# Are there good reasons to be anti-free trade? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 15, 2016, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-good-reasons-to-be-anti-free-trade/743281 "2016-01-15T21:59:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 14
**Author:** ![BrightNShiny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@BrightNShiny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrightNShiny)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2016, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-good-reasons-to-be-anti-free-trade/743281/261 "2016-03-18T16:44:03Z")
> [@DrCube](#): > > I’m talking about benefit vs cost. You’re saying “raise it until we see negative effects”. Will those negative effects happen before or after there’s any significant benefit to the lives of minimum wage earners? I don’t know what the term “significant benefit” means. I know what poverty level is. And I know what various groups are advocating as a “living wage.” So, those are what I’m going to look at. If you have a specific definition of “significant benefit,” that you are using, then you need to define it. But, I’m quite okay with looking at poverty level or the various living wage levels out there to determine where the MW should be to produce a minimum living standard for wokers. But, if I can raise the minimum wage by five cents without producing any negative employment impacts, I’ve still benefited workers. > [@](#): > > To be blunt, what’s the benefit? Simply saying “at very low [in my opinion pointless] incremental increases, there are no measurable downsides” doesn’t demonstrate any benefit. I contend that once you get to the point where you’re actually improving the lives of those earning minimum wage, the economic costs will be pretty huge, and the benefits won’t be enough to cancel them out. Prove me wrong. Anytime someone gets an increase in their salary, they benefit. Life is imperfect, and we have to make trade-offs. If we’re able to raise the minimum wage and benefit workers without negative employment impacts, I don’t really understand what your objection is. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2016, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-good-reasons-to-be-anti-free-trade/743281/262 "2016-03-18T18:11:00Z")
> [@DrCube](#): > > To be blunt, what’s the benefit? Simply saying “at very low [in my opinion pointless] incremental increases, there are no measurable downsides” doesn’t demonstrate any benefit. I contend that once you get to the point where you’re actually improving the lives of those earning minimum wage, the economic costs will be pretty huge, and the benefits won’t be enough to cancel them out. Prove me wrong. I don’t know if you are wrong, but I suspect the definition of how much benefit vs. how much cost is going to affect your conclusion. The costs of MW are largely hidden. The CBO’s analysis of an MW increase to $10.10 said that it would increase incomes for households earning MW, **and** cost a half million jobs or so. Is that worth it? TANSTAAFL. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![BrightNShiny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@BrightNShiny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrightNShiny)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2016, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-good-reasons-to-be-anti-free-trade/743281/263 "2016-03-18T18:30:20Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > I don’t know if you are wrong, but I suspect the definition of how much benefit vs. how much cost is going to affect your conclusion. > > The costs of MW are largely hidden. The CBO’s analysis of an MW increase to $10.10 said that it would increase incomes for households earning MW, **and** cost a half million jobs or so. Is that worth it? > > TANSTAAFL. > > Regards, > Shodan If this is the CBO report I’m thinking about… That’s not what the report said. It gave two scenarios, each with a range of employment/unemployment. One of the scenarios had an increase in employment within its range. But, they made a lot of assumptions about how the 2016 economy (for example, Federal Reserve rates). The assumptions weren’t outlandish or anything, but it will be interesting to see if those assumptions pan out. It wasn’t a clear-cut statement that raising the MW would produce unemployment, though. I will say that going off that report, you’d want to consider lower MW increases to be on the safe side. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2016, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-good-reasons-to-be-anti-free-trade/743281/264 "2016-03-18T18:58:05Z")
