US Economy and Permanent Job Losses

Great Debates
61

Gloom and doom have nothing to do with it.

Whatever new growth industry comes about, the factories will be in asia where there are no costs like medical insurance, social security, etc and wehre wages are below the United States minimum wage. Any new industry that creates jobs will create them in asia, not in the United States, so who cares what the next one is?

You dont need a time machine to see what is going to happen, the United States will end up producing nothing, with no manufacturing base, and no high tech base, and no tax base.

62

Really? And if the new growth industry requires technology, logistics, materials, etc that aren’t currently IN Asia, then what? You’ll magically just raise them up so you can move your jobs there? Thats facinating. I didn’t realize you (or our industries) had such powers. I hate to break this too you, but most of Asia (at least where the cheap labor is) as well as India don’t HAVE high tech cutting edge technology thats pushing the frontiers of science and engineering. They are geared to the latest trend (i.e. last years technology)…currently they are geared toward manufacturing and gearing up or geared to the computer services industry. No way in hell they can jump right in to whatever the new technolgy is on a moments notice…hell, WE can’t even do that and most likely the next trend or industry will originate here, in Europe or Japan. It takes years to build up the infrastructure to support something like the computer revolution…and it will take years to ramp up whatever the next big thing is, be it biotech, nanotech, or a better buggy whip.

Facinating. Well, I guess we should all collectively just shoot ourselves now and get the pain over with. Personally I think I’ll stick it out and see what happens. It will be facinating 10 years from now to look back on these kinds of threads and shake my head in wonder. Kind of like those guys at the turn of the century shook their heads at those saying automation in manufacturing would cause the US to blah blah blah…

-XT

63

I can’t believe the degree of pessimism here. Hey guys, you are the Americans, sheer up!

We had a similar debate in Sweden 99- 01, at first economics made some of us youngster believe that in “The New Economy” the stock market can go up,up,up without limit. Then when the stock market went straight down the stair to the basement instead of reaching for the clouds, people started to rant about computers stealing their jobs. Similar concerns where raised during the early nineties. But the fact is that more people are employed in the telecom/computer sector worldwide than ever before and unemployment is not higher in Europe now than it was a hundred years ago. It’s like the myth about the paper free office – now when we have computers, there is no need for paper anymore!
So you can’t compete with lower wages in less developed countries?
Well to this I answer you, you shouldn’t. So, the guys in India have taken over the low tech programming jobs. So what? Step up; focus on the high tech instead. Think about tomorrow and not about today. A hundred years ago more than 80% of the Swedish workforce where occupied in the agriculture sector. Then people moved over to manufacturing, then service and research. Today, less than 4% of our entire workforce is occupied by agriculture.

That said, I admit that structural changes are hard and painful.

64

Hey, why stop with outsourcing?

Why not go after people like me: Ive been on software development teams recently whos primary purpose was to make software that automated network configuration tasks. To allow companies to get rid of a large part of their network teams. Ive contributed to software that made it so anyone who could type could make a website, so that people wouldnt have to pay hourly rates for others to do it. Anyone think the government should do something about that? Most all the software I make put someone somewhere out of work. With the little side benefit of saving others a hell of a lot of money.

You know, the thing about permanent job losses is that, well, theyre permanent. You could ban all outsourcing tomorrow, and no one would get their job back. All this bitching about outsourcing and low wage competition; how many of you work or worked for a company that moved to your state from places like Cal or New York because it was cheaper? Did you bitch then? Did you feel bad when you collected each check?

Or how many of you live in Cal or New York, but only moved there because of the techno boom times? Did the natives spit at you, bitch about low wage competition from out of state driving down wages?

At one time, being a telephone lineman was a hell of a job. But then most all the telephone lines were in. Then it became what it is now, a service job. Service jobs generally maintain infrastructure that is allready in place, with the occasional new system added.

Ten years ago, we comparitively didnt have that much network capacity. We now are not faced with nearly so much of a shortage of network capacity as we were just ten or even five years ago. So now, network engineering is far less about building new networks as it is about maintaining existing ones. So now, there are far less jobs in that field than there were. This isnt any corporations or Indians fault.

As for thing like call centers: again, blame me. Its my fault. When I see a computer for sale at x amount, and the company brags about the level of service, I deliberately walk over and buy the other brand, at y amount, which is far less. You see, I have this thing about paying the least amount for the best product, and I could care less about customer service. This has the side effect of putting some people out of work. Not, of course, the people who worked for the company I ~did~ buy from. What country do they live in? I dont care.

