Two Years Later, ABC News No More Economically Developed

Some students (we're all students of life, I'd hope) are tougher cases than others.  It's been more than two years since my last post and David Muir and team at ABC News continue bravely reporting on the prosperity created by shrinking the size of our economic world (and helping get this message to those least equipped to question it).  They even had the breathtaking vapidity to travel to Mexico and promote "Made in America"--no mention of why Mexicans should root for "Made in America" rather than, I don't know, "Made in Mexico."  In tonight's edition, one can even hear a faint paean to inefficiency when Mr. Muir concludes his piece (about Winnebagos made in Iowa) with:

"...And a number we love: for every one of those Winnebagos, it takes on average 165 of those dedicated workers to get it on the road..."

My question about this is: what is it about that number that David Muir and his colleagues so adore?  Presumably, it's not that it's small.  Would it be a bad thing, then, if through innovation that number were trimmed to 150?  125?  100?  What if the very same Winnebago could be made in the same amount of time, at no greater (and probably lower) cost, by just 50 dedicated Hawkeye State workers--perhaps 50 Jack Rebneys?  Would that be a net positive for the company?  Iowa?  The country?  Humanity?  Would Diane chime in about what "great news" such ingenuity is?

Forgive me if I find an appreciation of the benefits of doing more with less to be inconsistent with the tenor of the reporting coming out of ABC America World News.  Would that it were "great news" issuing from the dedicated workers at "Made in America."  I hope it doesn't take 165 of them to stitch that segment together.

Ed vs. Claude Frédéric Bastiat

It can be only a pleasant dream, I guess, but wouldn't it be wonderful if Frederic Bastiat could travel 160 or so years forward in time, get a plane ticket to the U.S. and be a guest on The Ed Show (MSNBC) or on a similar forum where cheap labor is still seen as a terrible threat?

Ed: "Big business addiction to cheap labor, in my opinion, is un-American. They have no sense of economic patriotism any more and it seems to me that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce wants to protect American [sic] jobs in India and doesn't give a damn about jobs in Indiana."

Bastiat: "If man were a solitary animal, if he worked solely for himself, if he consumed directly the fruits of his labor—in short, if he did not engage in exchange—the theory of scarcity could never have been introduced into the world. It would be all too evident, in that case, that abundance would be advantageous for him, whatever its source, whether he owed it to his industriousness, to the ingenious tools and powerful machines that he had invented, to the fertility of the soil, to the liberality of Nature, ox even to a mysterious invasion of goods that the tide had carried from abroad and left on the shore. No solitary man would ever conclude that, in order to make sure that his own labor had something to occupy it, he should break the tools that save him labor, neutralize the fertility of the soil, or return to the sea the goods it may have brought him. He would easily understand that labor is not an end in itself, but a means, and that it would be absurd to reject the end for fear of doing injury to the means...But exchange hampers our view of so simple a truth." [Bold added.]

Import more of Frenchman Bastiat's economic wisdom for $0/hour here.