Has he no shame?

or figure the logic. It's a pre-analysis bias that erodes the entire argument.

When I was attending grad school in the Ivy League, I ran into a discouraging number of students who had grown up affluent and had NO IDEA how ordinary people live.

I actually ran into people who were surprised that not only could I not finance a year in Japan on my own but that even my parents didn't have that kind of disposable income.

Imagine one of those types from an affluent background, going to college with other affluent people, and then having a career as an investment banker or an economic researcher at a think tank.

There's no connection with reality there.

Kids from privileged backgrounds have no way to understand the true costs of anything not connected to their charmed lives. And they are the ones most able to afford an education at the Ivies, grad school, etc.

That's a rhetorical question, right?

K&R

..

I am so depressed about the situation - my whole group is gone :(

trade deficit.
Grrr!

It's a world wide system that makes slaves out of most of us.

it is basically "rich people of the world unite!"
I've said it for years.

"Democracy"

Corporate greed scares me!

It's very profitable.

Now, they are bringing the same to us.

There was a post, earlier, about how the multi-national corps basically took over the IMF and World Bank and created pure statistical and forecasting bullshit in order to impose aweful debt on smaller countries. I'll find and kick it up for comparison.

I suppose we should be grateful someone is out there rebutting the ideology of the corporacrats. If only they were in power rather than the profiteering gluttons.

its horrific

:kick:

really prefer health care and homes for everyone.

:kick:

:nuke:

"Steven E. Landsburg suggests that displaced American workers are “churlish” to criticize free trade"

And there's been a concerted effort to shut up the displaced workers! :grr:

We will NOT be silenced, Mr. Landsburg!!


Thanks for posting this!

:kick: & Recommended

get by and were better off with one income families. We could see doctors and dentists without going broke. People could save for retirement and even put kids through college without borrowing.

Then along came the free traders.