Posted on 05/20/2016 7:18:57 AM PDT by drop 50 and fire for effect
When it comes to the impact of global trade, the dismal science has done a dismal job explaining how to help workers hurt by globalization.
As a recovering economist writing on behalf of my erstwhile field, I would like to apologize to every American who has lost a job or a livelihood because of globalization. Economics has failed you. It has failed you because of ideology, politics, and laziness. It has failed you because its teachings are woefully incomplete, and its greatest exponents have done almost nothing to complete them.
There are positive questions in economics that have mathematical answers things that simply must be true and then there are normative questions that amount to value judgments on points of policy. In economics classes, we teach the former and usually stop short when faced with the latter. This leaves a hole in any discussion of economic policy; students acquire first principles but rarely consider real-world applications, because to do so would presuppose a social or political point of view.
(Excerpt) Read more at foreignpolicy.com ...
I think there is a legitimate point here, but I am concerned that we will overreact and overuse tariffs as we did with Smoot-Hawley. With disastrous results.
Now that I've pulled the pin on this particular hand grenade, I have to get ready to (ironically) fly overseas to a conference.
The voters are in the process of soundly rejecting the Free Trade theories being spouted by economists for the last 3+ decades.
Perhaps the academics are right. Higher tariffs and Smoot-Hawley 2.0 will lead to disaster.
We are about to find out.
...Keynesian Economics has Failed You...
Fixed It?
KYPD
I always understood that the onus was on the individual to adapt or get left behind. You are not supposed to get a free ride if you can't keep up. It's understood for the aged and the infirm that you would get some help, but not be made "whole". There would be no reason to strive to adapt if you got a full share if you didn't carry a full share of the production.
How can they, when a machinist, et al, is put out of work, not by technology, but by the job suddenly going elsewhere? Tell some factory worker in his 40s or 50s he has to "adapt" by taking on a low-skill/paid service job.
For me, the issue is they insult your intelligence by telling us twenty years ago that NAFTA would keep illegals at home in Mexico because they’ll build factories there to give them jobs - when they knew very well they’d continue to encourage illegal immigration to pad the Democratic voter rolls with gimme policies with money taken from MY pockets.
Here’s the biggest issue with ‘free trade’ - The theory is that it opens markets around the world to US goods. What happens in practice is it opens markets around the world to produce US goods which we then import duty free.
There it is in short. And while they hem and haw over this simple statement, yes, I do know it is too late to close the barn door, the cow’s already gone, but we can certainly put pressure on companies to bring assembly back on shore.
BS! Economics is simply a field of study. Adam Smith wrote the book. David Ricardo took Adam Smith's observations, and twisted them into an evil plot to impoverish and enslave the masses, to the benefit of a few government crooks, using the force of government. Ricardo's deceptions resulted in a century of war and poverty for the UK and continental Europe, unnecessary suffering my hundreds of millions, and stalled the advances of human civilization.
The neo-con RINOs have been pushing Ricardo's snake oil for the past three decades or more. Lying, cheating, stealing, and treason are to blame for the US and other nations' economic woes. People did that; not a field of study.
Formerly respectable economists took their payoffs, and switched their sermons to favor the global thieves. All the "globalism" corruption of economics is the exact sort of corruption that "climate science" is to science and meteorology. People pushing snake-oil theories have to hide data that disagree with their scam, and fabricate data that support the scam.
This author is a member of the CFR, by the way. Have at it.
“Free trade” might be workable, if we weren’t doing everything possible to make starting and running a business here in this country as expensive and difficult as possible.
Statism, collectivism and progressive central planning have failed America.
A super power must own the means of industrial production, raw materials, energy and agriculture...all of which have been devastated in the US.
But the mercantilists in China get it.
Depends: if you are a foreign company thinking of relocating here, they'll waive taxes, fees, interest, rules, etc to make your re-location as easy as possible. If you're an American, of course, you'll be shafted as well as they can.
The neo-cons will throw out Keynes (the Democrat Marxist economic hero) as the scarecrow to defend "globalism", but that is just a distraction.
Adam Smith recognized national borders, and the need for each nation to negotiate international trade to the best interests of their citizens and national interests. Smith's model of economics is real capitalist free trade to the betterment of all nations.
Ricardo, and today's neo-con globalists, ignore national borders and interests, and favor trade agreements that enrich the privileged few, to the detriment of the populations of all the involved nations. This is NOT free trade. It is cronyism. It is simply treason against one's own country, and crimes against humanity for all others. The catch phrases of "comparative advantage" and "creative destruction" are snake-oil sales pitches.
What was the last Chinese car you bought in the US?
China has nothing to do with Detroit’s implosion.
Economics? LOL—you mean criminal fascism (cronyism)economics have.
Those terms you may dislike, but you need to find some other way to describe how VHS “destroyed” Beta, only to be destroyed in turn.
Everyone should read Hazlitt’s “Economics in One Lesson”. Understanding economics is easy because the principles are simple. Economics and trade have not failed anyone.
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