Letters to the Editor
-
Common Sense on Trade
The controversy over NAFTA is stupid and just proves that people who lose jobs to trade are, for the most part, simply unwilling to adapt to the demands of a changing economy. Instead of yearning for the jobs of yester-year they should be clamoring for a strong support system to assist those who suffer trade-related job loss with education and retraining programs to help them rejoin a workforce. The part that transfers the unneccesary Farm Bill largesse into trade job-loss assistance will stay in power for a generation.
But Workers who have lost their jobs to trade hate change like trade liberals hate America - and ultimately they will both denounce and reject Obama's message of change. They subscribe to the platonic ideal of the arrested state of social affairs, a state of mind where all change is only the decay of a truer form of society (an egalitarian Sparta of union jobs and benefits). However, the reality is that they themselves helped drive the change by taking their patronage from main street to wal-mart in search of the cheapest prices and a better quality of life; looking forward to a secure retirement, they held stakes in union pensions and 401(k)s heavily invested in the same mutlinationals that employed them. They too clamored for the best returns. They too were part of the quarterly chorus for cut costs and higher returns. Does this make such workers responsible for hastening their own jobs overseas? Their proposed solution to their dilema - to bring the jobs back - is no solution at all. Are they willing to work for developing country wages and no benefits besides, perhaps, dormitory housing?
So why do politicians pander to this tragic chorus? Because their eternal dirge is an order of magnitude louder than the satisfaction of those many millions sitting in quiet enjoyment of their improved prospects because of trade. To not address them is to look uncaringly upon their plight. Yes, Obama's populist grandstanding has been the low-point of his primary campaign, but outside his rhetoric every other indicator shows a common sense approach to trade. Yes, trade makes some losers on the individual level, but it only makes winners by agregate measures. In america there is, however, no excuse for losers to be losers permanently, besides their own arrested state of mind.