Lou Dobbs is Off Base

I just read this article that Lou Dobbs wrote on Feb. 21 and I have to refute some of his points.

The Democratic Leadership Council is obviously frightened that my brand
of independent populism is a threat. The council claims that I, and those who
agree with me, "are simply, factually, decisively wrong about the strength of
the U.S. manufacturing economy itself," and that the more than three million
jobs lost in manufacturing are a testament to corporate America's
technology-based efficiency, not outsourcing and offshoring to cheap foreign
labor markets. Then why are foreign-produced imports rising so dramatically and taking an ever-larger share of many of the most important sectors of our
economy?

I think Dobbs discounts the lower prices that Americans pay for these foreign produced imports and how that savings contributes to the middle class. If you save money on a TV that is manufactured cheaper in China then that money goes to buy other things and pay bills. This free trade dividend is almost always forgotten when people talk about foreign made goods. Dobbs just looks at the bad things behind cheap manufacturing but never looks at the good things for both the US and the Chinese. We get cheap goods and they get a better standard of living. I thought Progressives like Dobbs want people to do better in other parts of the world?

Also I think Dobbs also doesn't understand that the people that held these 3 million lost manufacturing jobs didn't just disappear off the face of the earth. Quite a few of these Americans found jobs in other sectors of the economy. That means the unemployment rate has actually been dropping in the last few years. It went from 5.7 in 2002 to 4.6 in 2006. So it seems that quite a few of these people aren't making stereos in a factory but are doing construction, working in front of a computer, or are working for some big corporation. In other words doing knowledge based jobs instead of manufacturing.

About one-third of the families in this country bring in less than
$35,000 of income each year, according to the Census Bureau, a figure that's
nowhere close to ensuring the quality of life and standard of living to which
many Americans have grown accustomed. I fear the American Dream may finally
become the American Pipe Dream.

I don't know what world Dobbs lives in but making $35,000 a year is a decent amount of money and is more then enough to live on for many Americans. Sure they can't afford to drive around in a new car every year and then go home to their McMansion but they should be able to get by pretty well. If the American dream is to own your own home then more and more Americans are actually getting achieving it. Maybe the quality of life and standard of living that Lou Dobbs is accustomed to is different then that of most regular, working Americans. Or maybe the American Dream is different in Dobbs view.