If we were to restrict American companies to only hiring American programmers, writes Clifford Thies, the obvious response of the rest of the world would be to forbid American companies from selling their software and related products and services to their consumers.
China has experienced one of the great economic transformations in the history of the world, writes Frank Shostak. But will it last?
Concerns over safety and pollution are merely protectionist tactics to keep out imports from Mexico, writes Gary Galles.
Anti-outsourcing theories implicitly assume that high production costs are a source of wealth, argues Bill Anderson.
This dreadful election season will spew forth many promises by politicians to "lead us into the future." I can hardly think of a worse fate for any society than to be led into the future by the political class of gangsters, marauders, looters, and liars. Fortunately, they haven’t the capacity to lead whole societies anywhere. They are outclassed and outrun by trends in the world economy that are beyond the ability of the political class to control or direct.
The new protectionists, writes Sudha Shenoy, want to reverse the outflow of US capital to China and India. But it cannot be done, which is good in the long run for everyone.
The period from the onset of World War I until the demise of the Soviet empire in 1991 has been called the "great parenthesis" in western history, writes JG Hülsmann. The United States offered virtually the only safe haven for capital investments. Among the beneficiaries of this somewhat artificial increase of the capital stock were the American wage earners. Now this epoch is drawing to an end--to the ultimate benefit of all.
If the benefiting consumers from an innovation are largely outside of a given country, writes Robert Murhpy, then it is indeed true that the people in that country might actually be poorer as a result of the innovation. But in that case, no trade policy can change things. On the other hand, if enough of the benefiting consumers are inside a particular country, then the people in that country are helped (on net) by the innovation.
