My question was honest, I really don’t understand (and still don’t understand) the point you are trying to make. Perhaps a one or two sentence thesis of your position would not be too much to ask for?
[quote=“Lizard_King”]
Are you sure you don’t mean zero sum economics?[/quote]
I absolutely don’t mean zero sum economics.
OK, I’ll try. Very simply, I feel that corporations have become too powerful, and that capitalism does not adequately fulfill the needs that corporations were designed to meet. This is especially alarming given the aparent desire of the rich and powerful to privatize everything. Corporations are not primarily concerned with feeding, clothing, educating, enlightening, and otherwise furthering humanity. They are exclusively concerned with making money, next quarter.
That is entirely too short sighted a goal, considering the power, authority and autonomy that corporations have begged, borrowed and stolen from us. I simply feel that corporations need to be reigned in, and capitalism needs to be controlled a bit more. All it is doing is making the richer richer, and the poorer poorer, not only domestically, but globally. And the are unconsidered costs to capitalism – social, political, environmental – that aren’t being measured.
There is tons of propaganda from the rich and powerful media that screams otherwise on a daily basis, because they need us to keep consuming their crap, but behind the curtain, they know this to be true. It’s just a matter of how long they can keep up the charade. Considering the corruption in government today, I honestly worry about the future. Just recently, Robert Kennedy said "The Republicans are 95 percent corrupt and the Democrats are 75 percent corrupt.” That is worrisome.
Now sure, that is partisan. But is is also completely true, and we all know it. But it’s OK If they are corrupted to OUR way of thinking, right? Sorry, wrong. That is fucked. We are small. The world is large.
See, the main problem with what passes for media today is that we are only ever shown two sides of the story, right or left. Increasingly, there is almost no different between them, too. Both Bush and Kerry went to Yale. They are both rich white guys. I mean c’mon. People only read partisan opinion. They watch Fox or CNN. Everyone is lying. The truth is somewhere else. The truth is, actually, all around us. You just have to look for it. It isn’t screamed in your face. It isn’t sold to you. You actually have to THINK about it. And people are just too fucking busy and frightened most of the time to do that. Just keep me safe from the bad guys you tell me are trying to kill me so I can figure out how the fuck to be happy.
This was highly personal, so flame on if you like. I’m comfortably middle class, working in a creative and fufilling job. I’m not some bitter welfare bohemian. I’m not American, and I realize most of you are. But where I come from is only a little better, IMHO. I mean, our prisoners only got the vote last year. ;-)
What I mean is, I may live in a glass house, but I’m ready to throw stones.
True cost economics cannot be summed up briefly, at least not by me. Let’s just say, that cheap Japanese car at $15K should in reality cost $42K. I encourage all of you to Google “true cost economics” it and read up. I’ll make it easy for yah: true cost economics - Google Search
I feel it’s got to be done. If not, we are fucked. And our kids are double fucked. And their kids, well, I don’t even want to think about that.
That looks like an outstanding book to check out, thanks for the heads up.
As i enter the business world, i marvel at the down to earth common sense our elder generation possessed that we have increasingly lost. I mean i talked with an early 70’s millionaire whom wore boots and a bolo tie, lived on ranches all his life, and laughed at the born again generation. Its patently apparent to him that the bible is at best allegorical - its just common sense, what is right before your eyes. That doesn’t mean he totally disbelieves in religion either, but it doesn’t really concern him one way or the other. That clear sightedness is what made him a ‘founder’ of wealth; and yet its the fearfulness, cloisteredness and faith of the latter generation which increasingly frustrates its understanding of macroeconomics and leads them to give away the baby with the bathwater.
My pet theory is that the origin of modern social conservativism is some kind of linear relationship with the availability of information; the more publications, schools, TV and movies say that science is the end-all of knowledge, the more intense and widespread the revolt. We know more than ever and yet have apparently lost our capacity for wisdom - and more and more the modern undigestable feast of information is actually used to hide and manipulate knowledge itself to opportunistic ends.
This culture war as proxy to economic distress is compelling because it seems the great Red masses have only the foggiest views on macroeconomic forces, but i think it also has to do with, as it turns out, Gulf War Syndrome.
Basically, after Vietnam the red blooded patriot was discredited and marginalized - faith in the system, a quaint anachronism. After the first Gulf War and the collapse of the communist system, America was filled by with unilateralist triumphalistism, this belief that we really were the strongest, the most right, the saviors of the free world. But under a Democratic President and a Republican Congress, the philosophy ruminated and slumbered.
