The Robertses continue, "Moreover, many of the workers losing manufacturing jobs belong to unions, and organized labor has become the most vociferous foe of new trade deals." This begs the question, if free trade is so great for jobs and brings with it so many higher-paid export jobs, then why would organized labor be free trade's "most vociferous foe"?
The Roberts pair offer one that we hear over and over. We should just give up, suck it up, and accept our sorry fate because, "The clock cannot be turned back. Lost manufacturing jobs will not return."
Speaking of "jobs that aren't coming back," Ben Casselman, Chief Economics Writer at FiveThirtyEight, writes that "Manufacturing Jobs Are Never Coming Back." Casselman explains that we should just give up, suck it up, and accept our sorry fate. "A plea to presidential candidates: Stop talking about bringing manufacturing jobs back from China. In fact, talk a lot less about manufacturing, period."
He writes that we don't need manufacturing anyway, because service sector jobs something.
"It's understandable that voters are angry about trade. The U.S. has lost more than 4.5 million manufacturing jobs since NAFTA took effect in 1994. And as Eduardo Porter wrote this week, there's mounting evidence that U.S. trade policy, particularly with China, has caused lasting harm to many American workers. But rather than play to that anger, candidates ought to be talking about ways to ensure that the service sector can fill manufacturing's former role as a provider of dependable, decent-paying jobs."
Casselman explains that our economy is already replacing well-paid manufacturing jobs with low-paying service sector jobs. "In 1994 there were 3.5 million more Americans working in manufacturing than in retail. Today, those numbers have almost exactly reversed, and the gap is widening. More than 80 percent of all private jobs are now in the service sector."
Cassleman says candidates should start "talking about" making a service-based economy "work for workers." With talk like that, no wonder voters are fed up with America's corporate-favoring trade policies that sending our jobs, wages and ability to make things -- including a decent living -- out of the country.
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