
Workers See Costs, Not Benefits, to Global Trade - JamilD
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/business/economy/carrier-workers-see-costs-not-benefits-of-global-trade.html
======
nugget
There's no doubt that free trade is a big net positive for the US. But one of
the major oversights of the last few decades of public policy is the failure
to reallocate some of the net benefits of free trade more directly to the
losers, e.g. lower middle class working people in the US. Maybe they figured
these people would never organize or vote in serious numbers. Bernie Sanders
and Donald Trump might prove otherwise.

~~~
dclowd9901
>There's no doubt that free trade is a big net positive for the US.

Eh, I'm not so sure that cow's so sacred. Is free trade positive for the
American economy? Yes, of course. It moves our country toward a richer, more
intellectually-based economy, which should lead to greater quality of life for
everyone: fewer shitty jobs building stuff, being hurt by industrial
processes, working really really hard to make little money.

I guess I'm going to parrot you a bit here, because I agree with the rest of
your point, but what's happening is the second part of that equation, the
benefit for the workers and the individuals, is not being met. Our economy is
flourishing, but workers who have been displaced are not being supported.

Our rich, rich economy should be able to either 1) train up people who were
formerly doing the blue collar work to succeed in an intellectually based
economy or 2) provide them with a standard of living given their inability to
find good work (the standard income idea).

We are not even attempting to do either.

College costs a fucking shitload and social programs are drying up left and
right. Our kids are getting dumber, relatively speaking, so they will be less
competitive in a global workplace.

So no, that is _not_ what I would consider a "net positive" as a net positive,
in my mind, means that what's happening is good for most people. Clearly, it
is not. We shouldn't make it a platitude, because then we don't get to say,
"Free trade is clearly good, but if and only if..."

~~~
ricw
+1

The real problem in the US is that costs are prohibitive, particularly with
regards to education. Add to that crazy housing costs (SF/NYC/etc) as well as
health care prices and you've got a recipe for disaster..

~~~
fidget
The places that are currently the most anti free trade are not SF/NYC/etc.

~~~
ethbro
That's because trickle-down does work to some extent (which isn't to say it's
not still a socially regressive economic idea). A larger share of the global
economy going to someone in your town raises all boats.

But in towns where parent's trade-exported jobs predominated, there's only
pain without the benefit. Hence the resentment of the policy.

Which is good. People getting pissed off about that and making political
choices based on that fact should be happening due to the fact that we haven't
allocated the increased wealth due to trade around fairly.

... Honestly, we're essentially running knowledge/tech trickle-down economic
policies now. In that if you aren't one of that class, then hopefully some of
that wealth might get down to you... eventually...

------
bko
It is important to note that practically no economist believes that free trade
is not a net positive for all countries. In a recent survey of economists, two
questions were asked, of which 95% of those surveyed either strongly agreed or
agreed, while the remaining 5% were uncertain (none disagreed).

Question A: Freer trade improves productive efficiency and offers consumers
better choices, and in the long run these gains are much larger than any
effects on employment.

Question B: On average, citizens of the U.S. have been better off with the
North American Free Trade Agreement than they would have been if the trade
rules for the U.S., Canada and Mexico prior to NAFTA had remained in place.

I find it ironic that publications such as the NYT which often (rightfully
IMO) put a lot of weight on the scientific consensus on issues such as climate
change, are much more reactionary when it comes to issues such as free trade,
relying more an personal antidotes and political rhetoric.

[0] [http://www.igmchicago.org/igm-economic-experts-panel/poll-
re...](http://www.igmchicago.org/igm-economic-experts-panel/poll-
results?SurveyID=SV_0dfr9yjnDcLh17m)

~~~
fixxer
Economists? Are those the same people that make assertions based on
observations & models lacking legitimate control groups?

Beyond the fact that social sciences are generally not scientific and highly
subject to groupthink, I don't think they're wrong in the sense that
comparative advantages exist in the Ricardian/Smith sense. However, if they
dont account for currency manipulation, tax loopholes, and labour safety
standards, I think those same economists lose a lot of credibility clinging to
this fantasy that free trade as we know it is actually free.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_Are those the same people that make assertions based on observations & models
lacking legitimate control groups?_

You seem to be discussing climate scientists, actually. I guess the NYT
shouldn't take their consensus seriously either?

 _However, if they dont account for currency manipulation, tax loopholes, and
labour safety standards, I think those same economists lose a lot of
credibility clinging to this fantasy that free trade as we know it is actually
free._

Yes they do. Currency manipulation is well understood - it's a country giving
things away to other countries. I don't know what you mean by "tax loopholes".

Labor safety standards are also well understood by economists. Here's one
article on the topic:
[http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/JobSafety.html](http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/JobSafety.html)

Economists are also well aware that trade is far from free. For example, Bryan
Caplan is a famous advocate of increasing free trade in labor (via open
borders). There is a general economic consensus that occupational licensing,
as practiced in the US, is exceedingly harmful:

[https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/licensin...](https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/licensing_report_final_nonembargo.pdf)

[https://www.aei.org/publication/the-terrible-economic-
burden...](https://www.aei.org/publication/the-terrible-economic-burden-of-
occupational-licensing/)

[https://www.nber.org/chapters/c0601.pdf](https://www.nber.org/chapters/c0601.pdf)

