[Mb-civic] Feeling No Pain By PAUL KRUGMAN

[Michael Butler]

The New York Times
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March 6, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Feeling No Pain
By PAUL KRUGMAN

President Bush's main purpose in visiting India seems to have been to
promote nuclear proliferation. But he also had some kind words for
outsourcing. And those words help explain something that I know deeply
puzzles the administration's political gurus: Mr. Bush's dismal polling on
economic issues.

Now the American economy isn't doing as well as Bush partisans think it is.
In fact, since the end of the 2001 recession, the recovery in jobs, output
and especially wages has been unusually weak by historical standards. Still,
the economy is expanding, so it's impressive just how large a majority of
Americans disapproves of Mr. Bush's economic management.

Why doesn't Mr. Bush get any economic respect? I think it's because most
Americans sense, correctly, that he doesn't care about people like them.
We're living in a time when many Americans are feeling economically
insecure, but a tiny elite has been growing incredibly rich. And Mr. Bush's
problem is that he identifies so totally with the lucky, wealthy few that in
unscripted settings he can't manage even a few sentences of empathy with
ordinary Americans. He doesn't feel your pain, and it shows.

Here's what Mr. Bush said in India, when someone raised the question of the
political backlash against outsourcing: "Losing jobs is painful, so let's
make sure people are educated so they can find ‹ fill the jobs of the 21st
century. And let's make sure that there's pro-growth economic policies in
place. What does that mean? That means low taxes; it means less regulation;
it means fewer lawsuits; it means wise energy policy."

O.K., so you're a 50-year-old worker whose job has just been outsourced, and
Mr. Bush tells you that you should go get a 21st-century education and
rejoice in the joys of a lawsuit-free economy. Uh-huh.

Actually, Mr. Bush's remarks were even more off-key than they seem, coming
during a visit to India. India's surge into world markets hasn't followed
the pattern set by other developing nations, which started their export
drive in low-tech industries like clothing. Instead, India has moved
directly into industries that advanced countries like the United States
thought were their exclusive turf. When Business Week put together a list of
areas "where India has made an impact ... and where it's going next," that
list consisted almost entirely of high-technology activities like software
and chip design.

What this means is that American workers whose jobs are threatened by Indian
competition are, in many cases, people who thought they already had acquired
the skills to "fill the jobs of the 21st century" ‹ but have just discovered
that Indians, who are paid about a tenth as much, also have those skills.

Am I saying that we should try to stop outsourcing? No. But if you don't
feel conflicted about the effects of globalization, if you don't worry about
the many losers from the process, you aren't paying attention. And American
workers deserve a better answer to their concerns than yet another assertion
that a rising tide raises all boats, because that's manifestly untrue.

The fact is that we're living in a time when most Americans are seeing
little if any benefit from overall income growth, because their share of the
economic pie is falling. Between 1979 and 2003, according to a recent
research paper published by the I.R.S., the share of overall income received
by the bottom 80 percent of taxpayers fell from 50 percent to barely over 40
percent. The main winners from this upward redistribution of income were a
tiny, wealthy elite: more than half the income share lost by the bottom 80
percent was gained by just one-fourth of 1 percent of the population, people
with incomes of at least $750,000 in 2003.

And those fortunate few are the only people Mr. Bush seems to care about.
Look at what he had to offer after asserting, in effect, that workers get
outsourced because they don't have the right education: lower taxes,
deregulation and fewer lawsuits. Funny, that doesn't sound like "pro-growth"
policy to me. Instead, it sounds like a wish list for wealthy individuals
and big corporations.

Mr. Bush once joked that his base consisted of the "haves and the
have-mores." But it wasn't much of a joke. His remarks in India show that he
really can't imagine what it's like not to be a member of a privileged
economic elite.

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