Actually, the title is misleading. As far as I know, I have never been directly affected by NAFTA, I've never lost a job that went directly to Mexico (or Canada, for that matter). If I've paid lower prices for something because of lower trade barriers, I haven't been real conscious of it. But I probably have, so NAFTA has almost certainly been good to me, definitely not bad.
Robert Reich has a post about NAFTA, and a lot of what he says makes a lot of sense. In four paragraphs, Prof. Reich lays out the case quite clearly as to why NAFTA is not the enemy to displaced workers, the changing economy and refusal of politicians to fight for a safety net is. We have allowed the majority of Americans to win, at least a little, through lower prices. We have allowed a few Americans to win a lot, particularly large shareholders and top executives.
But there are Americans, many of them in Michigan and Ohio, who have lost virtually everything in the "new economy." And those Americans have focused on NAFTA as the source of their problems. NAFTA is a "symbol," and symbols are important. Politicians could lay things out as clearly as Reich does, but they don't, instead appealing to them as voters with faux populism. (There is also an interesting coda as to Hillary's "opposition" to NAFTA, and if there is a politician who beats her in opportunism, I don't know who it would be.)
My experience as to the extent to which we "help" the displaced: A few years ago, I was laid off from a technology company. Around that same time, the manufacturing arm of the company was outsourced to Mexico. As a result, a petition was submitted to allow us displaced workers to fall within the Trade Adjustment Assistance Reform Act of 2002 (TAA), and the petition was approved. I won't summarize the benefits that a worker gets; suffice it to say that it's like unemployment benefits on steroids, designed to cushion the blow for employees who have seen free trade take away their livelihoods.
One of the kickers was that there was substantial training benefits, the kind that Reich and many others believe is the key to helping the victims of the new economy. But those benefits are confined to training for "suitable employment," which is code for a job that pays 80% or more of the previous wage. For a software engineer like myself, the idea that I could find a training course that would be completed in the benefit timeframe, and pay 80% of my previous compensation, was ludicrous.
Even for some well-paid, union-protected factory workers, the idea was a joke. The training for hairdressing or home health care work was inaccessible, because those jobs paid too little.
One more joke on top: the program ran out of money fairly quickly, so, even among the people who could qualify, not all received benefits.
We talk about instituting programs to help people, and they end up poorly-designed and ineffective. Why? Because, ultimately, we don't care about this issue. Instead, we blame the victims, not realizing that we could be next (I certainly didn't worry too much about the loss of manufacturing jobs, so I can't be shocked that those folks don't work up too much sympathy when computer jobs sail out after them). Where will this process stop? When the representatives of the people stop posturing, understand the issues, and take action. I'm not holding my breath.
Robert Reich has a post about NAFTA, and a lot of what he says makes a lot of sense. In four paragraphs, Prof. Reich lays out the case quite clearly as to why NAFTA is not the enemy to displaced workers, the changing economy and refusal of politicians to fight for a safety net is. We have allowed the majority of Americans to win, at least a little, through lower prices. We have allowed a few Americans to win a lot, particularly large shareholders and top executives.
But there are Americans, many of them in Michigan and Ohio, who have lost virtually everything in the "new economy." And those Americans have focused on NAFTA as the source of their problems. NAFTA is a "symbol," and symbols are important. Politicians could lay things out as clearly as Reich does, but they don't, instead appealing to them as voters with faux populism. (There is also an interesting coda as to Hillary's "opposition" to NAFTA, and if there is a politician who beats her in opportunism, I don't know who it would be.)
My experience as to the extent to which we "help" the displaced: A few years ago, I was laid off from a technology company. Around that same time, the manufacturing arm of the company was outsourced to Mexico. As a result, a petition was submitted to allow us displaced workers to fall within the Trade Adjustment Assistance Reform Act of 2002 (TAA), and the petition was approved. I won't summarize the benefits that a worker gets; suffice it to say that it's like unemployment benefits on steroids, designed to cushion the blow for employees who have seen free trade take away their livelihoods.
One of the kickers was that there was substantial training benefits, the kind that Reich and many others believe is the key to helping the victims of the new economy. But those benefits are confined to training for "suitable employment," which is code for a job that pays 80% or more of the previous wage. For a software engineer like myself, the idea that I could find a training course that would be completed in the benefit timeframe, and pay 80% of my previous compensation, was ludicrous.
Even for some well-paid, union-protected factory workers, the idea was a joke. The training for hairdressing or home health care work was inaccessible, because those jobs paid too little.
One more joke on top: the program ran out of money fairly quickly, so, even among the people who could qualify, not all received benefits.
We talk about instituting programs to help people, and they end up poorly-designed and ineffective. Why? Because, ultimately, we don't care about this issue. Instead, we blame the victims, not realizing that we could be next (I certainly didn't worry too much about the loss of manufacturing jobs, so I can't be shocked that those folks don't work up too much sympathy when computer jobs sail out after them). Where will this process stop? When the representatives of the people stop posturing, understand the issues, and take action. I'm not holding my breath.
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