Spanky is losing an economic idol. The WSJ reports that Alan Blinder has revised his pro-free trade views, now seeing it as imposing major costs on US workers that are educated and politically vocal and who will fight against free trade policies that undercut their standard of living. Samuelson is joined by other major economists, Paul Samuelson, Lawrence Summers, Ralph Gomory, and Dani Rodrik. Further, in the non-scientific poll of WSJ readers, 47% thought free trade hurt US workers, 39% thought it helped, and 14% thought it was neutral.
Spanky's pro free trade ideology of expanding world GDP if that increases world GDP even if that reduces income for the majority of developed world workers isn't selling. Him and Bush economic advisor Barry Mankiw will lose peddling that. No one cares about increasing world GDP or helping the third world poor at the cost of sabatoging their own livelihood.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1175...ys_us_page_one
Quote:
Yet today Mr. Blinder has changed his message -- helping lead a growing band of economists and policy makers who say the downsides of trade in today's economy are deeper than they once realized.
... Alan Blinder tells the Journal's Jon Hilsenrath why he predicts that many highly skilled white collar occupations will soon be outsourced, including his own.... The job insecurity those workers face today is "only the tip of a very big iceberg," Mr. Blinder says.
Mostly he wants to shock politicians, policy makers and other economists into realizing how big a change is coming and what new sectors it will reach. "This is something factory workers have understood for a generation," he says. "It's now coming down on the heads of highly educated, politically vocal people, and they're not going to take it."
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