October 28, 2010
Low cost factory labor allows consumers to benefit from cheaper shoes, clothes, and toys. (These days it also means cheaper computers, aircraft parts, and windmill turbines.) Low paid immigrants from Latin America reduce the price of restaurant meals, hotel rooms, and child care.
The media routinely tout these benefits from globalization. The U.S. workers who may face cuts or unemployment as a consequence are told to get more training and learn to work harder.
This raises the question as why we don’t see a similar celebration at the prospect of an increased supply of lawyers driving down the wages of lawyers and the price of legal services. In fact, a lengthy Slate piece on the increasing supply of lawyers never once mentioned the potential economic gains associated with lower prices to consumers. The prospect of too many lawyers driving down wages in the profession was presented as a problem that should trouble right-thinking right thinking people.
Well, the logic is the same. Those who celebrate the low cost imports from China and the benefits of cheap immigrant labor should also be celebrating the fact that legal services should be costing us less in the future, unless of course they are partial to the relatively affluent types who tend to up as lawyers.
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