Should-Read: This from the very sharp Dani Rodrik seems t...

Should-Read: This from the very sharp Dani Rodrik seems to me to be largely wrong. The 1990s did not see dislocated workers fall into poverty: the 1990s saw, for the most part, workers pulled into higher-paying jobs and occupations by the then high-pressure economy. It was the Reagan deficits of the 1980s that started the midwest on its decline���but the idea was to blame the Japanese rather than St. Ronnie and his feckless policymakers. The China shock of the 2000s was a big deal. But the crash of 2007-2009 and the slow recovery since an even bigger one. And the long, slow decline of manufacturing and other traditionally male blue-collar jobs���a decline overwhelmingly independent of globalization���that was the biggest deal of all. I write about this. But here is Dani:

Dani Rodrik: The Trouble With Globalization: "The United States, too, could have moved aggressively to compensate dislocated workers in the 1990s, when it opened its economy to imports from Mexico, China...

...and other low-income countries in a major way. Instead, under the sway of market fundamentalists, the United States let the chips (and workers) fall where they may. By now, the compensation approach has been tarred as ���burial insurance.��� The trade adjustment assistance programs that are habitually tacked on to trade agreements have provided inadequate aid ��� and to just a sliver of the affected population. That is partly by design: politicians have little incentive to implement strong compensation programs once trade agreements are approved.

American workers have been the weak party in the bargain all along ��� if they���d had enough clout to obtain a robust safety net, they would have had the clout to reshape trade agreements in worker-friendly ways in the first place...