Trade and the Mankiw Quote

At a recent Liberty Fund conference I had an interesting discussion with Tom Palmer about how free traders could better characterize their positions in the popular press. That conversation seems very relevant now with Greg Mankiw's recent quote about job loss being good in the long run.

The problem is not just that this stuff sounds bad, it's that political demagogues like Pat Buchanan pick up this stuff and twist it around. I was thinking this morning how I would have responded to the question about outsourcing as someone who's a bit more sensitive to politics. I suppose I would have said that short-term losses are tough, especially for those lossing their jobs. But I also would have pointed out that the U.S. economy has benefitted tremendously from the increases in efficiency that have accompanied economic changes for hundreds of years. George Will makes the case much more eloquently than I could in this New York Post op-ed this morning.

Still I wonder about how easy it is to make the long-term case in politics at all. We know that social spending comes back to haunt us, that Social Security is a lead weight around the neck of future generations, that all sorts of things have long term costs. Can we ever hope voters will look past the short-term?