So you see, its really all my fault, I fess up; maybe the government should do something about people like me. Oh but wait; thats what this subject is really all about.

65

1.IF the new growth industry requries technology, logistics, materials, then we will put them in asia. Just where do you think the latest computers, electronics, and chips are being made? Asia.
2.I hate to break this to you, but most of asia has the latest, most modern factories in the world, much newer and up to date than the old legacy factories still operating in the US. Most of the factories and high tech facilities in the last 10 years have been built in asia. The ones in the US are old and out of date, and less competitive. Not too many people have been building brand new factories in the US lately.
Besides american factories being saddled with minimum wage, child labor laws, epa, osha, social security, unions, high wages, etc. they also have the oldest and most inefficient factories.

US workers just cannot compete with asians.

A business owner would have to be crazy to hire americans in our old factories to try to compete against his competitors who have new modern facilities over in asia with cheap labor and no U.S. federal regulations/taxes.

66

Just a friendly question, but doesn’t this assume things not in evidence? If we simply stop spending money on new cars, shiny televisions, and such, why would we continue to work as hard as we do? If we stop working so hard, where would the savings come from?

67

There are lots of people who “dont care” if they move jobs and technology to communist china, and they are the same kind of people who didnt care about doing the same thing with Hitlers germany in the 1930’s.

What you are saying is nothing new, some people said the same thing in the 1930’s, when they wanted to trade with the Nazis, and they wanted to build new factories over in germany.

They didnt care if the people they were dealing with were Nazies, much like the same people today dont care if they are dealing with chinese communists.

Our banks lent Hitler the money, and we built or showed hitler how to build factories and assembly lines, etc.

I admit that it is not any more illegal, nor any different , for people today to help the chinese communists and make them stronger than it was to help the German nazies back then.

A “made in communist china” label is not really any different than a “made in nazi germany” label was in the 1930’s.

But just for your information, there were some Americans who didnt like it.

68

No, but it does mean that they shouldn’t be so confident that things will be OK, either in the short or long term.

The 20th century saw many nations going to hell in handbasket, for various economic and politcal reasons. Venezuela once had a very high standard of living; now it’s on the verge of collapse. Lebanon was a relatively wealthy and cosmopolitan country. During the GD, many economically strong nations had 25% unemployment–for nearly a decade. There’s no magic power guaranteeing that the US is going to continue to be economically strong, or that good jobs will come to replace the ones we are sending off to faraway lands.

Indeed. The freetraders should recognize this.

69

I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. There are too many people who just don’t care. People want the lowest prices and go to Wal-Mart, regardless of Wal-Mart’s reputation for paying their employees poorly, not providing benefits to many, hiring illegal aliens, despite a 50-70% annual turnover rate at that company, etc., etc. Perhaps when/if you find yourself out of work for an extended period of time, I guarantee that your level of caring will change. Too bad it will take such a drastic event to effect that change.

Yes, we all want lower prices. But when we want them to go too low, there are severe economic repercussions. EXCESSIVE outsourcing leads to lost jobs without a replacement, sometimes losing their homes, sometimes getting divorced, sometimes the children get traumatized. Many people are forced to abandon their career choice and many often are forced to take a drastic pay cut. Many now find they have to work two or three jobs to help make ends meet.

As I believe I have said previously, outsourcing wouldn’t be a problem - IF we were creating adequate new jobs to replace those that were outsourced. But we are not! All we hear is pap about “something, somehow will save us because it always has”. Hogwash! Just because something happened in the past, doesn’t mean it will happen again in the future.

Those who lose manufacturing jobs to outsourcing are eligible to receive government support and retraining. Not so with white-collar jobs.

And here’s a statistic for you to consider:

70

Um…they are NOW. They certainly weren’t when the computer revolution started though, were they. And why is that? Do you know? Well, because those countries had to ramp up, thats why. Same with the computer services part…had to build up their capability and infrastructure (train their personnel, put the support infrastructure in place, etc). Why do you assume the next new thing will be different? As it will be a NEW thing, that means there presently ISN’T all that training, trained personnel or infrastructure in place. No? Who do you suppose is more flexable than the US and US flagged companies to follow a new trend? Who do you suppose will be the largest market in the forseeable future for whatever it is? Who speaks the language natively? What vast pool of workers already acclimated to US customs, language, etc exists out there? You getting the idea yet?

