Today’s Washington Post has a fascinating piece by Peter Whoriskey about the last factory in America that makes ironing boards. It stays in business in the face of Chinese competition only thanks to the fact that it’s persuaded congress to impose an extremely heavy tax “of 70 to more than 150 percent on its Chinese rivals.” If I proposed a 70-150 percent tax on sugary sodas, there’d be a big political debate about it, but this kind of thing goes unnoticed because it’s filed in people’s “obscure trade dispute” mental box rather than their “taxes” mental box. But make no mistake, it’s a tax and it results in more expensive ironing boards.

A soda tax, of course, would have a public health rationale—less obesity, longer lives. The ironing board tax lacks such a rationale. Instead its purpose is to protect the $15/hour jobs of 200 factory workers along with the profits of Chicago-based Home Products International.

What I would like to say is that this is a bad reason to impose extra costs on those of us who iron things from time to time. That if you repeal the tax, the profits will flow away from Home Products International and toward retailers like Target and Wal-Mart. Consumers will spend less money on ironing boards and will either spend more money on other things, or else will save more money generating extra investment funds. Either way, 200 people will lose their jobs but new jobs will be created from the extra investment and consumption financed by cheaper ironing boards. All-in-all, throughout the economy resources would be better-allocated and the vast majority of people will end up better off.

The problem for me is that with unemployment at nearly 10 percent and projected by the Powers That Be to stay above 8 percent for years it’s really hard for anyone to say with a straight face that if the factory closes down the employees will be able to find new jobs. Those adjustments are always difficult to make, but given healthy labor markets they’re very possible. Given today’s labor market, I don’t think you can say that with a straight face. Which means the longer elevated unemployment persists, the more random trade barriers we’re going to see, not just in this country but in countries all around the world. And over the long haul, that’s going to reduce the world’s overall ability to produce things and earn income.

Something I’ve often pointed out in the context of American manufacturing and the media is that somewhat paradoxically, in a developed economy highly productive sectors often feature massive job losses.

Of course the converse of this is that skyrocketing employment in the health care sector should make us suspicious that the productivity growth in this field is unimpressive. And indeed Austin Frakt pulls out this terrifying chart from David Cutler’s crackerjack paper on organizational innovation in health care, which shows that the health sector is actually getting less productive:

Estimating output in the health sector is hard, so things may be better than this. But then again, estimating output in the health sector is hard so things may be worse than that. Either way, it’s an enormous problem. The government is responsible for shouldering a huge share of the cost of health care, both through direct expenditures and through tax subsidies, so we’re going to bankrupt ourselves unless we turn this around.

Even if polling did say voters are more concerned about the deficit than about the jobs situation, I think it would take a foolish politician to listen to them. Voters respond positively to rising incomes, which will only happen if the labor market tightens. But remarkably, it’s somehow become conventional wisdom in DC that the public wants action on the deficit even in the absence of any clear polling that this is the case.

For example, CBS News asked people (PDF) “What do you think is the most important problem facing this country today?” Gulf oil spill came second. Then the deficit tied with health care for fourth. Number one? Jobs:

Does that mean the public has fully embraced Keynesian economics and would welcome a higher short-term deficit? Probably not. But the point is that if you want to tell people you’re going full steam ahead on jobs, that seems to be about what people want to hear. Substantively, skimping on short-term stimulus doesn’t reduce the growth rate of health costs nor does it slow the aging of the population, so you’re not achieving anything on long-term fiscal challenges.