> [@BrightNShiny](#): > > If this is the CBO report I’m thinking about… > > That’s not what the report said. It gave two scenarios, each with a range of employment/unemployment. One of the scenarios had an increase in employment within its range. > > But, they made a lot of assumptions about how the 2016 economy (for example, Federal Reserve rates). The assumptions weren’t outlandish or anything, but it will be interesting to see if those assumptions pan out. > > It wasn’t a clear-cut statement that raising the MW would produce unemployment, though. I will say that going off that report, you’d want to consider lower MW increases to be on the safe side. Any economic prediction is going to assume other factors, so that isn’t quite a quibble. Certainly it could happen where we increase the MW and there is a boom such that overall, unemployment doesn’t go up, or even goes down. But keep in mind that the boom wouldn’t be caused by the increase in MW. But that affects the past outlier study mentioned earlier in the thread. Other factors, it could be argued, compensated for the MW increase so that unemployment was not affected. And it does not change the basic fact that, when something costs more, people buy less of it if they have some alternative. Globalization and automation means that, in many cases, unskilled labor in the US will be less in demand than in some other country like China where it is cheaper. Hence the ongoing outsourcing of unskilled manufacturing labor, and the rise (as **XT** mentions) of automated checkout kiosks. All other things being equal, lower increases in MW will have less impact on employment. They will also have lower benefits in increasing income for MW earners. So it is the same situation as with an increase in MW to $10.10 - is the (lower) benefit worth the (lower) cost? 96% of the US workforce earns more than MW already, and of those who do, many are not supporting themselves, and not supporting a family, and not living in a poor household. So maybe it won’t be so bad to throw some of them out of work, while benefitting the rest. But it is not going to be an unmixed blessing to raise the MW, because there is no way to guarantee that only teen-agers working for beer money or saving for college are the ones who are going to be put out of work. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![BrightNShiny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@BrightNShiny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrightNShiny)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2016, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-good-reasons-to-be-anti-free-trade/743281/265 "2016-03-18T19:31:28Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > And it does not change the basic fact that, when something costs more, people buy less of it if they have some alternative. Maybe. Not all goods/services function this way, but since we’re talking about labor, I’d agree this is generally true. > [@](#): > > Globalization and automation means that, in many cases, unskilled labor in the US will be less in demand than in some other country like China where it is cheaper. Hence the ongoing outsourcing of unskilled manufacturing labor, and the rise (as **XT** mentions) of automated checkout kiosks. Even with outsourcing and automation, there’s still a lot of labor domestically surrounding getting this outsourced/automated product distributed to the domestic market. That probably won’t be the case in 20 or 30 years, but it’s still the case right now. > [@](#): > > All other things being equal, lower increases in MW will have less impact on employment. You’ll have to clarify this. Are you saying that lower increases will have less _negative_ impact on employment rates? > [@](#): > > They will also have lower benefits in increasing income for MW earners. So it is the same situation as with an increase in MW to $10.10 - is the (lower) benefit worth the (lower) cost? What is the lower cost? If it were me, I would have kept going back to the CBO with different MW increases and seen where the various scenarios shook out. We have no idea if the CBO model would have produced increased employment or decreased employment under those scenarios, since they weren’t run. One can’t just do a linear extrapolation for something like this, though. The CBO wouldn’t. > [@](#): > > 96% of the US workforce earns more than MW already, and of those who do, many are not supporting themselves, and not supporting a family, and not living in a poor household. So maybe it won’t be so bad to throw some of them out of work, while benefitting the rest. But it is not going to be an unmixed blessing to raise the MW, because there is no way to guarantee that only teen-agers working for beer money or saving for college are the ones who are going to be put out of work. There’s no way to guarantee anything. That’s why we go to some place like the CBO to make an educated guess. I feel like you’ve come into this with an a priori assumption that an increase in the MW must increase unemployment (if I’m wrong, correct me). But if that’s what you’re doing, that’s just not necessarily true. And even the CBO report we’re talking about says that it’s not necessarily true. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2016, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-good-reasons-to-be-anti-free-trade/743281/266 "2016-03-19T00:03:04Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > [T]here is also a consensus that free trade creates winners and losers You have this backwards. The government creates winners and losers by restricting trade. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-good-reasons-to-be-anti-free-trade/743281.md?page=13)