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February 15, 2004
More defence of outsourcing
For those who didn't get enough from my previous rant on the fear-mongering about outsourcing, here is more from Jagdish Bhagwati writing in the New York Times, by way of Daniel Drezner. Makes the argument that the Kerry/Schumer position is not only unsound economically but also bad politics.
how is losing your job and livelihood 'fear mongering about outsourcing'? think about the real material and psychological impacts it has on families and communities (I thought Republicans cared about families and the economics of the 'little guy/small business'). take a trip to the Rust Belt and give me your sense of what 'outsourcing' might have in store for more American communities? where is an accounting of the human costs outside of cheaper goods and services?
this is what gets missed in all the talk about unsound economics and trade. clearly there is more to life than defining people as redundant and giving all the voting power in the US to consumers about what the American future should look like.
what happens when you try and make arguements for a re-structuring American economy and their effects that moves beyond narrow economic and neo-liberal economic rhetoric? can we think of life as more than just being a consumer and/or sometimes producer and that the 'consumerist ethic' should be the only way we should direct economic policies in this country?