~~~
chillwaves
I'm sure that 9 out of 10 priests believe in the existence of God as well,
however the consensus does not strengthen the fundamental assertion.

You cannot say the same about climate change scientists. I hope this example
has made the difference between economics and science clear.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_I hope this example has made the difference between economics and science
clear._ ￼ It definitively has not. Rather than making confusing analogies, why
not just state explicitly the difference?

------
karmacondon
There is one clear benefit to global trade: It makes things cheaper. The
problem is that it only makes things a little bit cheaper, and it's difficult
for most people to see the effect in their daily lives.

In broad strokes, free trade is essentially a trade off between some US
workers losing their jobs and reducing the cost to make everything that people
buy at Walmart. I can understand that most people on hn don't shop at Walmart,
and wouldn't even notice if prices for consumer goods went up by 5-10%. But
the rise in household costs due to ending free trade would have a major impact
on the poorest and most vulnerable citizens. A single mother with multiple
children and one income simply can't afford to pay X% more for everything that
her family buys.

And for what? So that a factory worker in Michigan or Ohio can have their
union job back? That just seems like fighting progress. Those jobs are gone,
mostly due to advances in technology and global connectivity. It makes sense
to build things where it's most efficient to do so and to replace humans with
robots wherever possible. Why increase prices on everything and hurt national
and global economic growth just so that some people can keep the jobs that
they're used to having?

And unfortunately, "re-training" programs tend to work out better on paper
than they do in reality. The fact is that no one wants to throwaway a lifetime
of work in a given industry in order to start all over again in another. It's
not just learning new skills, it's years of meeting the right people, learning
new cultures and customs, etc. So few people want to do that, it's just not
human nature to start over from scratch.

HN is starting to sound like a broken record, but a Basic Income is probably
the best solution. I believe that some politicians are also proposing a kind
of "workers insurance", to help people who lose their jobs due to changes in
technology or culture. Either of these would be a better solution than forcing
price increases onto the millions of people who have jobs but still barely
make enough to get by.

------
ap22213
40 years old here, and I have seen much more pain than benefit over the last
30 years. Early in my youth I was exposed to libertarianism, and I was taken
in - it sounded so simple and logical and effective. But, over time I saw the
effects of globalization, free trade, and deregulation. They've been selling
us, the masses, on it for 40 years. Why haven't salaries and demand for jobs
increased? They always say it's because of the existing tariffs, regulations,
unions, etc. 'Trust us,' they say, 'just a little bit longer - more
deregulation and free trade, and it will happen. Trust us.' I've literally
heard that same claim for as long I can remember.

Maybe I'm a minority. I'm the first college educated person in my family (most
with 'gifted' level IQs - like that matters!). The rest were working class.
Then, I've seen them slowly lose jobs, fall below the poverty line. Now, I
make a good salary, and I have to send money back to my family because they're
unable to find jobs, pay for transportation, pay for education or health care
or housing. Luckily, they are still able to pay for food! It's like I'm an
immigrant in my own country, sending money back to the old country. Just
weird.

I am very happy that we have been able to raise standards of living for many
who had been earning less than a dollar a day. But, this has come at the
expense of the working and middle class in many 'rich' countries. There were
and are much better ways to achieve the same goal. Instead of pressuring the
benefiting countries to migrate to democracy and rule of law, we instead caved
into our primal demand for low-cost junk. (Yay! $5 t-shirts. Thank you, Stefan
Persson) Now, we have autocratic and corrupt countries with as much leverage
as we used to have.

