With apologies to a few kind friends of mine and the GOP or Democratic party-If you ask a partisan from the left about inequality you often hear invectives, Reagan and evil rich CEO. If you ask one from the right you hear invectives and “free market” and a sense of outrage about any and all criticism of wealth no matter how it is gained. IMHO, that’s all histrionic bullshit. The people to ask if you want to hunt solutions are economists and statisticians. Now they of course can be wrong but at least they seek to evaluate the numbers rather than political advantage. All the following bold is my addition. My approach is simple-Bring manufacturing back. By almost any means necessary. “Free Trade”=a drop in American income and a raise for a less advanced economy. We can afford some of that, it may be a responsible nation’s obligation to do some of that. But not at the cost of crippling recessions and long term negative income trends.

The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation has estimated that more than 60% of the 5.7 million U.S. manufacturing jobs lost over the last decade were because of rising imports of manufactured goods. The Peterson Institute of International Economics estimates that 39% of the increase in U.S. income inequality is because of this imbalanced trade.

Yet Washington keeps negotiating so-called free-trade agreements that seem to open the U.S. market while leaving others relatively closed. A major reason for this is the classic economists’ argument that the generally lower consumer prices that may arise from imports will exceed the more limited wage losses that may occur in a few specific industries, and therefore, on balance, free trade will always and everywhere be a win-win arrangement. In other words, despite the millions of jobs lost as a result of the rising U.S. trade imbalance, the overall U.S. economy is supposed to be better off today than 10 years ago because of lower prices for consumers. The argument is that the wage losses occur only in a limited number of industries, while the lower prices are available to the entire population.

This simplistic analysis is incomplete and wrong. Its key assumption is that the economy is at full employment. In such a situation, workers who lost jobs in a few industries would lose wages only for a limited period until they found new jobs at the same wages as the old jobs. Thus there would be no overall downward pressure on wages and only limited and temporary wage losses for a relatively small part of the labor force, while the whole population would be benefiting from lower consumer prices.

Well, it is clear now, after a long and deep recession, that the economy is not always at full employment and that even if workers find new jobs, the pay is often lower than at their old jobs. Indeed, most of the jobs created in the last year have been in low-wage industries such as retailing and food service.

More: The All-Too-Real Costs of Free Trade to Average Americans