There’s a Sensible Way to Ease Pain of Transition

Joe is an engineer at an aerospace firm. The crumbling of the Soviet empire and the downhill nuclear arms race killed his weapons system. Jack works in a sawmill at the edge of a national forest in the Rocky Mountains. Technological change and environmental efforts to preserve the forest are causing layoffs at the mill. Tom worked for years in a big, antiquated steel mill that failed to compete with imported steel and newer technology. Jane is a waitress in a diner that used to get a lot of business before they put in the new bypass.

These people all work hard to support their families and pay their bills. It is not their fault that the world changed around them and their jobs are threatened. What should society do to help?

Unfortunately, the political system usually does the wrong thing. It tries to obstruct change, often at great cost, especially if the victims of change have political clout.

In the name of “preserving the defense industrial base,” serious folks argue for keeping defense plants running to produce weapons for highly unlikely uses or for sale to countries that may someday aim them at each other--or at us. The security of the United States, however, depends more on a vibrant civilian economy and a rising standard of living than on preserving capacity to produce weapons.

Keeping Joe employed in the defense industry might someday have some spillover to civilian technology, but not nearly as much as putting him to work designing civilian products full time.

In the name of preserving logging and sawmilling as a “way of life,” the government subsidizes timber sales in national forests, often at high altitudes and on steep slopes where replanting is impractical. The result is heavy runoff, erosion, reduced water quality and destruction of fish and wildlife habitat as well as beauty.

The economic future of most forest communities will be much brighter if they preserve their natural beauty, clean air and water, and foster industries that depend on these assets.

In the name of preserving jobs in steel and other import-competing industries, companies and workers argue for import restrictions that keep prices high and punish American consumers and U.S. industries that use the protected products. Protecting the steel industry, for example, has raised costs for the automobile industry and retarded modernization in steel.

Alas for poor Jane. Neither the diner nor its employees have any political clout. No one advocates public subsidies for roadside restaurants, and politicians shed no tears for waitressing as a way of life. Yet there are more Janes--more small silent victims of economic change--than Joes, Jacks and Toms.

Subsidizing the obstruction of change can get expensive. Farm income support, for instance, costs about $12 billion a year, some years considerably more--and that does not count the subsidized water. Farm subsidies serve partly to smooth out the cyclic ups and downs in farm income, but mostly to keep more people and equipment than necessary engaged in farming and to raise the price of food. Most of the money goes to large enterprises, not to the small family farmer. It makes much more sense to use public resources to help people and communities adjust to change and find new ways to be productive than to try to turn back the clock.

Occasionally, the political system figures out that facilitating change is more sensible than trying to stop it. Trade Adjustment Assistance was intended to help workers adversely affected by import competition while they looked for other employment. Training programs have been focused on workers affected by plant closings and declines of regional industry.

So far, however, public efforts to help people adjust to economic change have been sporadic and limited.

But fostering change and easing transitions ought to be a positive broad-scale policy, not an occasional response to special circumstances. In today’s world of rapid scientific advance and increasing global competition, people should regard occasional job and skill changes as desirable, not disastrous. Opportunities for retraining and relocating ought to be available to the Janes of the world, not just to workers with political protectors. Communities also ought to regard adaptation to changes in local industries as normal and have a permanent process of anticipating and adapting to new realities.