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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 12/1/18

Our Elites Refuse to Accept Responsibility for Leaving Behind the Left Behind

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Anyhow, the reason that laid off steelworkers in Ohio are left behind and cardiologists in New York are not, is that we designed our system of trade to subject the former to international competition, while protecting the latter. It is incredibly dishonest for policy types to pretend that the current situation is an inevitable outcome of globalization.

I could go on at length, this is of course the topic of my [free] book Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer. It is amazing how so many highly intelligent and well-meaning policy types can keep up this charade that the upward redistribution of income over the last four decades was somehow a natural development as opposed to being policy driven. The denial really is Trumpian in its character.

I'm not sure how to break through, but I will keep trying.

[1] To respond to the inevitable complaint about brain-drain, it is easy to design mechanisms whereby developing countries are compensated for doctors or other highly paid professionals who come to the United States. This is a classic story of having the winners compensate the loser that economists like to talk about in other contexts. In this case it would be logistically easy, since the professionals are licensed and we would have a record of the country in which they got their training.

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Dr. Dean Baker is a macroeconomist and Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C. He previously worked as a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute and an assistant professor at Bucknell University. (more...)
 
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