Protecting and saving

Question

"Shifts do cause pain, however, to workers and owners in low productivity industries. But protection often costs consumers so much, the government would do better to directly compensate the displaced workers and pay to retrain them. Protecting one steelmaker's job cost over $100,000, while 'saving' a shoemaker's job costs $77,000 in the early 1980s. Further, the logic of protection points toward economic stagnation. Most industries and inventions that have raised our standard of living have forced others out of their jobs."

I am not quite sure what the highlighted sentence meant to say...;;;Is that even correct Enlish?

Avangi · Accepted Answer

"Shifts do cause pain, however, to workers and owners in low productivity industries. But protection often costs consumers so much, the government would do better to directly compensate the displaced workers and pay to retrain them. Protecting one steelmaker's job cost over $100,000, while 'saving' a shoemaker's job costs $77,000 in the early 1980s. Further, the logic of protection points toward economic stagnation. Most industries and inventions that have raised our standard of living have forced others out of their jobs."

I am not quite sure what the highlighted sentence meant to say...;;;Is that even correct Enlish?

I think it's safe to assume that both figures applied in the '80's. Therefore the verbs in both clauses should be in past tense. The second one, "costs" is clearly incorrect, especially since "in the early 1980's" is part of the second clause. The verb must be past tense.
You could argue that grammatically the 1980's phrase doesn't have to modify the first clause, but that one's in the past tense anyway.

"Protection" is usually in the form of "protective tariffs," or import taxes on foreign goods which compete with our manufacturers. These "increased costs" for the goods are passed on to the consumer.
"Protecting" and "saving" are synonymous in the two clauses.

The tag about technological unemployment describes a totally different type of unemployment than the first part of the paragraph, which refers to foreign comptetition through cheap labor.

In your underscored sentence, the cost of saving/protecting the jobs is born by the consumer, while your author's suggestion is to forget about the jobs and pay the workers off with taxpayer's money.
The taxpayers are the consumers, but he's saying it's much cheaper to let the jobs go and put the workers on welfare. (That's the way I read it.)

Protecting and saving

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