I always ask for the impossible. Anne Applebaum had a column in the Washington Post celebrating the fact that Europeans are now freely moving across national borders. She sees this free movement of people as victory over French unions and Polish bureaucrats. The Europeans can decide for themselves how much freedom of movement across borders they want, but there is something infuriating about someone who benefits from the lack of this freedom in the United States ridiculing those who want similar protection for themselves. Suppose I set up the Washington True Scoop across the street from the Washington Post, and hired smart English speaking reporters and columnists from the developing world at salaries in the $20k-$30k range. Since this would be a very good wage for a reporter from the developing world, I am sure that I would have no problem staffing it with people who are far smarter and more qualified than the folks currently at the Post. It may take them a few months to get fully up to speed in Washington, but with the money that I saved on paychecks, I could easily get by with a training period. I could then hugely undercut the Post on ad rates and newspaper prices. Folks like Anne Applebaum would either have to take big pay cuts or look for a new line of work. But, this won�t happen because I would get thrown in jail for setting up the Washington True Scoop. It is illegal to hire reporters and columnists without some pretext of paying them the prevailing wage. You can only do that if you�re hiring dishwashers and custodians, people like Anne Applebaum are protected from international competition. It is a bit disgusting to see people like Anne Applebaum, Thomas Friedman, Sebastian Mallaby, David Brooks and hundreds of others, trash workers for wanting the government to protect jobs that offer far more modest income and benefits than this group of columnists receive. When we see the columns and editorials demanding that I be allowed to open the Washington True Scoop and that the protections for highly paid professionals be eliminated, then we can take �free traders� seriously. Until then, everyone should call these folks what they are, �protectionists.�
--Dean Baker
