[lbo-talk] Inequality: The silly tales economists like to tell

[c b]

> http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/10/2012102915021526447.html
>
> "The reason why the manufacturing workers, construction workers, and
> restaurant workers lose their jobs to low-paid workers from the
> developing world, and doctors and lawyers don't, is that doctors and
> lawyers use their political power to limit the extent to which they
> are exposed to competition from their low-paid counterparts in the
> developing world. Our trade policy has been explicitly designed to
> remove barriers that prevent General Electric and other companies from
> moving their manufacturing operations to Mexico, China or other
> developing countries. By contrast, many of the barriers that make it
> difficult for foreign professionals to work in the United States have
> actually been strengthened in the last two decades."
>
> [WS:] Right on the target. It is not some impersonal force like
> "globalization" or "new technology" but old fashioned political power
> that has names and addresses, even if multiple. It is the new social
> class, the technostructure, stupid.

Dean Baker loves this story, but tech, management, consulting, and
banking are all full of foreigners. Doctors and lawyers aren't
typical.

Doug

^^^^^^^^^

CB: My anecdotal experience is many more md.s from other countries
than lawyers.  Of course, lawyers are government officials of a sort,
i.e. mass personnel of state power, which might factor in.