Honesty Not the Best Policy

Matthew Yglesias argues, if you want to call it that

Indeed, I would say it’s the very fact that a lot of people can lose jobs do to perfectly fair international competition that actually makes the case for financial assistance. If the problem was malfeasance of some kind, the right solution would be to halt the malfeasance. The main issue is that in a technologically and socially dynamic world, fair competition leads to people suffering economic hits through no fault of their own. This is one of several reasons why it’s important to have public services and a social safety net. Even people who do everything right—acquire skills, work hard, etc.—can be subject to large and unpredictable negative shocks to their value as a worker.

By fair competition he means what now?  Artificially low wages through denial of labor organization, lax or no environmental regulation? This is Walker's preferred method of job creation.  He can, he thinks, lure business here from elsewhere by destroying unions, lowering taxes, ignoring environmental concerns, and, generally, returning Wisconsin to the 19th century.

Somebody made the point once that the more horrific your desired end the more likely you will use obfuscatory language to mask the horror. In plain language, Yglesias means that if you let profit maximization rule the roost people get screwed out of jobs because somewhere someone is willing to participate in a race to the bottom.  However we can't, he suggests, do anything about the underlying problem because

Halting all the possible sources of these shocks would be disastrous to economic growth.

What does this mean? If we create a system that distributes the benefits more equitably the economy will cease "growing," where growing is a placeholder for fewer people getting ever more money while more people work for company script. That's growth we can believe in.

But refusing to acknowledge the reality and pervasiveness of this kind of misfortunate treats people unfairly and pushes political activity in the direction of rent-seeking.

I ask what does this mean?