Why isn’t a recovering economy allowing workers to recover jobs lost over the past two years? Read David Ignatius’ column today and listen to Diane Rheam’s show on WAMU and syndicated nationally. (It’s repeated tonight at 9:00 on WAMU and can be listened to — scroll down to the program for Feb. 24 — on the Internet.)
You can argue, as the Dems have, that we shouldn’t give tax incentives to companies for transferring jobs oversees, but the problems are systemic and won’t be solved by eliminating those incentives.
The problem is that we can’t compete with wage levels overseas, unless we want to pay higher prices for whatever industry we protect. The long-term answer is educating workers for jobs for which we can compete. On Rheam’s show, there’s a good discussion among Jared Bernstein, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, Kevin Hassett, director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, and Jonathan Weisman, economic policy writer for “The Washington Post.” Worth a listen.