Democrats And Their Weird Economics
James Pethokoukis from US News & World Report sends along a post he wrote where he quotes Democrats talking about economics at their recent debate sponsored by the AFL-CIO and then rebuts their statements with, well, facts and reality. Thus making most of them appear as though they haven’t had an economics class in their life.
You know they all have, of course. It’s just that pandering to labor unions and protectionists is more important to them than reality.
This one is my favorite:
“Well, look, people don’t want a cheaper T-shirt if they’re losing a job [from free trade] in the process.”—former Sen. John Edwards. Inexpensive T-shirts vs. outsourced jobs isn’ t really the debate. According to research from the International Institute for Economics, Americans are $7,000 to $13,000 richer because of trade, and removing all trade barriers would permanently increase our wealth by $4,000 to $13,000 per household. And since the North American Free Trade Agreement took effect in 1994, America has added nearly 30 million net new jobs.
I debunked Edwards’ nonsense on NAFTA in this post earlier this week. America absolutely has not lost jobs due to free trade.
As James points out, free trade makes goods and services in America cheaper thus saving our citizens money. And when we save money, we have more money to spend in other areas of the economy thus actually creating jobs, not losing them. What’s more, the jobs that get moved to these other countries improve their economies as well. Even if those new workers get paid significantly less than their American counterparts, they’re still undoubtedly getting paid more than they were before an American business brought in new jobs.
What Roberts is really upset about is the ability of American businesses to skirt labor unions by moving jobs to other countries, thus causing declining union enrollment. But that, of course, is a good thing. Labor unions cost Americans jobs by making the price of labor too high.
