Diocletian used this logic to nail the feet of “those filthy serfs” to the land for a thousand years. I guess some people never got enough of a good thing. Garfinkle may be Jewish; if so, perhaps that is distorting his values. Many people dislike being tied down.
(As a Jewish American, Garfinkle is likely to be Ashkenazi: his cultural memory of Europe does not involve violent capture and punishment as a valuable chattel that fled the master’s estates. As a member of a once-undesirable class, his cultural memory holds the supremely reluctant honor of a torchlit parade to the borders of the kingdom, not being forced to stay.)
Newsflash: China was a massive labor sink isolated from the West because of Chinese racism and xenophobia, then Red Fascist ideology and good old-fashioned Communist self-genocide. My father and grandfathers did not have to compete against Chinese labor because we lost China to Mao; my great-great grandfathers were spared, to a far lesser extent, by the Manchu.
It is the end and deflation of the biggest market distortion in history that has dropped this unprecedented labor force on us: the end of the Chinese nation’s isolationism and its emergence in the global market. The water is leveling in the glass and it is a hell of a ride. As Michael Barone noted about immigration: China’s supercheap labor market is not some malign dragon we must venture forth and slay with trade guilds and protective tariffs, but a particular product of a particular time. It will end. This painful time for American labor will end. As it is, we are under tremendous pressure and we are quickly shedding our bad habits: overpaid, featherbedding unions, the forced socialism of employer-based health care.
This is Bastiat’s simplest lesson: That which is not seen. Why is economics so hard to some?
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