Abstract

'Outsourcing' Our Lives

The author, a Pennsylvania state representative, argues that the outsourcing of jobs under the guise of free trade is bad for working-class Americans. The small town where I live, and that I've represented in the Pennsylvania State House for the past eighteen years, was once a center for [steel] manufacturing. We found a lamp manufacturer to move into the empty building. The new lamp-makers didn't pay as well as the old steelmakers, but 600 jobs was, well, 600 jobs. I say was because those lamps are now made in China."). I must admit that "outsourcing" is a much tidier way of describing how rich guys are shipping millions of American jobs to places where they are free to destroy the environment and disregard human rights--little-known places where they can pay human beings, some of whom hardly are old enough to go to school (assuming there is a school for them to go to), pennies a day to make things that will be shipped back to America and sold to the same people who once made the same things before the same rich guys "outsourced" their jobs. [N. Gregory] Mankiw admits there may be some short-term pain in this, but he quickly adds that Americans shouldn't worry because "outsourcing is just a new way of doing international trade. More things are tradable than were tradable in the past. And that's a good thing." What are we trading here? As I see it, America is sending jobs to other countries. America's rich people are getting richer. America's working people are getting poorer because they are no longer working. What "things" is he talking about? Jobs? Lives? Futures? Have these things now become "tradable" commodities, like baseball cards?