Word: trading
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Free trade is always a hard sell. In all of social science, the proposition that comes closest to being scientific, in terms of being theoretically provable and true in real life, is that a society benefits from allowing its citizens to buy what they wish--even from foreigners. But people resist this conclusion, sometimes violently, as in Seattle last week...
...couple of reasons. First, the principle of free trade may be true, but it's not obviously true. In fact, it's counterintuitive. If a factory shuts down because of a flood of cheap foreign products, how is that good? If middle-class Americans find themselves competing with foreigners being paid practically nothing and living in squalor, how can this send Americans' standard of living up and not down? If another nation is willing to pollute its air and water in order to produce goods for sale in the global economy, how can America join that economy and still hope...
...these questions, but they take a bit of background and a bit of persuading. Students of economics are led step by step through layers of reasoning until the moment they see the light. Skeptics think that the whole routine is like induction into a religious cult and that free trade is more like an article of religious faith than a sound policy recommendation. These skeptics are wrong, but their skepticism is understandable...
...other reason it's hard to sell free trade is that any given example tends to benefit a lot of people in small ways that are hard to identify and tends to harm a few people a lot in ways that are vividly evident. When that factory shuts down, the unemployed workers know they've suffered a loss, and they know why. And it's a big enough loss to stir them politically. It will affect their vote at least, if not cause them to march in the streets...
...contrast, budget-conscious clothes shoppers (maybe those same workers) who are able to save a few bucks on a new sweater are not likely to realize they are enjoying a bargain as a result of global trade or to take to the streets to defend their right to a cheap sweater. Or suppose the U.S. slaps a tariff on foreign sweaters and the foreign country retaliates by raising a tariff on something we're selling them--the people who would lose their jobs aren't even identifiable for sure, though for sure they exist. Likewise the people who lose jobs...