Still Hating America.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Spanky
Oooh. You got me.... You have trapped me into admitting I want to screw the poor to benefit the rich. . . . Why not use a real world example instead of a hypo?

The point of the hypo is to determine what principle animates your adherence to free trade. You've made abundantly clear that your support is ideological, rather than principled.

Your are making an assumption that if sixty percent of the people are hurt by something that it still could be considered good "in the aggregate". Doesn't that depend on your definition of "aggregate"? If sixty percent of the people are hurt, especially the bottom sixty percent, no matter how much the wealthy benefit I don't see it as "good in the aggregate". Like I said, if it benefited the bottom forty percent at the expense of the top sixty percent, then it might be considered good in the aggregate but definitely not the other way around.

I'm not assuming anything. I posed a hypothetical, with numbers to make this perfectly clear. If 40% of the country is $100,000,000 better off and 60% of the country is $60,000,000 worse off, in the aggregate the country is $40,000,000 worse off. You are either dim or determined not to answer it.

To say that a job is stolen assumes that someone has an ownership interest in a job.

I said "OK." Let it go.

My uncle was working for a company in Miami, they got bought out by an Australian firm, and he was replaced by an Australian from the home office. My friend worked at a bank that was merged with a foreign bank and his job duplicated a job held by someone in France of all places, so his job was discontinued. When companies go under from competition from oversees, the executives lose their jobs to. Globalization affects everyone.

I didn't say it never happens, but I asked you about the relative impact on different classes.

You are not getting it. The demand for low end service jobs is a direct function of disposable income in this country. They are the first jobs to be created in a strong economy and the first jobs to go in a bad economy. When people have less disposable income, they eat out less, cut back on luxuries like landscaping etc. Free trade, through the efficiencies it creates, directly frees up more disposable income in a society, thereby placing more demand for low end service jobs. This in addition, to the new demand created for low end service jobs by new markets opening up overseas.

The question is whether the benefits to the unskilled of (a) being able to buy Chinese-made goods more cheaply at Wal-Mart, and (b) seeing more rich people come through McDonald's are outweighed by (c) the depressing effects on wages that come from losing so many jobs overseas.

Rather, that's the question for those of us whose views of these issues might be affected by empirical matters.