Ahiakpor asks a reasonable and useful question: "what's the problem"
if a hypothetical outsourcing of economics jobs were actually to
occur (on a massive scale) from the United States (say) to India
(say), where the real compensation for such work would be much, much lower.
Not being an economist, I can but meekly answer that as I understand
"mainstream" economics now, here the principles of its trade theory,
according to these principles, there would be no problem. Consumers
of what economists produce would get cheaper results, which would
make them more "satisfied," and economists in India would receive
more compensation than before, which would make them more "satisfied"
too; win, win.
But being a historian, I have found in the past that the fact of an
ox gored, or a job exported, often moves the loser to new convictions
about what is just--and then sometimes even to new convictions about
what is real and true (science).
This is all (at least for the time being) purely hypothetical, what
I've read they used to call a "thought exercise." But I do wonder if
what is now U.S. economics science would change--if U.S. economists
saw the jobs in their profession massively outsourced to India. I
imagine it's a question with no answer in this science, which
couldn't change whatever happened to its scientists in one place or
another. Nevertheless, I suspect a historian in the future would see
economic thought here changing. If there could be no problem in the
science, it would nevertheless arise in the history of the science.
John Womack
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