I hate to break it to you, but I’ve actually BEEN to SE Asia, India, etc…I know exactly what they have…and what they don’t have. Most of those countries (with exceptions like Japan and S.Korea which I lump in with us for this purpose as they also will be on the cutting edge of whatever the new thing is) are geared to a very niche market…a vertical market (or set of services) if you will. Sure they are high tech…in VERY narrow fields which are geared to meeting todays (and yesterdays) needs. They aren’t at the point where they are cutting edge. Please try and read up and understand the difference between a cutting edge nation like the US and India…there are vast differences involved in the two, especially in their business’s.

From a cost perspective? Benifits? Training? Language? Where do you get this? In certain vertical fields (like cheap manufacturing or set piece service/support) this is correct, but catagorically? Bullshit. Do you have a cite to back this up?

Its clear that you don’t understand business at all. I OWN a business. There are certain instances where it makes sense to outsource…and certain instances where it doesn’t. If every company in the US would be crazy to hire Americans, why are so many Americans still working for US flag companies in the US?? Why don’t companies outsource all their labor if its cheaper overseas? Why do you suppose OTHER countries sometimes build plants in the US and run service and support in the US?? Do you have any idea as to the answer to these questions? When you can answer them, then you will understand how global business opperates.

-XT

71

Lotsa good points here. I wanted to throw a couple of other factors into the mix and see what you folks made of them:

1) The “graying of America”. It has been long lamented that our population is currently aging and that a shrinking workforce is going to have to support a growing population of retirees. But if the amount of decent employment available is shrinking too, is there perhaps a benefit to this? Yes, it’s an economic burden to have to support lots of retirees, but it may be less of a burden than supporting lots of restless, resentful, reproductively-capable younger unemployed. And perhaps by the time the current “aging boom” has passed, we will have figured out a better way to spread the benefits of a smaller, highly productive workforce into increased prosperity for everybody.

(Of course, that does mean that we’ll have to shift more of the tax burden from wage earners onto wealth owners, which is exactly the opposite direction from the way tax restructuring is currently going. But I think that if enough former wage earners get hit hard enough by their lack of income and lack of government services, they’ll muster the political will to make the changes.)

2) The “coming energy crisis”. No, I don’t subscribe to doomsday scenarios about running out of oil and exterminating the planet and all that, but I do think it plausible that in the near term we may see moderate but steady increases in fossil-fuel costs. We may also find, if mainstream climate-change predictions prove accurate, that we need to significantly change our energy-use patterns in order to cut down on our emissions. The net result may be to make local production activities more economically competitive than they are at present.

That would mean that, e.g., local agriculture, cottage industries, installation and service of residence-unit renewable energy appliances, etc., could become more economically viable, and that translates into more employment opportunities. No, I don’t think for a minute we’d end up abandoning global production and trade altogether, or even to any very large extent; nor would we retreat into some kind of Jeffersonian agrarianism in self-contained villages. But we might end up with somewhat more self-sustaining communities, which means more work for more people.

Is this mere Pollyannaism or is there a ray of renewable sunlight coming through the clouds here? :slight_smile:

72

Take a look at the Prudent Bear link I posted earlier; it’s edifying.

An Indian person no more deserves a good job than, nor any less. S/he also, however, deserves the same health insurance and other benefits that I and you do.

There’s nothing wrong with an Indian getting a job instead of me. We should not be forced to lower our standard of living, however, simply another government is unwilling or unable to provide its citizens with benefits that we consider essential.

The faith that some industry or another will develop in the US and save us is nothing more than Santa Claus-esque wishful thinking. First of all, the US was able to develop a high living standard in the first place not so much because of world trade of finished goods (even now only 10-15% of the economies of both the US and Japan consist of exports) but because we were able to fulfill our own needs so well. We grew our own food, built our own houses, and made our own cars, TVs, whatever. Exports and imports were just gravy on the roast. We were justifiably proud of what we had produced.

Other countries did not do so good a job; they were poorer. We eventually overtook Europe; Japan, in turn, caught up to us. Still, most of this was national economic power in action.

Now, however, we can arbitrage capital and labor around the globe. There is now no industry that can appear that will be uniquely American. The brands and patents may be owned by American companies, but labor and capital that realize these abstract properties can be placed, like Risk pieces, anywhere on the map.

