November 14, 2014
A NYT article on the G-20 summit describes the goal of such meetings:
“World leaders would work together to remove the roadblocks to economic progress, including corruption, trade restrictions and regulations that discourage hiring and firing.”
Actually the United States has been working hard in international negotiations to increase barriers to trade in the form of patent and copyright protection. These barriers can raise prices of drugs and other products by several thousand percent above their free market price, draining money out consumers’ pockets. The United States has even been encouraging such perverse practices as extending the length of copyright protection retroactively, in effect trying to give people in the past more incentive to produce creative work.
It is also worth noting that it is questionable whether protections against firing have much impact on hiring and growth. According to the OECD, Germany ranks near the top in the strength of its employment protection. It also has the lowest unemployment rate of any major economy. There is little or no correlation between employment and unemployment rates and the strength of employment protections.
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