Free Trade That Tosses People Aside

Re “Trade Paves Path to U.S. Prosperity,” Opinion, Feb. 1: Mack McLarty’s mathematical apologia for unbridled free trade may make sense to global companies whose interests it would serve but not to the 3 million American workers whose jobs have gone offshore. The cold justifications of math are not distracted by human consequences, which must be the major concern of economics. One cannot number-crunch away the misery of 3 million families whose sustaining wages now speak another language.

The only bottom line that counts here involves the human dreams and needs that economics is supposed to serve. As Enron and its like taught, the benefits of head office bookkeeping do not always trickle down.

Dick Guttman

Malibu

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In his core argument in favor of increased “free trade,” McLarty predicts that some day perhaps a billion Chinese and other citizens in the developing world will be “eager to drink Pepsi, wear Levi’s, Instant Message on AOL, get their Bruce Springsteen CDs from Amazon delivered by UPS and read Rolling Stone magazine at their neighborhood Starbucks.” I could not have made a better argument against it.

Al Meyerhoff

Los Angeles