Squeezin’ the Juice
by SVEA SAUER
The biggest problem facing us today is job loss. Over half of our 3 million manufacturing jobs have been lost due to our trade deficit. Professional services and information jobs have suffered the same fate moving overseas. Other countries are creating jobs by producing goods to export to us. To add another disaster, states are outsourcing contracts overseas for public sector jobs. But all this is old news now. We all remember NAFTA and its promises which have netted us hundreds of thousands of lost jobs.
The result is real wages go down as corporations find it easier to go overseas. The results in lower costs to the consumer here are taken into account when estimating real wages. Workers lose their bargaining power. When companies using workers with higher skills leave, they also hurt the community by reducing innovation at home.
If all this is true, how do we explain the Heritage Foundation’s report that there are 10 fallacies in this thinking. “More Americans are employed than ever before; unemployment is dropping, despite a surging labor force; outsourcing has little net impact, and represents less than 1 percent of gross job turnover; economic freedom is necessary for economic growth, new jobs, and higher living standards; outsourcing means efficiency; outsourcing works both ways; nations are losing manufacturing jobs worldwide, even China; everyone benefits from outsourcing; protectionism is isolation and has a history of failure; (and) jobless benefits are already working.”
After analyzing all their arguments in support of these contentions, I find they support cheap prices here, a threat to punish business, disdain for jobless benefits which are now sufficient, the argument that only greedy corporations benefit, that the whole world is suffering from joblessness, and a plea for less partisan debate with the announcement that American employment has been greatly exaggerated.
So who is right – the low skilled worker, the professional couple, the newly graduated, the older worker, the single mother and all those homeless who are overflowing the churches on cold nights? They all say there are no jobs. Will somebody please tell me where they are and I’ll write a column with names and addresses. I suspect these jobs are some place in the wilds of Antarctica.
