Columnist got her facts wrong

To The Editor: Susan Lane’s July 14 column, “Economic foundations need rebuilding,” is full of confused thinking and factual misstatements.

She claims that NAFTA was proposed in the early years of the Clinton administration. It wasn’t. It was negotiated by the first Bush administration. Bill Clinton pushed its ratification despite opposition from many Democrats.

She mistakenly claims that, at the time NAFTA was first proposed, “America still had a strong manufacturing base.” In reality, the manufacturing sector has been in a relative decline for more than 25 years.

This has resulted from fast productivity growth in manufacturing — which has allowed fewer people to produce increased amounts of goods — as well as consumer demands that have leaned toward services as incomes have risen.

Lane is fascinated with manufacturing. In the 1700s, a group of French economists known as Physiocrats thought that agriculture was the only source of wealth. While people obviously need food and fiber, agriculture as a sector has declined relatively for the same reason manufacturing has declined — fast productivity growth and shifting consumer demands.

In the meantime, Americans have enjoyed remarkable increases in their standard of living, owing to the virtues of a market system.

Gene Laber, Ph.D.

Hendersonville

Gene Laber is professor emeritus at the University of Vermont and a consulting economist.