Bart Adams at the Dunn Daily Record gets a number of things right in his commentary on the Goodyear bill, but one line seemed to come from the Lou Dobbs catechism.
We’re trading our jobs for low-cost goods. And if we continue doing so, we will certainly lower Americans’ standard of living.
Jobs do not move just for lower wages. If that were the case, all those people who pay thousands of dollars to take part in fantasy football camps would be on NFL teams: Wouldn’t the Colts prefer to get paid by a quarterback than to give Peyton Manning $14 million a year? Clearly there’s something more to labor decisions than just price.
Imports have had a marginal effect on jobs in the United States, as measured by both the OECD and the New York Fed. It is a sad personal story almost every time someone loses a job for any reason, but those losses are not often the result of sending work to another country.
If other countries are willing to sell us stuff for less, or better yet give it to us free, how does that lower our standard of living? We have to spend less money on essential, and even the poor have things that were once considered luxuries, such as air conditioning and satellite TV.
