[NJFAC] Where jobs have been destroyed by trade, people react politically

The paper referred to below is available at http://www.ddorn.net/papers/ADHM-PoliticalPolarization.pdf

Where Jobs Are Squeezed by Chinese Trade, Voters Seek Extremes

By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ and QUOCTRUNG BUI APRIL 25, 2016
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Disenchantment with the political mainstream is no surprise. But research to be unveiled this week by four leading academic economists suggests that the damage to manufacturing jobs from a sharp acceleration in globalization since the turn of the century has contributed heavily to the nation's bitter political divide.
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Cross-referencing congressional voting records and district-by-district patterns of job losses and other economic trends between 2002 and 2010, the researchers found that areas hardest hit by trade shocks were much more likely to move to the far right or the far left politically.

"It's not about incumbents changing their positions," said David Autor, an influential scholar of labor economics and trade at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and one of the paper's authors. "It's about the replacement of moderates with more ideological successors."

Mr. Autor added: "In retrospect, whether it's Trump or Sanders, we should have seen in it coming. The China shock isn't the sole factor, but it is something of a missing link."....

--   June Zaccone  National Jobs for All Coalition  http://www.njfac.org