There is a story, perhaps apocryphal, that Milton Friedman was touring the Chinese countryside when he came upon a government
project where workers were digging a canal. Friedman was surprised that
instead of bulldozers and modern earth-moving equipment, the workers
were using shovels and wheelbarrows. Thinking this was remarkably
inefficient, he asked the bureaucrat in charge of the project why this
was so. “You don’t understand,” the bureaucrat responded. “This is a
jobs program.” “Oh,” Friedman replied, “I thought you were trying to
build a canal. If jobs are all you care about, take away their shovels
and give them spoons.”
One wishes that Mitt Romney would display a bit of Friedman’s common sense in responding to the silly controversy over outsourcing
at Bain Capital companies. Instead of defensive technical explanations
about when he left the active management of Bain Capital, Romney should
point out the central fallacy of Obama’s argument. Contrary to the
president’s complaints, outsourcing is generally good for America.As Friedman pointed out, economic policy is not about preserving every single job that currently exists at any cost. Rather, it should be about creating general prosperity. The United States once had a thriving buggy-whip industry. Would we be better off if we had blocked development of the automobile in order to preserve those jobs?
Read more: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/309597/romney-s-chance-embrace-outsourcing-michael-tanner
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