141025S this section summary reviewed and sequence reposted 141025S first sequence posted Summarized from Greg Mankiw’s Principles of Economics PART 3 Markets And Welfare Chapter 9 of 36 – Application: International Trade section 9a (missed this section before) … Political candidates often say the government should help those hurt by international trade. In this article, an economist makes the opposite case. [This article here in textbook] What to Expect When Youre Free Trading By Steven E. Landsburg, New York Times, January 16, 2008 In the days before Tuesdays 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 youve just lost your job, theres something fundamentally churlish about blaming the very phenomenon thats 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? I doubt theres a human being on earth who hasnt benefited from the opportunity to trade freely with his neighbors. Imagine what your life would be like if you had to grow your own food, make your own clothes and rely on your grandmothers home remedies for health care. Access to a trained physician might reduce the demand for grandmas home remedies, but -especially at her age- shes still got plenty of reason to be thankful for having a doctor. Some people suggest, however, it makes sense to isolate the moral effects of a single new trading opportunity or free trade agreement. Surely we have fellow citizens who are hurt by those agreements, at least in the limited sense that theyd be better off in a world where trade flourishes, except in this one instance. What do we owe those fellow citizens? 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 previous landlord? When you eat at McDonalds, should you compensate the owners of the diner next door? Public policy should not be designed to advance moral instincts we all reject every day of our lives. In what morally relevant way, then, might displaced workers differ from displaced pharmacists or displaced landlords? You might argue pharmacists and landlords have always faced cutthroat competition and therefore knew what they were getting into, while decades of tariffs and quotas have led manufacturing workers to expect a modicum of protection. That expectation led them to develop certain skills, and now its unfair to pull the rug out from under them. Once again, that argument does not mesh with our everyday instincts. For many decades, schoolyard bullying has been a profitable [satisfying] occupation. All across America, bullies have built up skills so they can take advantage of that opportunity. If we toughen the rules to make bullying unprofitable, must we compensate the bullies? Bullying and protectionism have a lot in common. They both use force, either directly or through the power of the law, to enrich someone else at your involuntary expense. If youre forced to pay $20 an hour to an American for goods you could have bought from a Mexican for $5 an hour, youre being extorted. When a free trade agreement allows you to buy from the Mexican after all, rejoice in your liberation - even if Mr. McCain, Mr. Romney and the rest of the presidential candidates dont want you to. … the presidential candidates dont want you to buy from Mexico 大統領候補者 に は、メキシコ から 購入 したくない だいとうりょう こうほしゃ に は、メキシコ から こうにゅう したくない daitōryō kōhosha ni wa, Mekishiko kara kōnyū shitakunai メキシコ … Mekishiko … Mexico 大統領候補者 … だいとうりょう こうほしゃ … presidential candidate … nytimes/2008/01/16/opinion/16landsburg.html?_r=0
Posted on: Sat, 25 Oct 2014 11:15:05 +0000
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