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> Not necessarily, but they correlate very strongly. It's the rich countries that tend to have strong labor protections, mandatory pension schemes, high healthc
by lliamander 7y ago
> Not necessarily, but they correlate very strongly. It's the rich countries that tend to have strong labor protections, mandatory pension schemes, high healthcare costs, etc.
Obviously they correlate. The question is whether such labor regulations run ahead of labor productivity and inadvertently price labor out of the global market place. It's certainly not a given that labor regulations are proportional.
If it's not proportional, you either need to roll back some of those regulations or enact protectionist measures (tariffs, etc.) to enable fair competition.
It's not just labor regulations either. Environmental regulations also play a role. While I agree with having environmental regulations, if they are too stringent, then the result is that resource extraction moves countries without any protections.
> Some of them don't, but overall, developed countries have moved on to higher value-added sectors.
Those "left behind" could be a fairly large number. Democratic societies need to balance the interests of all of their citizens.
> Moving large numbers of American workers into things like mass hand-assembly of smartphones would not make economic sense.
If those large numbers of Americans are otherwise unemployed, or even working in low-skill service jobs, then moving them into smartphone manufacturing absolutely makes sense.
> Government could much more strongly redistribute the overall gains from world trade to those who lose out to trade. That would make a lot of sense, though it would go against the right-wing economic thinking that has dominated American politics since Reagan.
We are already redistributing to those who lose out on trade. I don't think more redistribution is what they want. My impression is that they would rather have jobs. Indeed, it makes much more economic (and psychological) sense to have as much of your population engaged in productive occupations as possible.