This is the territory of political economy.
All macro economists who didn't see the differing effects of free trade on capital and labor needs to just accept that this is the arena of political economy.
Quite true.
Just last week we had a thread where some on here tried to argue that "trade deficits were a GOOD thing", and no one could provide any kind of substantive argument as to why trade deficits were good or why we shouldn't worry about it, except for a really bad Tyler Cowen article that just called Dean Baker wrong without much of an argument.
I suspect some trade Economists with a PhD know what they're talking about, but your run of the mill PhD candidate and professor knows very little at all, and probably only has stories from Ricardo about Wine and Wool from UK and Portugal (which, by the way, historically worked out poorly for Portugal).
Moreover, being permissive on one side while the other is mercantilist is no giod. A game theorist should be able to come up with a scenario about "cooperation" and "defection" with the Nash equilibrium of free trade cooperation being what all non-trade economists assume is always the result.
Moreover, being permissive on one side while the other is mercantilist is no giod. A game theorist should be able to come up with a scenario about "cooperation" and "defection" with the Nash equilibrium of free trade cooperation being what all non-trade economists assume is always the result.
Well, granted a lot of the literature from the Great Depression did focus on the feedback loop effects of free trade barriers and tariffs post Depression that made the problem worse.
Being a phd finance now (former political economist) it seems relatively clear to me that the price of Good X and wage Y, where a US manufacturer goes to China to manufacture goods and sells to US customers at a cheaper price
$$(X_US-X_china)=US_consumergain$$
$$(Y_US-Y_China)=US_capitalgain$$
$$(Y_China-Y_US)=US_wageloss$$
But these gains do not come out of thin air. US wage loss and US consumer gain offset each other for the most part, but the capital gain from the US producer is pretty big. The case for \(Wageloss>Consumergain\) is that Chinese workers are getting better standards of living, it follows that it was when jobs shifted from America to China.
So the simple argument that trade is destroying American workers can be true. But a dangerous tightrope to walk given economic history.
Stop feeding the ungread.Just because a person disagrees with you does not mean s/he is an undergrad. If you were truly an education person, you would know this.
Tell you what. Post your Ph.D. degree and then you earn the right to call people undergrads.
Don't pout. There is no reason to cry about how little you know.
Stop feeding the ungread.Just because a person disagrees with you does not mean s/he is an undergrad. If you were truly an education person, you would know this.
Tell you what. Post your Ph.D. degree and then you earn the right to call people undergrads.Don't pout. There is no reason to cry about how little you know.
It took you that long to get this comeback? Lame. Later.
It's not that I disagree with you that inspired my conclusion, rather, it was the retarded nature of your arguments. I deal with your types every TuTh in my not so "safe space" class. And, I didn't call you an "undergrad", I called you an ungread. Now GTFO, ungread, and study for your final exams. You don't want to upset mommy and daddy.
Stop feeding the ungread.Just because a person disagrees with you does not mean s/he is an undergrad. If you were truly an education person, you would know this.
Tell you what. Post your Ph.D. degree and then you earn the right to call people undergrads.
This is just plain stupid.
It's not that I disagree with you that inspired my conclusion, rather, it was the retarded nature of your arguments. I deal with your types every TuTh in my not so "safe space" class. And, I didn't call you an "undergrad", I called you an ungread. Now GTFO, ungread, and study for your final exams. You don't want to upset mommy and daddy.
Stop feeding the ungread.Just because a person disagrees with you does not mean s/he is an undergrad. If you were truly an education person, you would know this.
Tell you what. Post your Ph.D. degree and then you earn the right to call people undergrads.
Yeah estimating the wageloss of a US worker in my example, it may not just be China wages - US wages. The person is out of a job. So it is really...
$$(0-Y_{US))=US_{wageloss}$$
And if that chinese factory worker was jobless before the American manufacturer came to China then that worker's gain is
$$(Y_{china}-0)=China_{wagegain}$$
Clearly in this example \(US_{wageloss}>US_{consumergain}\) since they are jobless afterwards.
Anyways, back to finance.
Frat Bro
Man this thread became a hot mess
It became a mess at the first post. Saying that you don't need econ specialists to analyze one of the biggest trade deals ever proposed is tantamount to saying that you don't need a doctor to perform brain surgery. Sure, give me a drill and I can make a few holes in a random person head to try and fix him... but more than likely I'm not going to do a good job no matter how many amateur surgery games I play.
