>A last remark. In his reply to you, Lawrence suggests that it's better to have people designing web pages and trading stocks than making textiles. And, he has a point. But of course, there's no way that we can reasonably expect the typical laid off 40-something textile worker to turn around and found a small internet business. So what do we do to ease the transition?
I can't let you get away with this typically Reich-Clinton fallacy. Economic policy should be concerned with the greatest good for the greatest number of people, and not be distracted by anecdotal storytelling that is ignorant at best and openly deceptive at worst. A laid off worker would presumably get an near equivalent job at a near equivalent wage.
The "transition problem" that you misinterpret is whether we allow uncompetitive industries to die and not suck up a generation of future workers into dead-end industries with no real hope and no real prospects. Or whether we allow the beauty of markets to operate, and let them pursue growth industries on their own accord, unhampered by the misallocation of capital and labor caused by government subsidies, tariffs, and the like.
This is not a theoretical problem. Look at Japan. Because of tight-fisted command-and-control economic policy directed by MOF mandarins, millions of Japanese workers are trapped in non-productive, paper-shuffling, dispensable bureaucratic jobs. They deserve better.
As for your reading list, I see it is decidedly unbalanced. What about Milton Freidman's Free to Choose, Larry Kudlow's American Abundance, any work by the Austrians, and PJ O'Rourke's Eat the Rich and Parliament of Whores? The last is, of course, required reading for anyone in your field. Maybe then you can comprehend how incredibly wrong-headed gadflies like Greider and Reich really are.
But enough from me. Perhaps Mr. Douglas can take up the cause and do a better job at enlightening the unwashed masses. |
