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Populism and the Economics of Globalization [pdf]

drodrik.scholar.harvard.edu

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Re: Populism and the Economics of Globalization [pdf]

#41

Post by dragonwriter »

It wasn't only predictable, but, in the US, its not even new; it's been a significant, powerful feature of the political landscape and since almost precisely the time the Democratic Party leadership was conquered by the neoliberal/DLC Third Way movement led by Bill Clinton. (Remember H. Ross Perot and the campaign that launched the party under whose banner Donald J. Trump would launch his first Presidential run in 2000?)

It's had limited policy impact because the electoral system limits the scope of viable alternatives and both major parties have leveraged other divisive issues to keep the wide opposition to neoliberal policies from being electorally decisive.

The only real question given the durable and strong opposition in the electorate (cutting across the usual left/right divide) to neoliberal globalization, was which major party would, rather than diverting from that, harness the opposition by nominaing a candidate willing to at least rhetorically reject the neoliberal globalist elite consensus first.

Re: Populism and the Economics of Globalization [pdf]

#42

Post by pillowkusis »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #19
pillowkusis wrote: post #2

I don't like the use of the word "predictable". I would qualify this populist uprising as a Black Swan[0], and as Taleb describes in his book, one of the common reactions to a black swan is to rationalize it's obvious predictability after the fact. Were there logical reasons to believe this populist uprising would occur? Of course (and this paper does a good job exploring them). Was it predictable? I don't know. By a…

> By and large most of us did not predict it, so I'm not so sure. Please, economists have been predicting this for awhile. Read someone like Piketty, he presents a plethora of evidence that inequality is reaching the levels of the gilded age, and that era wasn't exactly devoid of strife, political change, wars, etc... The only people who are surprised are those who are too distracted by their own insular worlds to se…

Taleb addresses this too. Of course somebody DID predict it. I don't know if that means the event is, in general, "predictable." If you put 1 million people in a room and told them to randomly guess what events would occur next, someone would predict correctly. The question is, should WE (as a society) have predicted this? Did reasonable application of our knowledge permit us to know this? I don't know the answer to that question.

Re: Populism and the Economics of Globalization [pdf]

#43

Post by collyw »

deepnotderp wrote: post #29
candiodari wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do realize that while the 1% doesn't include all IT workers in the bay area, the 2% does (I believe 1.6% is 100k per year before tax). It's easy to complain about the 1%, but most people on this site ... are the 1%. Median household income in the US is $55,775. That means, about half of all US households have less than that. [1] By and large, it's not the wealth enjoyed by the few. It's the comfortable, but proba…

It's not even the "1%", it's the "1% of the 1%", Zuckerberg is great no doubt, but does he really deserve 2000X as much as a high level machine learning researcher? The issue is that ~6-8 people in the world own the same amount of wealth as the bottom 40% of the world, that's not because of eight software engineers making $100K.

Is the data for that sort of thing available anywhere? It would be good to visualize it.

Re: Populism and the Economics of Globalization [pdf]

#44

Post by rainhacker »

candiodari wrote: post #6

It is too easy to forget that when a person is employed at $100k-$200k per year in the Bay Area, you want things like stopping climate change, more parks, more air, fair treatment, and above all, peace and prosperity. When making $30k with absolutely zero hope of real increases in Atlanta being a warehouse worker for an industry that's disappearing, the same person would burn all those things down, I would have said…

> global average wage is $2k ... not per month. Per year

How much was it before Globalization ?

Re: Populism and the Economics of Globalization [pdf]

#45

Post by dsfyu404ed »

pillowkusis wrote: post #2

I don't like the use of the word "predictable". I would qualify this populist uprising as a Black Swan[0], and as Taleb describes in his book, one of the common reactions to a black swan is to rationalize it's obvious predictability after the fact. Were there logical reasons to believe this populist uprising would occur? Of course (and this paper does a good job exploring them). Was it predictable? I don't know. By a…

It's a black swan if you take a 50% gray and round it up.