I'm pretty sure that the original argument in that thread assumed that trade deficits are always bad and the original critiques of that argument were that trade deficits are not always bad. The first person then tried to reframe the argument as if he had not been the one to make the positive assertion, refusing to accept any evidence offered in the thread of non-significant effects of trade deficits and repeatedly demanding evidence that trade deficits are a good thing, which no one had originally claimed.
This is the territory of political economy.
All macro economists who didn't see the differing effects of free trade on capital and labor needs to just accept that this is the arena of political economy.Quite true.
Just last week we had a thread where some on here tried to argue that "trade deficits were a GOOD thing", and no one could provide any kind of substantive argument as to why trade deficits were good or why we shouldn't worry about it, except for a really bad Tyler Cowen article that just called Dean Baker wrong without much of an argument.
I suspect some trade Economists with a PhD know what they're talking about, but your run of the mill PhD candidate and professor knows very little at all, and probably only has stories from Ricardo about Wine and Wool from UK and Portugal (which, by the way, historically worked out poorly for Portugal).
Moreover, being permissive on one side while the other is mercantilist is no giod. A game theorist should be able to come up with a scenario about "cooperation" and "defection" with the Nash equilibrium of free trade cooperation being what all non-trade economists assume is always the result.
Sanders: "You don't need an economics Ph.D to predict the effect of trade deals"
Man this thread became a hot messIt became a mess at the first post. Saying that you don't need econ specialists to analyze one of the biggest trade deals ever proposed is tantamount to saying that you don't need a doctor to perform brain surgery. Sure, give me a drill and I can make a few holes in a random person head to try and fix him... but more than likely I'm not going to do a good job no matter how many amateur surgery games I play.
beep beep beep
Also, I wouldn't expect a majority of economists who browse EJMR casually to buy into a discussion hidden away in a Koch/Clinton politics thread.
I'm pretty sure that the original argument in that thread assumed that trade deficits are always bad and the original critiques of that argument were that trade deficits are not always bad. The first person then tried to reframe the argument as if he had not been the one to make the positive assertion, refusing to accept any evidence offered in the thread of non-significant effects of trade deficits and repeatedly demanding evidence that trade deficits are a good thing, which no one had originally claimed.
This is the territory of political economy.
All macro economists who didn't see the differing effects of free trade on capital and labor needs to just accept that this is the arena of political economy.Quite true.
Just last week we had a thread where some on here tried to argue that "trade deficits were a GOOD thing", and no one could provide any kind of substantive argument as to why trade deficits were good or why we shouldn't worry about it, except for a really bad Tyler Cowen article that just called Dean Baker wrong without much of an argument.
I suspect some trade Economists with a PhD know what they're talking about, but your run of the mill PhD candidate and professor knows very little at all, and probably only has stories from Ricardo about Wine and Wool from UK and Portugal (which, by the way, historically worked out poorly for Portugal).
Moreover, being permissive on one side while the other is mercantilist is no giod. A game theorist should be able to come up with a scenario about "cooperation" and "defection" with the Nash equilibrium of free trade cooperation being what all non-trade economists assume is always the result.
I'm pretty sure that the original argument in that thread assumed that trade deficits are always bad and the original critiques of that argument were that trade deficits are not always bad. The first person then tried to reframe the argument as if he had not been the one to make the positive assertion, refusing to accept any evidence offered in the thread of non-significant effects of trade deficits and repeatedly demanding evidence that trade deficits are a good thing, which no one had originally claimed.
This is the territory of political economy.
All macro economists who didn't see the differing effects of free trade on capital and labor needs to just accept that this is the arena of political economy.Quite true.
Just last week we had a thread where some on here tried to argue that "trade deficits were a GOOD thing", and no one could provide any kind of substantive argument as to why trade deficits were good or why we shouldn't worry about it, except for a really bad Tyler Cowen article that just called Dean Baker wrong without much of an argument.
I suspect some trade Economists with a PhD know what they're talking about, but your run of the mill PhD candidate and professor knows very little at all, and probably only has stories from Ricardo about Wine and Wool from UK and Portugal (which, by the way, historically worked out poorly for Portugal).
Moreover, being permissive on one side while the other is mercantilist is no giod. A game theorist should be able to come up with a scenario about "cooperation" and "defection" with the Nash equilibrium of free trade cooperation being what all non-trade economists assume is always the result.
No, there were posters who claimed trade deficits were good or not that bad, there was very little to back up that position, and the guy who originally made that claim later agreed with another that temporary trade deficits were not a big problem, but that chronic trade deficits were.
But I guess we all see things through rose-colored glasses.