He’s one of those that will never change his mind on the greatness of Emperor Trump. This is pretty clear. Just let him wallow in his self-delusional pile of Donnie shit while he still can.
The tariffs are crippling Michigan industry. Because the tariffs were a good move right @Malathor?
This is the 3rd major manufacturer here in MI going through this. Those positive economic indicators are not going to last if this continues.
Tariffs always fail, because they are just a tax on consumers in America.
For any industry they help (like say, the tiny US steel industry that isn’t already making high end specialized steel), they harm far more US industry.
Either they harm other US industries which use those materials to build their own products, or they increase living expenses for US consumers, which needs to be picked up by their employers in the form of increasing wages (but a meaningless increase, which doesn’t translate to a standard of living increase).
It doesn’t work. Isolationist trade policies are bad.
They are the type of socialist Central planning that conservatives used to recognize as bad. It’s the government saying that our industry should be X instead of Y… Despite the fact that the market has deemed that not to be ideal.
The reason why we have more industries that USE steel than MAKE steel, is because that’s the kind of work we are now competitive at, at the standard of living we demand. When it comes to basic steel, china can make it cheaper. Because they basically use slave labor who will all die before they reach the age of 50. Just like we used to.
Whatever. Take their cheap steel, and make it into stuff. That’s GOOD for us.
Like a wall?
This seems like the general economics thread, for the moment, so…
Go Krugman. If only voters listened to him.
Thank you for that interesting article. It makes sense, except the whole, if you earn 1,000 to the company, get paid 1,000. It seems in reality, most of us earn far more for our corporate office is than we get paid, except the few at the top.
I don’t get why he phrased it like that. By design if we earn $1,000 in wages the company expects that directly or indirectly we have earned the company more than that, otherwise there’s no profit involved and no point in the hire. It only makes sense to hire someone if the value they bring is higher than the value they cost.
Remember, we are talking about the very rich. And I think Krugman is implicitly acknowledging the old adage, “You don’t get rich by working for someone else”.
Except, you know, corporations and other businesses benefit from special legal and social treatment in return for providing goods and services and employment. That last is supposed to be at least as important as profitability, at least from the perspective of the outside. If a corporation can make money without hiring people, why should they get any special treatment at all?
If a corporation’s expenses are not lower than its revenues, that corporation goes out of business.
Yet, somehow, I worked for 9 years for a corporation that was a not for profit enterprise. Over that period of time, expenses were not appreciably lower than revenues. It varied — some years we ran small profits, other years we ran deficits. The goal was to break even to minimize tax obligations, so if we made money one year, we lost it the next. The company employs a thousand people, more or less. We had a moderate reserve relative to our size for contingencies. That corporation is still in business, has been for seventy years, and exists to help small family businesses grow and be successful.
At least Malathor doesn’t ignore the points being raised. Most of these right wing guys just shit on everything and don’t debate because they know their position is stupid. So good for him, he’s a True Believer. Poor soul.
Fair enough, non profits technically operate without profit, although they do tend to have the same sorts of administrative cost issues you see in private corporations, with executives making large salaries. While the “ownership” isn’t pulling in money, this also precludes a lot of investment opportunities. Also, many non-profit organizations are supplemented by funding grants from either private or government organizations.
I’m not sure that you could really operate the majority of the economy as non-profit institutions and have things be effective.
And… yes.
Today, Trump has now reversed himself on this.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1082289526339448832
And so now I assume that you have also reversed your position, and believe that this is correct.
Also, I thought Trump said that we defeated ISIS? But now we need to continue to fight them? How does that make sense?
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1075528854402256896
lol you guys talked to a trump voter like it was people in this thread
i swear the shenanigans yall get up to
I believe ISIS was reinvigorated and took on a new form when the Democrats won the House. So Trump defeated ISIS but thanks to the Dems (who are in disarray), we now have a new ISIS to fight. It all makes perfect sense.
Me neither. But looking at how productivity gains have been shared (or not) with labor over the past 30-40 years, I’d say a proposal that employees get something approaching the value they create is at least looking in the right direction. The most telling criticism of capitalism is that it tends to exploit labor to the extreme, and were long past due for a correction.
I’d much rather be a worker in a capitalist society than the alternative.
If we’re talking capitalist society with significant socialist controls, yes. I don’t think factory workers, miners, and child laborers had it great during the industrial revolution.
In my view, the best economy is market based with reasonable regulations and a reasonable safety net to prevent exploitation, balance out big losses and swings, and compensate for market imperfections.
I’m not a socialist, in the historical sense of the word. One way to look at this issue is the overall size of government relative to GDP. For the successful advanced nations, the range of government size is roughly 30% to 55% of GDP, with countries like Singapore, Switzerland and the US at the bottom of that range, and countries like the Scandinavian countries at the top of that range.
If you look at the preferences of the current GOP elite, they want to take us out of that range, dropping the share of government to a level I’m not sure how low. They’ve never specified and they sound like they believe the lower the better. I consider that dangerous and radical.
If you look at the Bernie/AOC wing of the Dems they want something along the Scandinavian lines. Personally I think (assuming we count health care as part of the equation) something in the mid-40s percentage wise would be pretty good (or high 30s if we keep employer-based healthcare private).
People tend to talk concepts and theories here, but I find it more useful to put this down on a numerical spectrum. If you do that, it doesn’t look as wild and crazy as people make it sound.