Daniel Drezner says Must be a full moon, because I agree with Robert Reich:
Mickey Kaus links to this Robert Reich commentary that took my breath away because it was both blunt and correct. The key parts:The only problem with this and all other economic analysis is the poor quality of economic data. As for China, I've noted before that they apparently make it all up. That being said, the idea that manufacturing employment is falling worldwide just as agricultural employment fell throughout the developed world in the last century has a variety of interesting implications. If we don't grow food and we don't make stuff, what do we do? I'm going for overrated and annoying conceptual artist myself.America has been losing manufacturing jobs to China, Latin America and the rest of the developing world. Right? Well, not quite. It turns out that manufacturing jobs have been disappearing all over the world. Economists at Alliance Capital Management in New York took a close look at employment trends in 20 large economies recently, and found that since 1995 more than 22 million factory jobs have disppeared.
In fact, the United States has not even been the biggest loser. Between 1995 and 2002, we lost about 11 percent of our manufacturing jobs. But over the same period, the Japanese lost 16 percent of theirs. And get this: Many developing nations are losing factory jobs. During those same years, Brazil suffered a 20 percent decline.
Here’s the real surprise. China saw a 15 percent drop. China, which is fast becoming the manufacturing capital of the world, has been losing millions of factory jobs.
What’s going on? In two words: Higher productivity.
