A new Allstate/National Journal poll — accompanied by a piece charmingly titled “We’re No. 2” — reports that the attitudes of Americans are about what you’d expect. Yes, we’re a bit pessimistic these days, but let’s not get fatalistic. The most troubling aspect of the survey isn’t the glumness; it’s how willingly we accept myths that threaten our economic future.
Incredibly, only one in five Americans believes that the U.S. economy is the world’s strongest today — with nearly half of those polled picking China as the strongest power. Only 34 percent of Americans believe that the U.S. will have the world’s strongest economy in two decades and 37 percent believe it will be China.
You don’t have to have blind faith in American exceptionalism to know that the U.S. economy, even with the tribulations of the recent years, is still the richest, most productive and innovative power in the world. The private sector isn’t collapsing (though we’ve certainly hit a bump); others just happen to be gaining on us.
We tend to idealize past successes and too easily turn to base isolationist instincts. According to the poll, rather than embracing the immense opportunities of emerging markets, we fear globalization. Guess what? There is no bailout that is going to stop China and India from continued growth, just as there is no tariff that can stop irritating overachievers in Singapore preschools from acing calculus exams.
Other than “college whites,” the survey sees most Americans viewing international trade as a bad deal for the United States. Not surprising. We can’t go a day without hearing some experts talking about “outsourced,” or the equally chilling, “You know, we don’t make anything anymore.”
Economist Walter Williams provides the best historic rejoinder to this myth. In 1790, he explains, farmers made up 90 percent of the U.S. labor force, and yet by 1900, they made up only 41 percent. By 2008, less than 3 percent of Americans worked in agriculture. Yet, today we have more food than ever — at cheaper prices.
William Strauss at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago recently explained that the same number of Americans are working in the manufacturing sector now — around 14 million — as were in 1950. Yet, there has been a 600 percent increase in output. That’s good news.
It makes no sense for government to prop up non-productive manufacturing jobs any more than it makes economic sense to artificially prop up farmers (oh, I know, we try). We need far fewer people to work those jobs, but it doesn’t mean we don’t make anything. But as Williams succinctly points out, “If the U.S. manufacturing sector were a separate economy, with its own GDP, it would be tied with Germany for the world’s fourth-richest economy in the entire world.”
Eighty percent of Americans told the National Journal that manufacturing was “extremely or very important to U.S. economic growth over the next five to 10 years.” (Manufacturing what?) Sixty-two percent believe it was important for government to help advanced manufacturing industries with “tax incentives and funding.”
How many price-fixing fiascoes does government have to engage in for us to understand that Washington shouldn’t be picking winners in the marketplace? How many wasted dollars will we need to pump into subsidies to understand that the market doesn’t care what we think, that it cares what we buy?
Instead of blaming reality and resisting change — as the new isolationists continue to do — we have to start owning both.
E-mail David Harsanyi at dharsanyi@denverpost.com and follow him on Twitter here.