Now the black POW flag bearing houses have been vindicated after 9/11. Force is our duty, our right, and our salvation. Now we get revisionist views on history showing that Reagan destroyed the Soviet Union, that we won Vietnam if not for Jane Fonda, that every wrong we committed was for the acomplishment of a greater right. This ultimately comes down to a revivial of faith - faith in god, faith in the system, faith in capitalism. We are the richest country in the world and should be thankful for what we have, and all those damn whiney commies should just move to Canada if they don’t like it here.
As a drunken ass half heartedly reading these replies, where have you documented how you have hurt some kid in kansas by way of what you do in your window office in 98052?
Jason- The difference between protectionism and free trade is that under free trade the workers give everyone else more money than they lose, while under protectionism everyone else gives the workers more money than the workers actually gain. Protectionism is as close to burning money as you can find. Output is valuable. Just because it happens to gain in the “wrong” place doesn’t mean you can discount it, or even more bizarrely count it as a negative. The rich getting richer is a good thing.
IMPORTANT PART:
Why would you possibly choose protectionism over free trade+safety net? You keep misisng the point. Free trade isn’t the issue, the safety net is.
And Christ, necessary and sufficient? What sort of logic are you using? “I’ve found a country at some point in history that was rich with protectionist policies, therefore the United States in 2005 should be protectionist, because it doesn’t guarantee poverty!”
Why do companies ship their jobs overseas, then? Are they just doing it to piss Bren off?
Bren- I couldn’t help but notice the lack of .edus on that google page. I bet that’s a big conspiracy of capitalists and corporations.
This is myopically facile, IMHO. “Protectionism” is a means of fostering and supporting domestic industry. I challenge you to name a single industry in the US that hasn’t benefited from, or been outright “saved” by, government support at one time or another.
I assume this is a rhetorical question, but they do it to reduce costs, not only to find cheaper labour markets, but also to escape domestic law that requires abiding by and paying for things like things health benefits, safety and environmental laws, business taxes, etc.
<groan> FWIW, there’s 1 .edu hit on page 2, and 2 on page 3, including Berkeley and Cornell. It’s a relatively new concept, so you can also search on “true cost accounting” and “full cost accounting”, both of which cough up more .gov and .edu hits on later pages. In any case, I did mention that schools, particularly business schools, are training students to function in the biz world as it exists today, not as it will exist in the future.
Besides, I have little doubt that were there a lot of .edu hits, the concept would have been dismissed as elitist academia and/or the fretting of chicken little liberal Marxist intelligensia, right?
Read “The Ecology of Commerce” by Paul Hawken, and look at the example being set by Ray Anderson, CEO of Interface Corporation.
“Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.” - Bertrand Russel
“At many stages in the advance of humanity, this conflict between the men who possess more than they have earned and the men who have earned more than they possess is the central condition of progress.” - Theodore Roosevelt
Not going to piss in my employer’s cornflakes. :D
Jason- The difference between protectionism and free trade is that under free trade the workers give everyone else more money than they lose, while under protectionism everyone else gives the workers more money than the workers actually gain. Protectionism is as close to burning money as you can find. Output is valuable. Just because it happens to gain in the “wrong” place doesn’t mean you can discount it, or even more bizarrely count it as a negative. The rich getting richer is a good thing.
This is total “my professor and the editorial page told me this so I’m not going to bother checking my model against empirical data” bullshit. Free trade in a good does not always increase output on both sides or either side, even over the long run. When it does increase total output, there is no iron law of economics requiring the people benefitting to compensate the people who got screwed.
IMPORTANT PART:
Why would you possibly choose protectionism over free trade+safety net? You keep misisng the point. Free trade isn’t the issue, the safety net is.
Does the US have a safety net to deal with trade? No. Are the Democrats suggesting we add one? No. If your option comes up I’ll vote for it first, but I doubt it will.
And Christ, necessary and sufficient? What sort of logic are you using? “I’ve found a country at some point in history that was rich with protectionist policies, therefore the United States in 2005 should be protectionist, because it doesn’t guarantee poverty!”
Why do companies ship their jobs overseas, then? Are they just doing it to piss Bren off?
I’ve said this three times, but it’s apparently not sinking in: every single first world great power got there through heavy regulation of trade and sheltering of favored industries. The only countries that have gotten rich from neoliberal trade policies are countries like Singapore, which have rather unique circumstances of being the central port for a superpower or something. Does this strike you as support for “free trade will make you rich?”
Jason- So basically, you’ve decided that every significant theory of international economics is more or less fiction?
