Re: Trade debunking -- MIDRANGE-NONTECH

I agree Rick..the loss of jobs, as well as the loss in tax revenue and
the loss in buying power, is happening too fast and we don't seem to be
able to/want to control it. If we take the starter jobs in IT (for
instance) and farm them out somewhere, we won't be able to establish
dominance - we won't have people that know how to do IT. And IT is not
the only industry by any means...engineering, biotech, the list goes on. 

The only field the US will dominate is middle management...

My wife has a Master's in Economics...we argue (sweetly) about this stuff
all the time. :)

- Michael

On Thu, 1 Apr 2004 15:21:58 -0500, rick.baird@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx said:
> 
> The effects of free trade are pretty much agreed upon by most economists.
> The saliant point in the article is that whatever we switch to will
> eventually be off-shored too.  While true, this has always been true and
> we've always found our way out of the problem.  Forward thinking
> societies
> will find something else they are better at than the rest of the world.
> This is no different than any such economic cycle in the past 100 years.
> We've always found a new way to reestablish dominance.
> 
> The problem as I see it isn't that it's happening.  It's inevitable.  The
> problem is that it's happing so quickly.  More people are getting hurt,
> more quickly in more and more job sectors.  It will be tougher to absorb
> the jobless into other existing industry sectors and they can't be
> trained
> quickly enough for new ones.
> 
> In the past, the economy would eventually right itself.  With training,
> displaced workers could actually better themselves.  But now, if I become
> unemployable in IT, it will take years to re-tool my skills to the point
> where I could regain my current earning potential.
> 
> As I said, I'm really on the fence here.  but I'm starting to lean....
> 
> Rick
> 
> ------original message-----------
> Folks:
> 
> You know they keep saying outsourcing increases trade and so forth.  The
> economic theory this is based on is called "comparative advantage".
> Any  beginning book on economics will have this in the  first couple of
> chapters.  On March  22, 2004, Paul Craig Roberts (former Assistant
> Treasury Secretary in the Reagan Administration) wrote a guest column in
> Business Week titled "The Harsh Truth About Outsourcing" where he
> debunks the "comparative advantage" myth.  Read below for his commentary.
> 
> MARCH 22, 2004
> <snip>
> 
> 
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-- 
  
  michaelr_41@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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