Years Late But A Sign

    The crumbling of so-called "free trade" has got to be near when you read The Wall Street Journal and learn that "Republican presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain will use his campaign's first big economic speech today to talk about downsides of free trade." Apparently, McCain will "acknowledge that open markets have resulted in pain for some individuals whose jobs are being eliminated or sent overseas..." Of course, McCain's response is classic: retraining.

     Retraining has been a bi-partisan failure. The problem is that retraining has simply set people up for a failure because they can't find jobs that pay anywhere near what they made before. The solution is not retraining--it's a different conception of how to set up the rules of the global economy. But, it does say something that McCain feels compelled to even acknowledge that something is amiss.

Comments

[Rick McHugh]

Here in Michigan, those of us that are advocates for dislocated workers have little good to say about either "free" trade or job retraining. Neither have come near to fulfilling the promises to workers made by their proponents. Having said that, the question remains as to what policies progressives should support to address those losing jobs due to the continuing decline in U.S. manufacturing. Simply decrying the bad faith of proponents hardly answers compelling needs facing affected workers and communities.

Certainly, while lots of training has not placed workers in new jobs paying equivalent wages, there is evidence that certain training (generally longer term training leading to a credential, some apprenticeships) is better in terms of getting dislocated workers reemployed in some jobs. And given the disappearance of good jobs generally throughout the U.S. economy, expecting retraining alone to produce equivalent replacement wages is similar to criticizing welfare for not ending poverty. And, that criticism led to replacing a low quality safety net with a worse safety net.