The capitalists have been selling us Powerball tickets for 40 years, and we
keep lining up to buy them.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_Why haven 't salaries and demand for jobs increased?_

Because non-wage compensation is tax advantaged so it's cheaper for companies
to increase compensation there. If they spent $1 more on health care, you get
$1 more worth of health care. If they spend $1 more on wages, you get $0.80 in
your take home pay.

Real compensation per hour has increased, both across the economy and in
manufacturing.

[https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/COMPRNFB](https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/COMPRNFB)

[https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/COMPRMS](https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/COMPRMS)

That increase just comes in the form of health benefits/retirement/etc.

If you want to fix this, eliminate the Obamacare employer mandate and push
everyone to the exchanges and increase taxes on non-wage benefits. (You can
make it revenue neutral by reducing taxes on wages commensurately.)

 _There were and are much better ways to achieve the same goal._

What are some of these "much better ways" to reliably and effectively achieve
the same goal?

~~~
poof131
That’s one of the problems with data. It seems so exact but can really be so
misleading. You break out charts, I break out charts. [1] My gut feeling is
that much of middle class america has seen significant wage and livelihood
stagnation. I’m all for free trade and a competitive economy, but something
feels off about the past couple decades and the distribution of economic
gains. And I don’t really trust the Federal Reserve and their CPI metrics—the
institution is far too political and the members have too much skin in the
game, rotating in and out of banking jobs.

[1] [http://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-
stagnation/](http://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/)

~~~
yummyfajitas
Your charts don't contradict mine. They say yearly wages for certain
households have gone down, I've shown wages+benefits/hour for workers has gone
up.

It's true that CPI has it's flaws - inflation is wildly overstated. Medicine -
one of the big drivers of increases in CPI (the other is education) is not
even hedonically adjusted. If we properly measured inflation compensation
would almost certainly be a lot higher.

Of course if you want to ignore all data which doesn't support your
preconceived notions, I can't stop you. (Incidentally the data is from the
BLS, not the fed. The fed just brings all the data to one convenient site.)

~~~
Apocryphon
Sounds like we're at an impasse. Both sides have their own respective stats
and figures that they draw their conclusions from. The only way forward is for
each side to debate the merits' of each dataset.

~~~
ap22213
If you believe this is about one 'side' vs. another, I'm not sure what we gain
by having a dialogue, honestly. I'm not coming from 'a side'. I'm not battling
some ideological conflict. I'm just reflecting on a reality that I and many
others like me experience. Honestly, I am a pragmatist - I am not interested
in an ideology or 'side' winning an intellectual battle. Maybe I was in my
teens and 20s. But now, it doesn't matter what it is that works, as long as it
works. I would simply like to see a system and set of policies and laws that
work for most people. That has not happened in the last 40+ years, so we need
a new way. I'm open to anyone's ideas, including yours. It's a collaboration,
not a conflict.

------
aab0
Summers: "Like experts in many fields who give policy advice, the authors show
a preference for first-best, textbook approaches to the problems in their
field, while leaving other messy objectives acknowledged but assigned to
others. In this way, they are much like those public finance economists who
oppose tax expenditures on principle, because they prefer direct expenditure
programs, but do not really analyze the various difficulties with such
programs; or like trade economists who know that the losers from trade surges
need to be protected but regard this as not a problem for trade policy."

------
raldi
...but only if workers in poor countries don't count.

I'd like to see a video of the Mexicans receiving the news that a factory is
opening in town, and it's going to need lots of employees.

~~~
jordanb
I would think that the Mexicans should expect their elected government to look
after their interests above those of workers in some foreign country.

~~~
raldi
That's absolutely true. If you consider the plight of Mexicans less important
than the plight of Americans, the factory moving to Mexico is a bad move.

And I'm not being sarcastic here; such a bias is exactly what the US
government is supposed to have.

But as an individual, that's not my perspective on the world. Tell me if a
person considers themself foremost an American or a citizen of the world, and
I'll tell you their opinion on free trade agreements.

~~~
twoodfin
I'm foremost an American, and I'm enthusiastically for free trade agreements.
The US government _is_ looking out for its citizens, who on the whole will
benefit greatly even if particular factory workers suffer.

(Also very happy that the rest of the world benefits, and not a little
selfishly. I don't think people have a good conception of just how incredible
life will be in a world economy where the average Chinese or Indian worker
produces and earns as much as the average American worker today.)

~~~
gnaritas
> I don't think people have a good conception of just how incredible life will
> be in a world economy where the average Chinese or Indian worker produces
> and earns as much as the average American worker today.