The solution is not a restraint of free trade. I think, rather, that the US should tax companies heavily that use labor in regions that pay less than the US rate–minimum wage plus benefits. A tariff on imported labor value, so to speak.

BTW, just as another poster indicated, the best semiconductor factories are now mostly in Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, Korea, and Japan–and more and more in mainland China. Japan has held on because, well, it’s Japan, but it’s not going to be able to hold on much longer. The US, Japan, and Europe still have about 20% apiece, however. Needless to say, the actual value that accrues to those regions is much higher (Intel’s chips aren’t made in the US, but the profit goes back to the US): US 58%, Japan 28%, and Europe 10% (lower for Euro because Euro is not all rich countries and some stuff is just made their under US or Asian brands.

Another poster asked me what I meant about the US being partly “feudal.” Well, of course that can be a simple land thing, but there can also be what I call “feuds of captial,” as exemplified by the above: Intel owns the brand and its patents, whereas Asians do the bulk of the labor.

Still, the 2nd biggest semiconductor company is Samsung (Korea), and #3 is the newly formed Renesas (Japan).

73

Let’s parse this cleaner. The two worries we’re talking about here are the job market in the US and the overall health of the US economy, exclusive of the first factor.

For the “NEW thing” to help the job market, two things are required:

  1. The new thing requires lots of labor, not just capital, in the primary industry, secondary industries, or both.
  2. The labor required will go to Americans instead of others, despite cheap wages abroad.

I have no reason to believe that either of these conditions will apply. As to whether the “NEW thing” will help the US economy, if it actually arrives, and US companies get it first, it might.

There are many countries that can do just as good a job; several in Asia and Europe come to mind.

China.

What language?

All of which can be sacrificed if the price is right, and it is.

Point missed, I think. The very poverty and and hunger of these countries is what makes their wages low and their workforces attractive. Their populations are so big that they can swallow a heck of a lot of labor potential here before their price goes up.

Right, but this is precisely their virtue.

If they were cutting edge and expensive, then we wouldn’t be having this disussion.

From a cost perspective? Benifits? Training? Language? Where do you get this? In certain vertical fields (like cheap manufacturing or set piece service/support) this is correct, but catagorically? Bullshit. Do you have a cite to back this up?

Its clear that you don’t understand business at all. I OWN a business. There are certain instances where it makes sense to outsource…and certain instances where it doesn’t. If every company in the US would be crazy to hire Americans, why are so many Americans still working for US flag companies in the US?? Why don’t companies outsource all their labor if its cheaper overseas? Why do you suppose OTHER countries sometimes build plants in the US and run service and support in the US?? Do you have any idea as to the answer to these questions? When you can answer them, then you will understand how global business opperates.

-XT
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74

Some cool thoughts, Kimstu.

Yes, I think that most likely we’ll see populations shrinking to accomodate the shrinking amount of work to be done. This, rather than seeing lots of people working 2-day weeks, or whathaveyou.

We’re already seeing this in Euro, Japan, and to an extent the US. People simply can’t afford, they perceive, to have more than two kids and have a decent lifestyle. Birth rates are now below replacement in most developed countries. If you look at the stats for Euro, you would be shocked: even in countries like Poland, which are Catholic and one would think fecund, you see rates below replacement. Not only this, but some countries, like Italy are already shrinking in absolute terms.

Yes, and this could reinforce the first trend of lower populations. If local economies were stronger and more holistically necessary, then we would not be seeing the unemployment and pychic malaise we are.

75

  1. If you don’t know WHAT the “new thing” is then there isn’t any way to discuss whether it would be good, bad or neutral. This “new thing” might not happen at all. We might be at the end of the chain for full employment, not to be saved this time by the next “new thing”. I’ve been out of work 8 months now and don’t have any health insurance. I wouldn’t mind using some of your tax dollars to help send me back to school for 4 years to study say, nano technology and have the government pick up my health insurance at the same time. OK? :smiley:

  2. Here’s a good article that asks where does offshoring lead? When India, China, etc. learn how to work the whole product cycle themselves, from creation through development, marketing and sales, where does that leave us? Why would they need us at all?