How much would I win if I bet that this entire anti-free trade schtick you unveiled about a week ago is based off one book you read, and in fact one factoid in that book(the industrialization thing)? At least my bullshit doesn’t come from Barnes & Noble.
Does the US have a safety net to deal with trade? No. Are the Democrats suggesting we add one? No. If your option comes up I’ll vote for it first, but I doubt it will.
Uh, so what do you want again?
Are the Democrats suggesting a return to protectionism? No. You played this exact same card last time when I called you on that. What exactly is your thesis?
Oh, and EVERY SINGLE FIRST WORLD GREAT POWER GOT THERE TWO
HUNDRED YEARS AGO. What infant industry does the US need to protect?
Bren- Protectionism is an inefficient means of giving money to politcally favored industries. Hooray for graft!
And you’re lying about the google thing, none of the first 20some links are from .edu. The links from campuses that come up are not referring to the actual theory, but merely those very common words. The Berkley link is an Econ 100A example about selling appliances.
The links that actually talk about “True Cost Economics” come from commondreams.org and adbusters.org. It’s not even a proper theory, it’s just whining about capitalism destroying the environment.
Jason- So basically, you’ve decided that every significant theory of international economics is more or less fiction?
Right, that’s exactly what I said! And I am basing this on a single out-of-context quote! You’re a mind reader! Give me a break. That idiotically-simplified neoliberal trade policy helps anyone but the rich is really at odds with the evidence, and I’m not the only person to think this. Stiglitz & Krugman have more nuanced views, but they’re more on my side than yours.
Oh, and EVERY SINGLE FIRST WORLD GREAT POWER GOT THERE TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO. What infant industry does the US need to protect?
“These trade policies will make everyone rich. Economic theory says so.”
“How come the democracies that have tried your policies are a total basketcase, while the ones that didn’t are well off? How come every time we adopt one of those policies in the well-off economies, workers seem to universally get screwed?”
“Protectionist!”
Uh, so what do you want again?
The ideal situation is trade-adjustment policies, yes. But in the current political environment, “screw you” is the only politically feasible option. Why?
It’s impossible to imagine getting any trade-adjustment policies or trade openings in the short-term or medium-term that aren’t designed to funnel money from the rich to the poor. It’s not that hard, however, to imagine knocking down various trade openings as they come up, one by one, until a sea change in trade policy is possibly. Actually, sustained opposition will make that future change possible; you don’t build a political movement by losing repeatedly.
If the choice is “more trade” or “no more trade,” anyone who’s either not rich or cares about people who aren’t, should take “no more trade.”
Jason: Point is, you spend all day looking at a glowing box and you push buttons. At what point in the button pushing frenzy did you piss into the cornflaks of a kid in Kansas?
Helping the rich is a good thing, Jason. Unquestionably. Taking a dollar from a poor guy to give $20 to a rich guy is a benefit to the nation, especially a nation with a progressive tax policy.
You want to talk about dramatically at odds with the evidence, the United States is a “basketcase”, as opposed to being well-off? What countries are well-off if we aren’t?
And the reason workers get screwed is pretty basic economics. That’s not a “gotcha”, that’s the way free trade is supposed to work. Rich people in rich countries and poor people in poor countries are the disproportionate winners. This is so-called blackboard econ 101. And by the way, I know you’ve been looking for ways to use the techniques of the rabble-rousing right, but the “book learnin’ ivory tower intellectual” gambit? Weak.
As for the current political environment, free trade isn’t a hot button issue, “screw you” isn’t feasible either. You can’t choose “no more trade” any more than you can choose “loser compensation.”
Why aren’t you arguing the benefits of an increased welfare state? In the real world, you’re absolutely boned in the short term. Your brand of leftism has no traction. Go to war on trade and you lose the upper-middle class educated liberal.
In the long term, anything is possible, so why not aim for free trade with a comprehensive safety net to help the losers? Either that, or create a reasonable argument that protectionism is better than free trade+safety net for workers.
Helping the rich is a good thing, Jason. Unquestionably. Taking a dollar from a poor guy to give $20 to a rich guy is a benefit to the nation, especially a nation with a progressive tax policy.
- The US does not have a “progessive tax policy”; we have very low tax rates for the poor, then pretty much flat taxes beyond that.
You want to talk about dramatically at odds with the evidence, the United States is a “basketcase”, as opposed to being well-off? What countries are well-off if we aren’t?
Didn’t say that; Argentina, which has tried to develop with straight-up neoliberal policies, to pick an example, sure is.