The problem is that's only going to happen because of American wages going
down significantly; something Americans aren't going to think is so
incredible. When the world lifestyle normalizes out eventually, the result
will be the India's and China's lifestyle stepping it up a bit and the
American lifestyle being reduced drastically. The whole planet cannot live the
American lifestyle, we don't have those kind of resources.

~~~
hiram112
Why can't we all increase? Cause part of globalisation's promise is increased
productivity which should mean we ALL get richer.

Except, it turns out only the wealthy capital owners get more in the US. And
please don't tell me I'm actually better off because I have an IPhone and my
grandpa didn't. My grandpa had job security, a stay at home wife, and 4 kids
on a middle class salary. Virtually nobody under 30 in the US or anywhere in
Western Europe could afford that today.

~~~
gnaritas
Normalization means some get richer, some get poorer; it will be America that
gets poorer, by necessity.

As for your second paragraph, we agree, so there's little to say there.

------
pink_dinner
Global trade is very similar to the Music (and software) revolution that
happened over the last 15 or so years.

The original creators of creative works were upset because free music,
software diluted the value of the original work and it would make it more
difficult to sell it in the future because most people would just get it for
free. These companies essentially needed to compete against the same
software/music they were selling, but free.

The same thing is happening now, but with jobs. Companies are going overseas
for workers and Americans now need to compete over a worker that can
essentially do the same job, for a lower wage.

Many people here have defended software and music piracy and even said things
like "I wouldn't have purchased it anyway".

Well, companies "Wouldn't have hired Americans anyway". It's ironic that so
many of those same people are now clamoring for government protection when
they fought against patents and copyrights for so long.

Instead of complaining, you basically need to compete and offer companies
something that they can't get overseas. This is exactly what the software and
music industries have both needed to do to survive.

------
icebraining
The latest Econtalk episode was an interview with the mentioned professor of
economics at MIT - David Autor - about the loss of US low-skilled
manufacturing jobs to China.

[http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2016/03/symposium_autor.htm...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2016/03/symposium_autor.html)

------
Vlaix
You can't expect the people who are the adjustment variable of worldwide
unimpeded trade to applaud with both hands.

------
andrewclunn
Health care coverage requirements + environmental regulations + other nations
without these things that you can ship your goods to the US from without
paying a tax penalty...

The US citizens don't need cheaper iPhones, they need decent paying jobs. The
average citizens DOES NOT benefit from free trade deals. The average
international company does. If these other nations had the same regulations,
then it wouldn't be cheaper to move the jobs there either.

Free trade is bad for the environment and bad for domestic low skilled
workers. And with all the unemployed college students around, its clear that
educating people for jobs that aren't there won't fix the issue. You're
selling out your citizens for your corporate overlords, and now that Bernie is
all but out of the running Trump is the only one left speaking the truth about
this.

------
Dowwie
Autor spoke about his findings on EconTalk last week:
[http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2016/03/nations_gain_wh.htm...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2016/03/nations_gain_wh.html)

------
chdjcnx
All I ever see from globalization advocates are a bunch of hypotheticals and
never any actual quantitative data. Kind of concerning, considering how widely
accepted the assumption "globalization=good" is.

~~~
hiram112
You're not supposed to point that out. If ALL economists say free trade is
good, who are we to question their wisdom?

And if you do, you're obviously a [racist, xenophobe, uneducated, commie,
etc].

------
api
This is the entire reason for Trump being a viable candidate at all, let alone
winning.

~~~
caseysoftware
_That_ is what people here are missing.

It's easy for us to criticize and complain about the economy but we only see
our thin slice most of the time. Odds are most of the people active here don't
know a plumber or a cop, let alone a factory worker and don't know someone
directly affected by these changes or they're isolated to the hometowns we
left long ago. We just move in wildly different circles.

I think this article is less about free trade and its ramifications and more
about communicating "and here is why labor favors Donald Trump.."

If AFL-CIO comes out for Trump, the election is effectively over. That siphons
a huge amount of cash and ground organization from the Democrats.

~~~
hiram112
Are you kidding me? Plumber or cop?

Try IT worker. Along with factory workers, we've been screwed the most by the
elite. It's bad enough to have your job move to India, China, or Mexico.

But that wasn't enough for our masters. They took advantage of H1Bs, so now we
get to train our replacements here at home.

I would imagine there are many, many IT workers supporting Trump. Most of HN
swings younger, and still thinks they're doing great making six figures in
their open office plan and $3k month studio apartment in SF.

