Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Class Lecture #23 - 10/26

1.) Some people who argue that trade is bad because it misplaces a lot of jobs are WRONG. It is true that technological advances today only benefit a certain group of people who have a unique set of skills (as opposed to at the beginning of the century when technology benefited everyone). But, those jobs, in most cases, would not be in existence if not for trade (ex: Rizzo's job and international students). Also, while those outsourced may be down at first, in the end, trade always ends up benefitting the whole society. And finally, it's just a known fact that trade DOES NOT cause job loss.

2.) From the powerpoint, the trade deficit has gone steadily down since around 1976. This is because the trade balance is negative because we are importing more than we are exporting (US and China). Today, we have spent $10 trillion more on goods from China than they have spent on our goods. While all this is happening, we have actually seen a steady increase in employment. This is because trade DOES NOT change the number of jobs. It changes the type of jobs.....

3.) U.S. Manufacturing employment has increased and decreased independently of the trade deficit. The share of manufacturing employment as compared to total employment has seen a steady decrease long before the trade deficit became persistent. And even though the share of manuf. employment has gone down, the manuf. out put has seen a steady increase = a lot more stuff with a lot fewer people (newer technology more efficient and cheaper).

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