Get used to it: sending jobs overseas is the way of the future

Free trade groupthink is elevated to a new and disturbing level.

Matt Wade, Get used to it: sending jobs overseas is the way of the future

ASIA'S economic transformation has been very good to Australia ...

But we can't expect the ''Asian century'' will always suit us. It won't be one-way traffic. This has been underscored by the Off-shore and Off Work report prepared for the Finance Sector Union and the Australian Services Union by the National Institute of Economic and Industry Research. It estimates 80,000 service-sector jobs have been moved overseas in the past four years and predicts hundreds of thousands more will go in the next three decades.

Occupations most at risk include those in information technology, administration, and jobs in finance and insurance and the professional, scientific and technical services sectors...

The author of the government's ''Asian century'' white paper and a former Treasury boss, Ken Henry, says Australians must get over their hostility to business moving offshore. In a recent speech he said companies that had defined themselves as Australian, must begin looking at themselves as regional, and that offshoring would be a key source of productivity growth ...

... Governments should help workers adjust to economic changes, not waste money trying to hold back the tide.

Gobsmacked. Maybe, just maybe, you could make the case for a net gain in jobs or real income through free trade (though I doubt it). But is the chaos, uncertainty and change really worth saving a few pennies? I think not. And Chinese goods are not cheap anyway if we have to spend buckets to counter their military and cyberwar.

Fortunately I've just discovered the sober writing of economist Clyde Prestowitz who is busting out of the free trade groupthink. I'll follow with some of his articles.

File under: fatalism par excellence.