The railroading of the Trans Pacific Partnership trade pact that will
be attempted after the election makes an old subject -- outsourcing -- current
again.
Outsourcing of jobs -- under one name or another -- has been going on
for some years, but now conflicting forces are pulling at it.
It’s become somewhat less popular as wages in third-world countries
begin to rise to poverty level from slavery, where they’ve been. If the trend
continues long enough it will eventually make sense to bring those jobs back. Wages
being equal, patriotic firms will want to employ our poverty-level workers.
The TPP, however, could once again make outsourcing popular, in the
tradition of previous trade agreements. (It would also have other disastrous,
although not unintended, consequences, but -- one disaster at a time.)
The one thing you can count on during the negotiation of these trade
pacts is that there will be conservative commentators justifying the agreements
on “free market” grounds. While there will be some period of “adjustment,” they
tell us, the invisible hand of the free market, now leveraged on the long arm
of the trade agreement, will work its magic and everyone will be OK in the long
run.
The operative principle in this is that these people -- the economic
gurus and business analysts pushing the pacts -- do not expect to be
among those who will lose their jobs in the ensuing “adjustment.” There will
always be the need to explain how things work or why they didn’t, and they’re
the people who do that. They will be
OK long before pie-in-the-long run day.
Wouldn’t it be fun if their jobs
were exported?
Knowledge and communication have expanded worldwide; surely
there are people in other parts of the world qualified to take over that work
and willing to pontificate for less money. Everyone would win. We would get a
fresh perspective. Economists in other countries would find work. And our
domestic commentators would have the ultimate scientific experience: the chance
to observe at first hand the effect of a process they advocate but know
only theoretically.
Here’s to the Economic Commentary Export Act.
