Live With It: The Conventional Wisdom on Being Displaced by an Eight-Year-Old

The July 31, 2008 installment of The Diane Rehm Show included a segment captioned "The Future of Free Trade." It included some revealing commentary from several think-tank gurus, including Claude Barfield from the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research.

At one point during the show, a caller from Detroit asked how Michigan could return to economic prominence. Mr. Barfield's nutshell answer: stop making cars and start doing something else. Terse as it may be, could there be a anymore of an American mantra than to stop whining and get a job? I think I can hear Ben Franklin chuckling on the set of Ghost Hunters.

Free trade can't be stopped, I'll concede that. And with it, comes a necessity and responsibility to adapt to structural economic changes. Here's my question, what would happen if someone handed Mr. Barfield a shovel and said, "Start digging, I've got a nice shiny silver dollar for you when you're finished." Probably the same scenario that would follow if someone posed the question to me: "Here's a #1 sign with my middle finger." Factory workers don't like the idea of becoming retirement home nurses anymore than a kitty would like the idea of swimming the English Channel.

So what is there to do? We here calls for fair trade from my blue brethren in the Democratic Party, but does anyone know what fair trade is? The concept is not only rooted in backwards-thinking, it's as nebulous as the "green" label.

The energy initiative proposed by Mr. Obama is a step in the right direction. Infrastructure and energy certainly provide a more attractive and socially beneficial solution than working at Home Depot. But we can't build every energy project in Michigan. We need a mechanism to ensure that displaced workers and their families have the means and incentive to relocate. We also need a long-term plan for adjusting to future trade agreements, one that ensures human capital isn't rendered obsolete overnight. What that is, I don't know. I suspect it would begin with a focus on less manufacturing and more on services, research and development, government-sponsored energy projects, and civil service initiatives. Whatever form it takes, it will be better than our present no-plan-no-problem strategy.

It may be dynamic and it may be complex, but the future of the displaced worker is something that America must confront now as opposed to later. Otherwise, it won't be long before our national "Starbucks conversation" mirrors the "golden age" discussions taking place at the UAW union houses in Michigan.

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