David Brooks is yet again touting the merits of the current path of globalization in the NYT. While he's welcome to embrace a policy that has led to wage stagnation for the bulk of the U.S. workforce and weak growth for most of the developing world (although the growth story for those who ignore conventional liberalization policies such as China, India, and more recently much of South America, is good), he doesn't get to label himself an advocate of free markets and populists as opponents of free markets. Brooks and people like him benefit from the fact that the United States has a large number of protectionist barriers that prevent the most highly educated workers (e.g. doctors, lawyers, economists, journalists etc.) from having to directly compete with their less highly paid counterparts in the developing world. Because these people largely control the media, they can get away with denying that such barriers exist and claiming that they are doing well simply because they are so highly skilled. (I would get arrested for setting up the Wal-Mart Times, which would hire very smart Indian reporters and pay them half the wages of the NYT reporters. That would still be many times as much as they could earn in India.) Brooks also supports patent protection for prescription drugs which leads to enormous economic waste and bad medicine. He supports copyright protection for Bill Gates and other rich software entrepreneurs, as well as his buddies in the entertainment industry. These are huge departures from a free market. It would be great if the NYT would get a columnist who would go beyond name-calling and debate the real issues, but hey, that could undermine its protection from the market.
--Dean Baker
