121–130 of 168 posts
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Everyone is egocentric. For countries, egocentric-ness is maximum. UBI/FB like threads are filled with comments that seemed to forgot this so obvious fact of life. Its the worst thing about HN.
What point are you trying to make?
Subsidizes get introduced either to score political points and/or bribes. Thats it.
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This argument doesn't hold up. By that reasoning (safety, workers rights, environmental concerns) every industry is special and deserves subsidy. Can mine be better subsidised please?
To be fair, I don't believe in free trade outside equal partners. That is, I think trade should be completely unrestricted to foreign markets that are within some economic margin (let's say US, Japan, Canada, and Germany to come up with a very incomplete list) and in any other cases should be subject to significant restrictions. I don't like the fact that it's nearly impossible to pay someone in America an honest wag…
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You might like to know more about Australia's experience with unsubsidizing farmers. Or, heck, you might not like it. But I think you should know more about it anyway.
Why, what experience is it?
Food production (amount of food) rises, while falling as a share of GDP. Agricultural productivity (food output production per unit input) shoots up. A lot of land is repurposed from sheep to other products.
And of course, subsidy spending goes way down.
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Lovely argument, if only it were true. Your whole argument is all over the place, not least because a lot of food eaten in rich countries is has minimal subsidies already. Why don't you examine the world as it is today rather than how you think it is. > "You starve poor countries by selling off all of their food to rich countries and making what's left very expensive" The food produced in the poor country will sell f…
It's all over the place because there's a tree of possibilities that's difficult to cover succinctly. >The food produced in the poor country will sell for "the world price", pretty much the same everywhere. Not "cheap" in the rich countries and "expensive" in the poor ones. Spending power around the world varies by several orders of magnitude. If there's one "world price" for a crop, that price will be incredibly che…
Significant numbers of both poor and rich countries do not subsidize food today. Many agricultural products are commodities and traded at the "world price" already. This is the world you live in right now. Have a look at what is actually happening rather than speculating...
>In the US, SNAP (food stamps) costs about $75 billion per year and is about 80% of the spending on the farm bill
Food Stamps are not a subsidy to farmers, they are a welfare program for poor people. They just are part of the "farm bill" for political reasons.
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Really? Wouldn't you think U.S. has the lowest proportion of "rich without merits" as %age of rich of any nation in the world – and indeed in history of world?
Given that the US has among the lowest social mobility of developed nations, this is highly unlikely today. Interestingly, Americans have more belief that their society is a meritocracy than most developed nations and so are especially unaware of the problem. I submit it is this commonly held perception rather than data that is informing you comment. Obviously in the past, when democracies were even fewer in number,…
The US also already has among the highest median income of any developed nation, and nearly the highest median disposable income. The US also has a higher median household net worth than either Germany or Sweden. That would inherently make it more difficult for the US to keep pushing the boulder up the hill.
Further, in the US more people are moving up out of the middle class and into the higher income brackets, than are moving down and out of it. That has been true for 40 years running now. Given the immense scale, income and wealth involved in that result, it's a staggering accomplishment.
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Really? Wouldn't you think U.S. has the lowest proportion of "rich without merits" as %age of rich of any nation in the world – and indeed in history of world?
I would think the opposite in the U.S. Surely most wealth of the top N% (for some small N) is either inherited or enabled by existing family wealth and connections. The rags-to-riches hard worker stories are outliers.
Typically between 2/3 and 3/4 of all members of the Forbes 400 for example, are self-made. Roughly half of all members in that group originate from the middle class or lower.
This is a simple duty arbitrage play. For anyone wondering what he actually did wrong, there are a few key points to note. Aluminum (and all materials, really) is exported and imported and duties are paid on the basis of the HS code and (if there is a trade agreement to be taken advantage of) certificates of origin (COO) along with the usual shipping docs. China is inclined to tax exports of primary aluminum because…
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Really? Wouldn't you think U.S. has the lowest proportion of "rich without merits" as %age of rich of any nation in the world – and indeed in history of world?
Not sure why you're getting downvoted. This is a totally valid point. For the downvoters: malchow's claim is that in the US, rich people are more likely to be businessmen or people who have otherwise worked for their wealth, rather than simply having been born to the right parents.
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Do you know the story of how the British went from petty traders to "greatness"?
And then back again. That's empires for you.