And the reason workers get screwed is pretty basic economics. That’s not a “gotcha”, that’s the way free trade is supposed to work. Rich people in rich countries and poor people in poor countries are the disproportionate winners. This is so-called blackboard econ 101. And by the way, I know you’ve been looking for ways to use the techniques of the rabble-rousing right, but the “book learnin’ ivory tower intellectual” gambit? Weak.
Are you even reading what I write? “You’re a prisoner of your shitty model which persists in the face of empirical contradictions” is not an anti-intellectual critique.
You can’t choose “no more trade” any more than you can choose “loser compensation.”
You aren’t paying attention, then. Like immigration, current trade policy is an issue that really pisses off people, but the various coalitions of the two parties mean it never gets raised as an issue.
As for the current political environment, free trade isn’t a hot button issue
In the wonderful insulated world of Newsweek, the Atlantic Monthly, and CNN, no. With people who actually work for a living, it certainly looks like there’s terror that some immigrant is going to take your job or that everything higher paid than wal-mart greeter is going to get shipped overseas. Maybe they’re being irrational when their wages fall year after year?
So to summarize your better solution:
- Workers are fucked regardless.
- Might as well sign up with the rich people to fuck them!
- Maybe someday a miracle will occur and we can stop screwing them?
…and anyone, trade is just a minor feature in the constellation of what screws workers, and I really didn’t intend for this thread to turn into the “idealistic but naive neoliberal fights the evidence” thread, but hey, take what you get, I guess.
Why aren’t you arguing the benefits of an increased welfare state? In the real world, you’re absolutely boned in the short term. Your brand of leftism has no traction. Go to war on trade and you lose the upper-middle class educated liberal.
In the long term, anything is possible, so why not aim for free trade with a comprehensive safety net to help the losers? Either that, or create a reasonable argument that protectionism is better than free trade+safety net for workers.
Your suggested solution just requires way too much painful reevaluation of the plausible but wrong things I use to justify my life; I’m sitting pretty, so what’s the deal? Why don’t you focus your energies on an long-term project that’s impossible without short-term action instead?
Man, I’m in the wrong circles. I don’t know anyone that cool. :D
Because it looks like the losers are groing in number, and are going to stay losers indefinitely. Is a nation of welfare recipients and burger flippers really such a fantastic idea, even if their livelihood is secure?
I’ve been lurking in here for a while and I’ve only recently registered, but this is just too funny to pass up. Are you guys serious about this? Heh, if so, why stop at saying no to more trade? Why not roll back international trade entirely? Why even stop there? If international trade is bad, interstate trade must be bad too. And then there’s inter-county trade. Hell, we’ll just ban all out-of-towner business and limit commerce to the scale of the good old-fashioned American town where everyone knows everyone else on a first name basis, just to be on the safe side. :roll:
I think all of this trade talk is just Jason dancing around the issue that unskilled labor has become cheap. With service jobs, you’re tied to a locality, but when used in manufacturing, whose goods can flow rather freely, you’re talking about an unpleasant inevitability for unskilled laborers.
You can try to stem the flow of unskilled labor with trade sanctions or cronyist protectionism, but that just leads to an insular economy built on vaporous foundations, like Japan. That leads to huge crashes and mountains of debt.
And of course it’s compounded by the fact that you can’t exactly go back to Kansas and tell people that they need to get some education/skills.
- Uh, you just defined progressive tax. As opposed to flat, or regressive.
2)Argentina is a bad example, but rather than go into it I’ll return to this:
2a) America isn’t trying to develop. We already are developed.
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Are you even reading what I write? My shitty model knows that workers are going to get screwed. You haven’t uncovered a blinding flaw, you just read chapter 2.
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It pisses off people? You spend a lot of time in the mill, Jason? Anyway, even if so, because of the way the parties are set up neither party can reasonably go to war on trade without losing half their base. You just said that.
And yes, workers are fucked, regardless. Not going to college is a bad idea. Rich people aren’t screwing the poor people, the world is screwing poor people. Having no skills and no education is a recipe for getting fucked.
So basically, you agree with me about trade. You can’t make an argument that free trade+safety net is worse than protectionism. But because we are living in the land of harshly limited hypotheticals, we can’t talk about free trade with a safety net. We need to stop trade today!
Chris- There aren’t a lot of alternatives. The speed at which goods and capital flow around the world makes unskilled labor cheap. There’s no real way to stop that from being true.
Or, to use my example, Jason isn’t screwing over Billy in Kansas by typing out code. Billy is screwing over Billy when he chooses to stay at home and work at Wal-Mart instead of going off to college.
There’s definately enough jobs, as evidenced by our low unemployment rate.