[HillaryBriss]

> It worries me that almost no one seems to be thinking about the range of possibilities that might lie at the end of this outsource & optimize for GDP/efficiency/profit, rinse and repeat ad infinitum approach

good point. and even when they do think about lost jobs the best solutions they come up with are feeble.

too often it's poorly funded government worker training wherein middle-aged washing machine plant workers who live in upstate Michigan are supposed to learn to code (or something equally likely to fail for the majority of retrained workers.)

another dubious aspect of this policy is that government officials are somehow supposed to both accurately predict the industries where the economic growth will be and what sort of training these industries will actually require from job hunters. that's really really hard. wall street investment firms are constantly trying to that sort of thing, and it's very difficult to get right.

this is where the globalization story unravels. the replacement careers don't materialize for the displaced workers. so the defense of the policy becomes a loud repetition of "it's great for consumers!"

but, somehow, it's "absurd and irrational" to ask if Walmart/Target/Amazon's massive quantities of cheap imported throw-away garbage (aka "consumer goods") are actually useful at all.