In the abstract I agree with the point that Paul Krugman makes in his most recent New York Times column:
I don’t want to sound unsympathetic to miners and industrial workers. Yes, their jobs matter. But all jobs matter.
Yes, all jobs matter. Yes, we should be concerned about retail clerks as well as miners and assembly line workers.
On the other hand it seems to me that there are some important distinctions to be made. For example, here are some average wages:
If we lose 1,000 coal miner jobs and they’re replaced by 1,000 jobs in retail sales, that’s not an even swap. It’s $34 million in earnings less to middle income workers.
Additionally, when the loss of jobs is a consequence of policy as is the case with many dirty or dangerous jobs that have departed our shores in all likelihood never to return it’s different from retail which we’ve done everything we could to prop up for the last couple of decades.
I wouldn’t expect there to be large productivity differences between coal miners in the US vs China, just to pick an example, but I honestly don’t know. If there isn’t, I don’t see how we keep the jobs here.
Steve