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...
