What Do We Owe Displaced Workers?

With the economy emerging as the central issue in the presidential primaries (cited by an overwhelming 55% of Republican voters in Michigan as the most important issue, with the war in Iraq and immigration coming in at distant second and third places, respectively), "anxious" has become the adjective-du-jour to describe how middle-class Americans are feeling about the future. Sluggish wages, rising health care costs, the mortgage crisis and an uncertainty about the benefits of globalization are all contributing to a widespread sense of unease that candidates are trying to address through various economic policies.

And although Democrats and Republicans often differ fundamentally about what the role of government should be in supporting Americans going through tough times, the frontrunners are remarkably aligned in their positions on one particular source of this anxiety: Americans who have lost their jobs due to outsourcing. Mitt Romney
John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama all support some version of worker education and retraining programs for those displaced by trade.

The positions of the Republican candidates, however, were lambasted in the New York Times today in "What to Expect When You're Free Trading," an Op-Ed by Steven Landsburg, a professor of economics at University of Rochester who dismisses the argument that worker retraining is a moral issue the government should put resources into, writing, "Even if you've lost your job, there's something fundamentally churlish about blaming the very phenomenon that's elevated you above the subsistence level since the day you were born." While I believe that his argument does indeed exhibit a lack of moral imagination for the plight of displaced American workers, the question at the core of his piece is nonetheless an important one: "What do we owe those fellow citizens?"

Putting aside the broader issue of the social contract for now, even if you do not believe we have a moral imperative to help Americans who have lost their jobs due to forces beyond their control, the economic imperative is undeniable. Put another way, what does our country lose by NOT retraining workers, many of whom have lost jobs in the prime of their lives? Years of lost productivity. Declining house values in communities abandoned by industry. Strained public services. Families breaking apart under the strain of unemployment. And so on. That an economist would argue against worker retraining programs boggles the mind.

This is a rare instance in which all the major candidates are united on an important domestic policy issue. And while their ultimate policies may differ, the impulses behind them--that everyone deserves a second chance, that American workers need skills that allow them to be more flexible in the job market, and that government should invest in its workers--should be embraced as economically, but also morally, correct.