The latest issue of Forbes magazine features Steve Forbes‘ assessment of the impact of global trade on jobs.
A CRITICAL RAP against the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership is that it will destroy jobs, which is the argument labor unions always use to oppose free-trade agreements like this one. Nonsense. What destroys jobs is innovation and productivity. When allowed to do so, people always look to find new and better ways of doing things–or to come up with new things altogether. Who had heard of an iPad or the process we call streaming just a few years ago? In the constant turbulence of free markets some jobs are eliminated, but the overall number and quality of jobs improve.
People today wax nostalgic over manufacturing, just as they did over farming before that. In reality, both, until recent decades, involved backbreaking manual labor. Remember the criticism that factory work was soulless and repetitive? Factory assembly lines are largely a thing of the past in this country. Job destruction? The U.S. railroad industry has shed a million jobs since the end of WWII, yet our standard of living today is significantly better than it was then.
It’s human nature to look for and lash out at targets when our lives are disrupted by economic change. But when barriers to progress aren’t put in the way, most people quickly land on their feet.
The problem today isn’t nefarious bankers or currency-manipulating foreigners; it’s our own government, which has hobbled us with a horrific tax code, a destructive monetary policy and a tsunami of opaque rules regarding health care and everything else and prevents us from focusing our energies on productive activities that would benefit us all.
