A curious thing has happened in the argument over protectionism vs. free trade. Somehow, the practice of outsourcing call-center jobs to India is now considered trade. This is ludicrous, and it's time to set the record straight: Exporting American Jobs Is NOT Free Trade. More below...
Free trade works like this: If I specialize in making cheese, and someone across town specializes in making wine, and the two of us trade with each other, both of us get fine wine and yummy cheese. If I tried to make both wine and cheese, I'd probably end up drinking vinegar and eating moldy Muenster. It would not be in my best interests to try to do both. Free trade also entails that there are no barriers to entering the cheese or wine producing industries. If ten other people want to make cheese, then they ought to be able to enter this market without excessive interference (this ties into my first point about umpires and regulation.) And, there are no tariffs nor quotas nor subsidies offered to any firm. Everyone in this theoretical world competes in the market and tries to outdo the competition by making better cheese, or becoming more diverse cheese makers, and so forth.
How this argument has been applied to exporting US jobs is beyond me. Compare the abovementioned theoretical justification for free trade - one that makes good sense, and ought to be prominently displayed in the Democratic Party's economic platform - with the current debate regarding job exportation. Say an American computer firm sets up a call center in Bangladesh and relieves Americans of their decent waged, health-insured jobs. The product (customer service) is not being traded with anybody for anything at all. Americans are still consuming the product, which happens to be the same product consumed if the call center were located in Flint, MI. In this model, no trade has taken place, none whatsoever. Nobody has specialized in anything in Bangladesh. Nobody has specialized in anything in the United States. All that has happened is that Americans lost good paying jobs, Bangladeshis have gained relatively high paying jobs, and the computer company has increased their revenues. Now there is nothing wrong with a company trying to maximize profit; it's what they are supposed to do. But because of the way our laws are structured, these firms are actually given tax breaks to send our jobs overseas and our laws ought not be written to send jobs away. Period. This is not protectionsim, it's our national economic security.
The American people have experienced a great net loss by allowing this to continue. We must fiercely promote and maintain free-trade principles while fighting hard to stop the exporting of our jobs overseas. The loss of American jobs is not the natural result of market forces; rather, it came about because of specific policies put in place by American politicians to increase the revenue stream of their biggest contributors. We Democrats have to take a stand: Pro-free trade, anti-protectionism, and anti-job exportation.
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Quick note: When I post comments, oftentimes my analogies are not 100% accurate. For instance, my previous post talked about Halliburton and oil refining. I realize that Halliburton does not refine oil. It was just an analogy. I could have used Exxon but I didn't. Call it artistic license. Please don't revoke said license, oh great blogosphere. Please?