I don't think I am arguing for protectionism. I think I am arguing that it is incorrect to blame greedy mill owners for the offshoring of their fabric factories. If they hadn't offshored they would have gone broke.
I don't think I am arguing for tariffs. I am arguing that it is incorrect to blame milliner unions for the offshoring of fabric manufacturing because they could not have lowered their wages enough to compete with a $2 an hour Sri Lankan mill worker.
There is no doubt that increased automation makes a country's average wage less important. But automation is not what moved those manufacturing jobs offshore starting about fifteen years ago. Extremely low labor costs were. And there was nothing those union factory workers could have done to prevent it. And there was nothing those open-shop factory workers could have done to prevent it.
The root cause for our manufacturing decline was globalization. Globalization was possible because our nation chose to eliminate tariffs and because the cost of shipping goods across the ocean has become terribly cheap. So if blame is to be assigned, assign it to "us".
Last edited by AmarilloMike; 06/02/15 11:02 AM.
