Limits of Trade Protection

In The Chinese Century (Wharton, 2006), Professor Oded Shenkar of Ohio State University makes the case that many job losses in the U.S. have had more to do with off-shoring of traditional manufacturing activities than to automation per se. In the case of textile workers who have lost their jobs in the U.S. due to global economics, the time for them to find new jobs has been longer than for those displaced in other industries. The buffering argument has been that even if these low-level jobs are eliminated, higher paying jobs will eventually replace them. But low-end textile workers are rarely qualified for these up-scale jobs--especially those in high tech.

All of this of course is tied to that other American crisis--health care. Since post-WWII, health care benefits have for reasons that don't make a lot of sense today been tied to having a job that offered them. Meanwhile global forces have been removing people from the workforce and leaving them without any way to get health insurance.