~~~
dominotw
I see that you comment exclusively on H1B/Immigration issues. Obviously you
have spent lots of mental cycles on this.

I am curious if you have any thoughts on what immigration to unites states
should look like. From my limited research on this, there seems to only 2
ways( there are others but irrelevant) to immigrate to the states 1. dual
intent work visas 2. family connections.

------
canistr
Funny enough, you could probably apply this line to a bunch of different
industries/practices. "Workers see costs, not benefits, to _______".

For instance, investing in security. "Workers see costs, not benefits to
security".

------
raincom
It is true that Americans can buy cheap goods; but we need to calculate the
differential good. Differential good for the blue collar workers vs
differential good for the elite (capital holding class). This distribution of
differentials is skewed: the elite is getting the most of the it.

While I can buy cheap stuff from Walmart, most of my income goes to rent.
There is no free trade for rent and health care, while most of an average
worker makes go for rent and insurance.

------
Futurebot
As many others have stated in these comments, free trade doctrine makes the
assumption that the gains from said trade will be redistributed to the losers
(if we did this properly there would be far, far less opposition to the
system.) That we do not actually do very much (our "Trade Adjustment
Assistance" programs are incredibly weak and stingy) is probably well known.
What's less appreciated is that some to much of what we have _doesn 't even
meet the Ricardian definition of Free Trade_.

"Few economists have bothered to think about the issue of offshoring,
preferring to dismiss concerns about it as manifestations of the old
protectionist fallacy. They learned in graduate school that free trade is
always mutually beneficial and ceased to think when they passed their exams.
This is especially true of “free market economists” who believe that economic
freedom, which they identify with the freedom of capital, is always good.
Thus, most economists mistakenly believe that offshoring is protected under
the authority of free trade doctrine.

However, free trade doctrine is based on the assumption that domestic capital
seeks its comparative advantage in its home economy, specializing where its
comparative advantage is best and, thereby, increasing the general welfare in
the home economy. _David Ricardo, who explicated the case for free trade,
rules out an economy’s capital seeking absolute advantage abroad instead of
comparative advantage at home._

...offshoring, or the pursuit of absolute advantage, breaks the connection
between the profit motive and the general welfare. The beneficiaries of
offshoring are the corporations’ shareholders and top executives and the
foreign country, the GDP of which rises when its labor is substituted for the
corporations’ home labor. Every time a corporation offshores its production,
it converts domestic GDP into imports. The home economy loses GDP to the
foreign country which gains it." \- Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant
Secretary of the US Treasury and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal.

~~~
Futurebot
This is all yesterday's news, though. Even if we ripped up all our FT
agreements, those jobs are gone permanently. The debate at this point is
largely academic. Instead, we should focus on how to help those who lost their
jobs with what we have to work with now (free training, free college, cash,
etc.)

------
sjg007
Free trade is fine but you need free and high quality education from daycare
on up to make up for it.

~~~
gedy
"Education" does not magically create a high paying job for you though,
especially when you are talking about 10s or 100s of millions of people.

~~~
collyw
[http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/mar/12/uk-
education-...](http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/mar/12/uk-education-
reforms-not-helped-social-mobility)

------
iamleppert
Some choice quotes:

“We’ve shifted an abundant part of our manufacturing footprint to relatively
lower cost countries, about two-thirds,” said Mr. McDonough, president of the
climate, controls and security division of United Technologies. “Still,
there’s some opportunity there.”

..

“Our company, with American workers,” he added, “builds a heck of a lot of
stuff in the U.S.”

I feel really bad they have to resort to these kinds of tactics to increase
shareholder value. I guess when you have a really banal business making things
like air conditioners that hasn't innovated in years the only thing left is to
reduce costs to stay competitive?

Methinks they should outsource the managements' jobs too.

------
jcoffland
The root problem is not jobs moving to poorer countries it's that manual labor
is losing its value and will continue to do so as technology advances. A huge
problem with capitalism is that it has no solution for what to do with the
masses once a days labor is no longer worth a days living expenses. We are
heading in this direction and are already there in many parts of the world.
Education is a good solution but at some point demands for higher-level skills
outpace the capacity of the average human brain. I'm not a big advocate of
government run welfare but pure capitalism leaves many the gutter.

~~~
roblev
Although a similar argument could have been made as societies industrialised,
that once the value of farming work fell (which nearly everyone did), then
there would be mass unemployment. It didn't play out that way.

