The new iPod is the reason why we must trade with China

The scary thing about free trade is that you lose control. But really the only way to gain control is to lose it. We have been trading heavily with China since they entered the WTO in the late 90's under Bill Clinton. The point to outsourcing is to lower costs here by sending work abroad to lower cost wage earners thereby boosting those smaller economies. The problem is that we are hemmoraging jobs waiting for those other countries to have enough of our money to buy some of our stuff thereby balancing out the whole thing and creating a larger customer base for our products. And all we do is worry about the jobs we're losing instead of the jobs we should be making. The untold part of the freetrade story is that in order for this to succeed we have to keep inventing. If inventions stopped today and we lived in the economy we have now forever, then free trade would just not work. But we are no longer a textile industry, or even an industrial state at all. We're even moving past the service industry. But every time jobs would move down the ladder we'd have new jobs waiting. And Apple is a great metaphor for the larger picture. First there was the iPod and it was good. But then people started wondering what the hell apple could do to stay on top, then it got smaller and then it got better battery life, then it got color. Today apple introduced the video iPod and people are scooping them up. So if we could just believe that our economy will keep bettering itself the way we believe apple does then free trade just becomes a no brainer. The industry of tomorrow is what we need to prepare for. America's industry needs to start acting like Apple's R&D department. That means investments in education, science, math, grant projects, missions to mars, whatever the horizon hints at we'd better go there or some guy in India is going to call up customer service and hear some guy with a Brooklyn accent saying, "Yeah, how can I help you."