There’s a nice new academic paper just out by an MIT economist and his friends that gives some hard data to back up everyone’s suspicion that the U.S. is losing jobs to China. It’s entitled The China Syndrome: Local Labor Market Effects of Import Competition in the United States, by David Autor, which can be downloaded if you are curious.
The bottom line here probably won’t be all that surprising to most ordinary Americans, though it will annoy the living daylights out of most academic economists and our political establishment. In the authors' own words:
Our study suggests that the rapid increase in U.S. imports of Chinese goods during the past two decades has had a substantial impact on employment and household incomes, benefits program enrollments, and transfer payments in local labor markets exposed to increased import competition. These effects extend far outside the manufacturing sector, and they imply substantial changes in worker and household welfare.
In ordinary language, we’re getting scr*wed, folks. “Welfare,” in this context, doesn’t mean welfare checks; it is the economists’ term for, roughly, “economic well-being.” And the “substantial changes” mentioned are not for the better.
One key discovery of this study is hard data to back up the idea, which I have personally argued for years, that free trade is not a small-government policy. In reality, free trade tends to expand government, by increasing the demand for social services and transfer payments (unemployment, welfare etc.) needed to mitigate its social costs. As the authors put it:
"Growing import exposure spurs a substantial increase in transfer payments to individuals and households in the form of unemployment insurance benefits, disability benefits, income support payments, and in-kind medical benefits."
Read more:
http://www.activistpost.com/2011/04/economists-shocked-shocked-we-really.html
No comments:
Post a Comment