NY TIMES letter says it's fine if IBM ships jobs overseas. [View All]

[Eric J in MN]

This economist says it's fine if IBM lays off thousands of computer programmers and replaces them with people in other countries.

Why?

Because free-trade mostly affects low-skill jobs.

He ignores that computer programming is high-skill labor, and we need both low-skill and high-skill jobs in America.

He cares more about economic theory than about the thousands of people suffering because of the theory of how "free trade" benefits us.

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Free Trade: Winners and Losers (5 Letters)

Published: January 11, 2004
To the Editor:

Re "Second Thoughts on Free Trade," by Charles Schumer and Paul Craig Roberts (Op-Ed, Jan. 6):

The fact that a worker in India now can write lines of computer code for I.B.M. does not pose an existential threat to economic theory.

Falling transportation and information costs have allowed us to split the production of goods and some services into chunks that are done in many parts of the world. Within each industry, the jobs shifted overseas tend to be the lowest-skilled ones. The result, for us and for other countries, is lower-cost goods, more investment resources and a higher average standard of living.

If your job is the one outsourced, this is no consolation. But the appropriate job of public policy is not to protect any particular class of jobs, but to give the average American worker the skills and flexibility necessary to adjust to changes in the global marketplace.

DAVID H. FELDMAN
Williamsburg, Va., Jan. 6, 2004
The writer is a professor of economics, College of William and Mary.