Dollars and Jens
Tuesday, March 16, 2004
 
Outsourcing
The other day, I caught a fellow from the Cato Institute discussing outsourcing on CNBC's Kudlow and Cramer. Two interesting points he made:
  1. The number one exporter of services in the world? As you might guess, that would be us.
  2. He showed a chart of the number of manufacturing jobs vs. time. There was a significant decline. The graph, he pointed out, was of manufacturing jobs in China. Outsourcing isn't causing a decline in manufacturing jobs -- productivity is causing the decline, just as it caused a decline in agricultural jobs a century ago.
The answer isn't protectionism -- the answer is to use some of our gains from trade to assist manufacturing employees in adjusting.


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