Lost in all the fine and refined analyses ...

Re:  DeLong on Rodrik on Delong on NAFTA - at Equitable Growth

Lost in all the fine and refined analyses ...

... see http://angrybearblog.com/2017/01/trade-agreements-have-harmed-manufacturing-employment.html ...

... seemingly forever out of focua is that most all today's $10/hr US jobs (e.g., Walmart cashier) could plausibly pay more like $20/hr -- with German level union density.  That 45% of today's US workforce is earning $15/hr or less seems to make debating about a few percent more or less available manufacturing jobs blamed on this or that -- far from the defining issue of our time.

And don't forget health care looks like the next manufacturing -- evenly spread everywhere and eventually government funded.

[cut-and-paste]
THE MONEY IS THERE SOMEWHERE

You can't get something from nothing but, believe it or not, the money is there, somewhere to make $10 jobs into $20. Bottom 45% of earners take 10% of overall income; down from 20% since 1980 (roughly -- worst be from 1973 but nobody seems to use that); top 1% take 20%; double the 10% from 1980.

Top 1% share doubled -- of 50% larger pie!

One of many remedies: majority run politics wont hesitate to transfer a lot of that lately added 10% from the 1% back to the 54% who now take 70% -- who can transfer it on down to the 45% by paying higher retail prices -- with Eisenhower level income tax. In any case per capita income grows more than 10% over one decade to cover 55%-to-45% income shifting.

Not to mention other ways -- multiple efficiencies -- to get multiple-10%'s back:
squeezing out financialization;
sniffing out things like for-profit edus (unions providing the personnel quantity necessary to keep up with society's many schemers;
snuffing out $100,000 Hep C treatments that cost $150 to make (unions supplying the necessary volume of lobbying and political financing;
less (mostly gone) poverty = mostly gone crime and its criminal justice expenses.

IOW, labor unions = a normal country.