Please Tell Me This Isn't True

Job insecurities

SIR – Lexington tried to find some reassurances for blue-collar workers, who are dropping out of the affluent middle class in large numbers (June 6th). He concluded that “there is still hope for blue-collar workers…willing to learn from the calamity that is General Motors”. However, even rueful and sobered workers cannot create jobs: that is mainly the function of investors, who usually want to cut wages and benefits. In the longer run virtually all manufacturing faces an equalisation of factor prices due to the globalisation of trade, a process that will keep pushing American prices and wages well below our current middle-class levels.

Edwin Reubens
Emeritus professor of economics
City University of New York
Weston, Florida

Letter to the Editor of The Economist, June 27, 2009.