The Washington Post has an article discussing plans for "wage Insurance." This is a set of proposals which would provide workers who lose their job and take a new job at lower pay a wage subsidy for a number of years (usually 2-4 years) Many proponents of the Clinton-Bush trade agenda have argued that wage insurance is a way to compensate the losers from trade agreements. Of course, the vast majority of workers who are hurt by the Clinton-Bush trade agreements are not those who lose their job. Since the agreements have been designed to place U.S. manufacturing workers in direct competition with low-paid workers in the developing world, the vast majority of losers are the manufacturing workers, and other non-college educated workers, who have their wages lowered as a result of trade. This is the result of a trade policy that deliberately places less educated workers in competition with workers in the developing world, while still protecting doctors, lawyers and other highly paid professionals. For this reason, wage insurance would provide little comfort to the opponents of recent trade agreements. This point would have been clear to readers if the article had cited any of the critics of wage insurance.
--Dean Baker