The Offshore Proposition

Here’s an excerpt (most of the final 2 paragraphs):
Once the offshore companies realize they have the business development, design, manufacturing and service skills, they’ll begin asking themselves just what their U.S. partners are bringing to the table. This will bring about the emergence of new competitors among companies that were once partners, which, I predict, will be a hallmark of the technology market over the next year.

This election year is due to amplify the entire outsourcing issue beyond its current relatively small (OK, I know it doesn’t feel small when you are the one being outsourced) percentage of the U.S. technology marketplace. When outsourcing companies become competitors throughout the product cycle, traditional U.S. vendors will have to show that they have learned more from outsourcing than just how to transfer costs.

76

The United STates does NOT!! have a shrinking work force!

It is increasing, each and every week.

The number of legal and illegal immigrants coming into this country is between 30-50,000 each week, which vastly outnumbers the number of americans who die or retire. If we dont create 30-50,000 new jobs each and every week, we lose ground. In order to improve the employment picture in the United States, we must create MORE jobs than the numbers of aliens coming in to our country each week.

77

Don’t be snide or dismissive. Engineering jobs already ARE being outsourced – not just to what you might call “third world” nations, but to Eastern Europe. Highly educated english-speaking engineers who are paid a LOT less than Americans can do Electrical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and whatever else you want. Plans, equations, and blueprints travel effortlessly over the Internet and E-mail.

As if that’s not enough, some companies are already setting up R&D centers in China and elsewhere in the East – read the Wall Street Journal sometime.

It’s not a major phenomenon yet, but I can’t see what would stop this “brain drain” from increasing. India and Cina have some very good schools, and a huge base population to draw from (which will be very highly motivated), so there will be a considerable talent pool.

What does this do to U.S. Scientists and Engineers? They can’t all work on classified government contracts. If these highly trained people re-train, what would you advise that they re-train for that won’t be similarly threatened?

78

Let’s assume the argument about whether or not some Miracle Jobs will come down from Employment Heaven to save us all is over, and we’ve pretty much decided we can’t afford to wait for this lovely manna to appear, or enough of us have starved to death that no one can hear our increasingly feeble complaints. What if anything can we do?

My thought is to turn the problem on its head: what we have in a jobless recovery isn’t just unemployment, it’s also excess human capacity. A lot of capable, skilled, energetic people who might otherwise have been sucked into corporate America’s maw are on the street or selling burgers – let’s figure out how we can make good use of all that unused ability.

Why wait around for corporate America to hire? They won’t. What we need is to set up some kind of mechanism that will get these people working in ways that will make the economy go boom.

One thought I have had is to re-imagine the Small Business Administration as an unemployment program. The idea is to make money, expertise and so forth available to all the unemployed who have had some business experience and would like to start one of their own, as opposed to losing house and home.

The org would provide corporate shells and expertise for small biz people, keep their paperwork down and provide low-cost loans to people wh might not have a lot in the way of capital themselves to start businesses. There’d be an org to review business plans to make sure they have some hope of making money and oversight mechanisms to make sure the money got spent on biz and not hookers and booze. Yeah, it’d be kind of like a bank, except that it would be disposed to loan money to unemployed, poor folk instead of rich people. In fact, something very much like it has been very successful in the Third World, making low-cost loans to poor folks so they can start up small biz.

Yeah, we’re gonna need some of those Third World programs soon …

79

EC: Why wait around for corporate America to hire? They won’t. What we need is to set up some kind of mechanism that will get these people working in ways that will make the economy go boom.

The folks over at the New Apollo Project suggest spending about a hundred billion dollars over the next ten years to jumpstart research on and implementation of renewable energy and energy conservation technology, similar to (but on a larger scale than) what a number of European countries are now doing.

The idea is that this will create about 3.3 million jobs in the US (most of which, involving installation and service, would have to be and remain local) while achieving energy independence, or at least greatly decreasing our foreign energy dependence (not to mention vastly reducing pollution and greenhouse gas emissions).

I don’t believe that the proposed project would work out as rosily in real life as described in the promos, but I do think that the combination of environmental, conservation, energy-security, and job-creation benefits could well offset the fact that renewables aren’t price-competitive yet with fossil fuels.

For an even bigger (not to say fuzzier) picture, the so-called “sustainability movement” takes the position that we should strengthen our commitments to local everything, for an even more diverse set of reasons: not just environmental health, stronger local economies, and energy conservation, but also more cohesive communities, less stress and overwork, less sprawl and commuting, and simpler lifestyles. This philosophy comes in just about every flavor you can imagine, from full-blown sixties-style communes to modern techno-urbanites like jshore putting in a few hours at a food co-op.