Re: Populism and the Economics of Globalization [pdf]

#46

Post by msimpson »

Swizec wrote: post #24
candiodari wrote: post #6

It is too easy to forget that when a person is employed at $100k-$200k per year in the Bay Area, you want things like stopping climate change, more parks, more air, fair treatment, and above all, peace and prosperity. When making $30k with absolutely zero hope of real increases in Atlanta being a warehouse worker for an industry that's disappearing, the same person would burn all those things down, I would have said…

I for one support globalization because it's how me and all my friends escaped the fate of our parents. Working all your life for $20k/year in a tiny little country in Europe. Without globalization we'd all be fucked. If we could get skills and jobs that rival Bay Area or are in Bay Area from half the world away, why can't someone from Atlanta? What's stopping them? What, realistically, are the missinh opportunities…

I'm against increased globalization because it erodes national sovereignty and undermines republican governments.

Re: Populism and the Economics of Globalization [pdf]

#47

Post by mayukh »

candiodari wrote: post #6

It is too easy to forget that when a person is employed at $100k-$200k per year in the Bay Area, you want things like stopping climate change, more parks, more air, fair treatment, and above all, peace and prosperity. When making $30k with absolutely zero hope of real increases in Atlanta being a warehouse worker for an industry that's disappearing, the same person would burn all those things down, I would have said…

Sorry for the snark but this observation is obvious. 'Look at all these poor/fed-up/frustrated/mis-trained' people that are left out by globalization and capitalism' Or 'look at rising inequality' blah blah.

What is the solution ?

Re: Populism and the Economics of Globalization [pdf]

#48

Post by msimpson »

rainhacker wrote: post #44
candiodari wrote: post #6

It is too easy to forget that when a person is employed at $100k-$200k per year in the Bay Area, you want things like stopping climate change, more parks, more air, fair treatment, and above all, peace and prosperity. When making $30k with absolutely zero hope of real increases in Atlanta being a warehouse worker for an industry that's disappearing, the same person would burn all those things down, I would have said…

> global average wage is $2k ... not per month. Per year How much was it before Globalization ?

Why are you trying to create a false dichotomy?

Re: Populism and the Economics of Globalization [pdf]

#49

Post by TommyBombadil »

Leader2light wrote: post #32

People need to realize there is not enough for everyone. Apple just hit 1 billion iphones. Facebook is close to 2 billion. There are 7.5 billion people on earth. They all want iphones, facebook, AC, food, clean water. You can see where this is going and it's not good. I personally think its almost made worse by the internet and people being connected, they see and feel what they are missing. Most Africans, for exampl…

> Most Africans, for example, would kill to be in Europe / USA.

I hope you meant this figuratively, because it is fair to say that it is a completely ridiculous statement otherwise.

Re: Populism and the Economics of Globalization [pdf]

#50

Post by Mikeb85 »

pillowkusis wrote: post #42
Mikeb85 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By and large most of us did not predict it, so I'm not so sure. Please, economists have been predicting this for awhile. Read someone like Piketty, he presents a plethora of evidence that inequality is reaching the levels of the gilded age, and that era wasn't exactly devoid of strife, political change, wars, etc... The only people who are surprised are those who are too distracted by their own insular worlds to se…

Taleb addresses this too. Of course somebody DID predict it. I don't know if that means the event is, in general, "predictable." If you put 1 million people in a room and told them to randomly guess what events would occur next, someone would predict correctly. The question is, should WE (as a society) have predicted this? Did reasonable application of our knowledge permit us to know this? I don't know the answer to…

> The question is, should WE (as a society) have predicted this? Did reasonable application of our knowledge permit us to know this? I don't know the answer to that question.

Not everyone is an expert in all fields. This is the domain of economists, sociologists and political scientists. Certainly many of them did predict this, there's a ton of data to support their theories and predictions.

The problem is that if you're one of the people who are comfortable with the status quo, you're not going to be paying attention to these things, much like a labourer in the south likely doesn't care about the stock market or happenings in the venture capital markets in the Bay Area.

The truth is that it's the media and political class who let us all down, by ignoring the experts and working class.

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