Professors Mankiw vs. Blinder

Like Don McLean in "American Pie" I get overwhelmed on occasion with bad news. The Senate has voted for surrender, and the Wall Street Journal news pages have endorsed a paper citing greater than anticipated consequences of free trade.

This is like President Bush capitulating to the DAWG crowd. Prepare to hear Senators Jim Webb and John Edwards intone "even the Wall Street Journal said..." Nobody will read this paper or understand it, but it will be taken as proof positive that Smith, Mises, Hayek, and Friedman were wrong. "Didn't you hear? I read that that had been completely debunked?"

I didn't have the chops to take Alan Blinder on, but I knew one of my betters would.

Greg Mankiw comes to the rescue in My Father is Darth Vader (Blinder was a professor of his).

For some reason, Alan does not respond to this rise in technology-driven offshoring as he would to a rise in policy-driven trade. But economic logic suggests that if he is to embrace tariff reductions as an economic positive, he should similarly embrace technology-driven trade increases an an economic positive. But instead of recognizing this change as primarily a force for good, he offers mainly hand-wringing. In doing so, he gives, perhaps unintentially, aid and comfort to the protectionists.

Amen to that last fear. Today and yesterday were bad days for freedom.

Economics and Markets Posted by jk at March 28, 2007 4:03 PM