BRAD DELONG writes that worries over outsourcing are misplaced and — sounding almost Hayekian — suggests that the cure would be worse than the disease: ” Given the all-thumbs hand the U.S. government has to try to guide industrial development through tools other than maintaining the infrastructure of a market society and the provision of basic research and other public goods, it is hard to imagine that the costs to the country as a whole will not greatly outweigh the benefits.”

Indeed. But even if you think a problem isn’t a problem, or that addressing it would make it worse, that doesn’t mean it won’t be an election issue.

UPDATE: Here’s more proof on the issue, as a reader emails:

I don’t know if you’ll read this message because of the e-mail viruses, but I had to comment on outsourcing. My property management company in Atlanta that manages VA foreclosures, is about to be outsourced. Hundreds of companies around the country, as well as hundreds of VA employees will be displaced shortly. The lovely Clinton administration decided to put the VA’s Property Management Division under the auspices of the VA Hospital System (???). The failing VA hospital system didn’t want anything to do with it, and they commissioned the same consulting firm that helped the HUD Property Management system become a fiasco. The consultants recommended virtually the same system that HUD had implemented – privatization – which has been very inefficient and costly. OCWEN, a Florida corporation, was the winning bidder for the VA job. According to their website, OCWEN utilizes staff in India. Hundreds of Americans will be losing their jobs and companies, and many will be replaced by workers in India. Fortunately, most of the displaced VA employees have been offered other government jobs. It seems ironic that the Department of Veterans Affairs will be outsourcing to a company using foreign labor.

I don’t know anything about this, but it seems like the kind of thing that could be turned into a campaign issue.