Some elements of both these “grand visions”, IMHO, are at best idealistic and at worst pretty much nuts. However, I think their basic principles are indeed potentially very appealing. And they are poised (well, flapping around in a sort of semi-poised state, at least) to take advantage of one weird characteristic of Homo economicus that the frenzied cost-cutting schemes of commerce never fully account for:
People are often willing to choose a more expensive option over a cheaper one if it brings them non-economic satisfactions.

The current trends of boosting productivity and cutting costs (not that we can really call them “current”, seeing that they’ve been around since before the Industrial Revolution) are predicated on the assumption that individual purchasing decisions are overwhelmingly based on price. Things like the organic agriculture and green-energy movements, on the other hand, exploit the fact that people are often willing to forego a price advantage if they think the sacrifice is worth it in non-monetary ways.

And for many ordinary Americans, the price advantage that they’d get as consumers (and investors) from a superproductive, low-jobs, minimal-taxation economy is simply not enough to offset the losses in wages, benefits, services, and general quality of life that they’d have to put up with as a result. Who cares if you can buy a CD player for $49.95 instead of $74.95 if you can’t afford either of them because you don’t have a job?

Protectionists try to exploit this willingness to sacrifice in counterproductive ways, by simply slapping tariffs on foreign imports and/or bans on foreign jobs. But I think we can use it in much more constructive and healthy ways, by starting to build a more sustainable, locally-grounded economy in parallel with the frenetically mobile cutthroat capitalism we’ve got going now, rather than instead of it.

80

The biggest threat to our continued economic well-being is that government will decide to ‘solve’ this problem. Then we’re screwed. Because the tools government has at its disposal are tariffs, taxes, and money handouts. All of these things distort the economy, make capital flow less efficient, and in the end hurt us all.

We’ve seen all of this before. Remember when the Japanese were going to take over? American auto companies were all going to collapse, there would be an economic meltdown, and Japan would buy us all up. That was the fear of the 1980’s.

Well, guess what? The Japanese were ‘taking over’ because American auto manufacturers got fat and sloppy, and so did their unionized employees. By and by, the American auto companies learned to compete, and now the industry is relatively healthy again. And the Japanese used the wealth in THEIR bubble to buy a lot of U.S. property at exhorbitant prices - much of which they sold back to Americans at a big discount.

You could see a big correction coming in the computer science/IT field, because salaries and expectations were simply out of whack. When I graduated from college in the mid 1980’s, a CS degree would get you a job that paid maybe $25,000 - $30,000. Top end of the scale for senior programmer/analysts was in the $60K range. This was within the same pay range as other professional fields.

The tech boom sent IT salaries through the roof. When a kid can take a six week MCSE course and come out and land a $70K IT job, something’s wrong. So the first thing that happened was that supply tried to catch up to demand. People all over the place were quitting their jobs and retraining in IT. Trade schools in IT were springing up all over the place. Not so much computing science, mind you - that’s too hard and takes too long. Six month ‘programming’ courses were the order of the day. So we wound up with a whole lot of overpaid, underqualified ‘IT Professionals’ in the field.

Then the bubble broke, and a correction happened. Now most of those people are out of work or have moved back into other industries, or have taken major pay cuts. This is as it should be, painful though it is.

No, all our engineering jobs won’t go to India and China. Companies are finding out that it’s HARD to run an engineering shop across the world. And the quality of the engineers and programmers there still isn’t as high as it is here.

And you know what? As the quality of Indian engineers goes up and we learn ways to use them more efficiently, their salaries will rise. Eventually, a new equilibrium will be reached, and it will still favor American workers, because they have significant advantages in geography, language, and access to infrastructure that their Indian colleagues can’t match. And if they could match it, their salaries would rise again.

In the long run, allowing capital to flow to where it is used most efficiently is good for our economy, for the world economy, and for the consumers of the goods that are made more efficiently.

Everyone wants the economic benefits of capitalism, but part of that benefit comes from the efficiency of its rather ruthless dynamism. If a company can’t compete, it dies. If workers can’t compete, they lose their jobs. If you try to shield us from the very forces of capitalism that make it so efficient, then in the end you’ll destroy the goose that lays the golden egg.