Rejoice in Your Liberation (Redux)

For years, Americans have been enjoying the benefits of globalization in the form of reasonably priced footwear. We know, because assholes respected academics like Steven E. Landsburg have been telling us for years, that Americans are "net winners" when jobs are outsourced to far-flung locales, because for what we lose in jobs, we more than make up for in lower prices on consumer goods. Happy are we with this bargain. We skip around the mall in our reasonably priced footwear, content in the knowledge that for every manufacturing job shipped off to Shenzhen we'll save a few bucks on our next pair of Air Rhyolites.

But wait. Something's afoot (groan) in one of those far-flung locales. NYT:

China’s latest export is inflation. After falling for years, prices of Chinese goods sold in the United States have risen for the last eight months.

Soaring energy and raw material costs, a falling dollar and new business rules here are forcing Chinese factories to increase the prices of their exports, according to analysts and Western companies doing business here...

Because of new cost pressures here, American consumers could see prices increase by as much as 10 percent this year on specific products — including toys, clothing, footwear and other consumer goods — just as the United States faces a possible recession.

In the longer term, higher costs in China could spell the end of an era of ultra-cheap goods, as well as the beginning of China’s rise from the lowest rungs of global manufacturing.

This is what's known as not getting the benefit of your bargain, people. So if that bargain was exported jobs for cheap imported goods, and you didn't receive the benefit of your bargain, what remedy are you going to seek? Are you going to demand those jobs be brought back to America? Are you going to stop snapping up those Air Foamposite Ones? Are you going to ask Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama what they're going to do to stop -- and maybe even reverse -- the job bleed? Or are you going to take on a second job, absorb those price increases, and continue to rejoice in your liberation?