Hypocrisy is the wrong word, but I’m not sure what the right word is. (BTW, the link took me to an account login page but I’ve read the piece by noted travel writer Paul Theroux.)
It’s a definite social good that China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, etc. have become better off, just as its a definite social evil that so much of the Arab world (and beyond, all the way to Afghanistan) has disintegrated. I think that’s unarguable.
And it’s unarguable that change has cost. I think Theroux is bemoaning the cost of change and our indifference to it. That we are indifferent to the cost is not only undeniable but part of the argument made for change: that it costs but the eventual good outweighs the cost.
Have to note it’s an irony that many free trade agreement supporters, notably of Nafta, were Democrats and opponents were Republicans and one effect has been to hollow out Democratic state union employment thus enabling Republican gains.
But I also think it’s natural to overlook problems closer to you. All countries tend to do this and I doubt we’re worse. It’s easier to simplify issues to something like “x is bad”, removing the complications we know exist for issues in our own neighborhoods, states and country.
Theroux’s piece focuses on the costs here of raising wealth in the rest of the world. He can’t talk about the solution because one argument made in favor of Nafta, etc. is that there is no solution: low cost countries and the globalization of the supply chain have made it easier to shift jobs elsewhere.
But another aspect comes from the two places where I’ve spent most of my life. I grew up just outside Detroit and my family was deeply connected to the city itself. The auto industry was partially decimated by overseas competition, meaning actual imported cars, but what then happened was that jobs went to other parts of the US: as the Japanese, etc. companies expanded into US production, they located where they got tax breaks, utility cost abatements, etc. (and, yes, somewhat lower wages but that is overstated because the UAW negotiated tiers of wages). Intra-US competition has done more to kill Detroit than competition from Asia.
I live now in Boston. The mills of NE were the great industrial plants of the 19thC. They left, first moving south and then overseas. A big reason for the move south, which began in the 1880’s, wasn’t labor cost but proximity to workers and markets. Have to note as well that most of the mills by far were essentially commodity weavers: smaller mills that produced specialty products (higher quality niche fabrics, etc.) remained in the NE (and the South) until the 1960’s-70’s. It’s interesting to note that Italy has retained a fabric cluster by focusing on niche fabrics. People now might argue that NE is, a hundred plus years later, better off for losing the mills - which are now, where standing, converted into office parks, housing, even museums - but it took decades of loss and poverty. And just as importantly: the mill towns themselves were poor back then, back when they produced so much; the capital and the bosses were located in Boston and NYC and some other richer places with the workers filling Lowell and Lawrence.
We are completely unwilling to stop preying on our neighboring states. One of my nephews makes his living arranging for facilities to move to where they can get the best deal. We talk a lot as a nation about competition among the states. There is a cost to that.