Robert Reich: Who needs Republicans when Wall Street has the Democrats?

[bhikkhu]

26. Economists like trade

...and much of what "NAFTA has done to this country" is actually what technology and automation has done to this country. Which is eliminated jobs and reduced costs. Not to be an apologist for economists, as I think they are all basically wrong in their calculations when it comes to resource depletion, and climate change is much more important in the long run than GDP growth...but they do favor trade as a basic economic stimulus.

In any case, according to this (and there have been various studies arriving at various similar numbers) http://sent2null.blogspot.com/2011/09/us-job-losses-automation-is-culprit-not.html about 88% of job losses in the relevant time period were the replacement of people by machines. About 12% was outsourcing.

Both lead to people without incomes, of course. The second one is easy - you just have to close the borders, wave the flag and hate foreigners. Everybody knows how to do that. The first one though, which has made by far the biggest impact, I've not heard any very good suggestions about what to do. My own suggestion to my kids is to make sure they take school seriously, as it is one big competitive world lately.