Thomas Friedman Is Flat: More Nonsense on Economics In the NYT

From Dean Baker.--SS

Thomas Friedman Is Flat: More Nonsense on Economics In the NYT:

The NYT continues its policy of affirmative action for people ignorant of the world by allowing Thomas Friedman to write two columns a week on whatever he chooses. Today he talks about the job crisis.

He does get some things right in pointing out that we have a huge shortage of jobs. He also notes the growing crisis posed by long-term unemployment in which millions of people are losing their connections to the labor market and risk being permanently unemployed.

However he strikes out in his dismissal of manufacturing as a source of jobs and calling for more high tech centers like Austin, Silicon Valley and Raleigh-Durham. When the dollar falls to a sustainable level it will have an enormous impact in improving the competitiveness of U.S. manufacturing. We stand to gain more than 4 million manufacturing jobs once we get the dollar down to a sustainable level.

To take this a step further, if we followed the German model (of which Friedman often speaks fondly) we would create another 3 million jobs in manufacturing by shortening the average length of the work year. The seven million new manufacturing jobs that would be added due to a more competitive dollar and shorter workyear is only a bit over 4 percent of the work force, but it is still a far larger number than those employed in Austin, Silicon Valley and Raleigh-Durham.

In addition, those seeing Austin, Silicon Valley and Raleigh-Durham as the future of the United States have not kept up with the present. Just as China and other low-wage countries can undercut the United States in manufacturing goods with their lower wages, so can developing undercut the United States in high tech production with their lower wages. India already has a large and growing trade surplus in software with the United States.

It is difficult to see how this trend will be reversed in the decades ahead, no matter how much we tax ordinary workers to subsidize the centers that Friedman advocates. The arithmetic is straightforward, high tech workers in the United States will not be able to compete with comparable skilled workers in the developing world making one-fifth as much. Furthermore, it is much cheaper to send software programs half way across the world than it is to send cars.

Friedman also wants to cut Social Security and Medicare for retirees as advocated by the co-chairs of President Obama's deficit commission, former Senator Alan Simpson and Morgan Stanley Director Erskine Bowles. This policy will make Wall Street deficit hawks happy, but it is difficult to see how it will help the future strength of the economy.