Does Free Trade Exploit the Poor?

Where does the foreign oil come from, daddy?

Seems like our Canadian brethren supply us with quite a bit of black gold. When presidential candidates mouth off the usual populist cant against foreign oil, most people think of the middle east. I wonder if the Japanese, Chinese, or Germans put as much effort to demonizing foreign oil as much as we do?

Milton Friedman on opportunity

HT: Liberty Pen

The Wisdom of Children

Don’t mess with Texas

A quick look at the graph above will illustrate that the Texan economy is on a roll, folks. Mark J. Perry of Carpe Diem writes the following about the hot Texan economy:

Texas employment has increased in 56 out of the last 60 months, and has increased by +238,700 jobs over the last 12 months, compared to only a +77,000 net increase in jobs nationwide since May 2007. The chart above shows that overall U.S. employment is up by about 5% since 2000, while Texas employment has increased by 13.5% during the same period (1.26 million new jobs).

When Barack Obama talks about how free trade (NAFTA) has hurt Ohio’s economy, he always fails to mention Texas and how it has benefited by NAFTA. Ohio’s economic pain is simply self-inflicted. Maybe other states that are struggling need to model their state economies a little more like the Lone Star state.

True Progressivism

From Don Boudreaux over at Café Hayek

According to today's Wall Street Journal, Barack Obama alleges that "Globalization and technology and automation all weaken the position of workers." If this presidential wannabe is correct, then some of the world's most prosperous workers must be the people in that newly discovered tribe in Brazil -- persons with absolutely no contact with the global economy or with modern technology.

Less extreme cases, of course, include persons not so cut off from the world as these Brazilian tribes. Sub-Saharan Africans should be more prosperous than eastern Europeans, who, in turn, should be more prosperous than Americans and western Europeans.

Of course, if the facts don't follow this pattern, then I guess that Sen. Obama will soon publicly apologize for either misspeaking or admit that his thesis is flawed.

Comment: The Democrats have been bashing free-trade at every turn as if it were the worst thing since the plague: Attempting to re-negotiate free-trade treaties will not bolster our image either. And “fair-trade” is just a code word for protecting union interests over the interests of everybody else. Maybe if we all went back to running around in loin cloths and put an end to globalization and technology would we get the worker equality that Barack speaks of.