------
pessimizer
Workers are probably just forming knee-jerk opinions based on all of the
evidence and all of the theory. It probably helps to calm them down that the
NYT consistently equivocates between the entire concept of international
trade, actual trade agreements (which are highly protectionist and
monotonically increasing protection on copyrights, patents and professional
services), and general lowering of tariffs.

------
chasecache
There are too many termites in the trade system.

------
facepalm
It's democracy and everybody is entitled to vote for their own benefit. When
cars where invented, horse breeders should have voted for laws against cars.

Still, not sure if the typical worker can really be sure they are a net loser?
They might have less money in the pocket, but if the TV they want costs only
10% of what it would cost without global trade, maybe they are still in the
positive overall?

The problem is the world is always changing, and people and nations always
have to try to keep up and adapt. Or maybe not, looking at the example of the
Amish? What would happen if everybody would become Amish overnight?

~~~
griffordson
> What would happen if everybody would become Amish overnight?

How much land would that take? How would these new Amish afford the $10K/acre
that the best farm land in the US can cost?

~~~
facepalm
Well you could just say we are an Amish country now, and divide everything by
Amish rules. Are there too many people already for all of them to be able to
go Amish?

I've read sometime ago that the Amish population doubles in regular intervals,
so in theory they should own the whole country after some time?

------
cynical_sheet
Americans are living way above their means with rampant entitlement mentality.
You see a lot of these paper-shuffling office jobs where nothing of value is
produced; people studying worthless subjects(sociology, political science,
gender studies etc.) plus there is an assumption that everyone needs to go to
college; trades are looked down upon; push for $15/hour minimum wage;
entitlement mentality with welfare etc.

You have very little of that in China + some other countries and that is their
appeal.

~~~
drewrv
I don't want to live in a world where people only study what "the market"
considers valuable.

~~~
cynical_sheet
You mean you don't want to live in a world where you actually have to learn
useful skills, so that you can trade with other people who have learned to do
something you find useful?

I've already addressed that when I mentioned 'rampant entitlement mentality'.
It's people thinking that others owe them something just because they happen
to be members of homo sapiens species. Entitlement 101.

It's not a coincidence that most of the people studying philosophy, sociology,
gender studies etc. are leftists, many even radicalized (e.g. anarcho-
syndicalism in philosophy departments).

That's why the leftists need a powerful state. Since they are useless
parasites, they have to make money by working in government or non-profit or
government-inspired jobs.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
You should probably go spout this crap on a site where the average user
doesn't make six figures.

~~~
cynical_sheet
What is your point? What does people making 6 figures on this site or 7
figures on some other site matter?

Is what I'm writing true or not?

~~~
zuminator
No. You're being at the least inconsistent when you on the one hand claim that
it's wrong to push for a higher minimum wage (because the free market should
decide what low skill jobs are "worth") and on the other hand deride sociology
and gender studies as worthless when people are willing to pay a lot of money
for those courses. In other words, you're not a capitalist, you're just co-
opting the language of capitalism to spout a particular brand of conservative
moralism.

~~~
cynical_sheet
I am not inconsistent.

Where exactly did I write that it is (morally) wrong to push for a higher
minimum wage? I am not writing that it is wrong to push for $15/hour. I'm
writing on why American workers have a hard time competing with people in Asia
or South America, many of whom work for $15/day. That's why, among other
things, companies are leaving for Mexico or Vietnam.

Students are taking huge government-backed student loans, so that they can go
to college and study sociology/gender studies(or some other worthless field)
and then get a job in the government or non-profit. Do you see the circular
nature of that?

My point is that most people(except some spoiled & stupid rich kids) who are
studying sociology now would NOT do it in a truly free market environment,
because:

a) There wouldn't be many government jobs or government-inspired jobs waiting
for them. b) 18 yo couldn't get student loans to study these subjects. Why?
For the same reason homeless drug addicts aren't getting $10 million loans
from banks. It's a bad investment for a bank to give unreliable people money.
Likewise, sociology(or some other worthless field) majors couldn't get a loan,
since their earning potential is very low. c) No welfare. Since there wouldn't
be welfare checks to fall back on, most people would think twice about what to
study and their choice would not be sociology.

~~~
Apocryphon
You seem to have intense negativity towards what you label "worthless fields."
What is your definition of a non-worthless field? Not to mention, a lot of
graduates in those fields end up working in other fields anyway (I've met a
good amount of tech recruiters who were polisci or communications majors on
LinkedIn). That seems to contradict your point of considering these people as
inherently unreliable and unemployable.

