Economists are now admitting that they were wrong about globalization • Hacker News Board

Re: Economists are now admitting that they were wrong about globalization

#161

Post by CharlesColeman » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 10:50 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #41

wahern wrote: post #6

> But after the Cold War ended, the debate over trade (Krugman’s Nobel-winning specialty) became a proxy for a larger intellectual struggle over free markets versus government intervention. This is the crux of it. The notion that economics, as a field, was blindsided by the rapidity and extent of economic dislocation doesn't match the history. Such a narrative is a whitewashing of a particular clique of superstar eco…

> Nothing about free markets guarantees "equitable" distribution More than that, free markets guarantee nothing at all. But the historical record is that free markets have lifted far more people out of poverty than anything else. The most recent example is China turning to free markets, and the resulting vast improvement in their economy.

> The most recent example is China turning to free markets, and the resulting vast improvement in their economy.

China hasn't turned to anything like textbook Anglosphere free markets. Yeah they loosened up and turned away from classical central planning, but state-owned firms still control 30% of assets and their government does quite a to set economic policy and direction. They didn't privatize everything and let the free market run amok.

[1] http://blogs.worldbank.org/eastasiapacific/state-owned-enter...: With all these evidences in hand, we can now answer the question raised before: How big are Chinese SOEs? Even though their share in the economy continued to decline in the past decade, SOEs still make up a substantial part of the national economy – roughly controlling 30 percent of the total secondary and tertiary assets, or over 50 percent of total industrial assets.

Re: Economists are now admitting that they were wrong about globalization

#162

Post by yorwba » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 10:52 PM UTC

codingslave wrote: post #114

yorwba wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Starting at the bottom of another career hierarchy at the age of 40 is a complete disaster, you will be out-competed by 22 year olds who cost alot less, are easier to train, have less grievances about a low salary, are okay with the bottom rung, and do not have huge expectations. Only if those 40 year olds believe they're entitled to higher pay just because they're older. The number of available jobs in a given car…

"Only if those 40 year olds believe they're entitled to higher pay just because they're older. The number of available jobs in a given career hierarchy shrinks pretty quickly as you ascend, which means that most people won't rise very far. Start at the bottom rung, stay at the bottom rung for the rest of their life." So your solution is to delegate a 40 year old replaced by trade policies to the bottom of the economi…

Unless I misread the article, it's about blue-collar workers losing their manufacturing jobs due to globalization. I don't know what the typical career progression in manufacturing looks like, but if you can be replaced by some freshly hired 22 year old in China, you're probably in the bottom rung. So it's not like that hypothetical 40 year old was suddenly thrown back into the bottom rung after a successful career where their superior experience protected them from competing with 22 year olds. Their well-paying job at the bottom rung disappeared, with the only alternatives being retraining for less well-paying jobs in the bottom rung of other industries or staying unemployed. It appears many stayed unemployed.

I think they should be given sufficient support to bridge the gap while they retrain; potentially even before their jobs disappear. That seems strictly preferable to unemployment.

Re: Economists are now admitting that they were wrong about globalization

#163

Post by AnthonyMouse » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 10:53 PM UTC

clairity wrote: post #129

OrangeMango wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The thing is, we can never put the free trade genie back in the bottle. Tariffs as a weapon in the fight against climate change would sure make free trade look at LOT more equitably distributed.

while economists dismiss tariffs out-of-hand, they can certainly be used strategically to dampen the otherwise sudden effects of free trade on industries. the tariffs should be implemented dynamically and smoothly, increasing and decreasing over time without a sudden dislocation. the other tool we tend to overlook is immigration. grow the economy through internal demand and upstart labor rather than external. but tha…

> the other tool we tend to overlook is immigration. grow the economy through internal demand and upstart labor rather than external.

The thing about immigration is that it can be good or bad. Immigration of entrepreneurs and skilled workers can grow the local economy, but immigration of unskilled workers into a country that already has an oversupply of unskilled labor only serves to suppress wages and increase the unemployment rolls.

And advocates of increased immigration typically use the numbers from legal immigration, which is (by design) disproportionately immigration of the first kind. But increasing immigration implies relaxing those sort of restrictions, and then the numbers change.

Immigration also can't be a global solution since it's a zero sum game. You take a doctor from one country and move them to another, it helps the destination country but harms the source. It's not helping us to take in another country's cab drivers, but it's also not helping poorer countries when we take their engineers away from them.

Re: Economists are now admitting that they were wrong about globalization

#164

Post by jayd16 » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 10:56 PM UTC

codingslave wrote: post #4

The odd part about capitalist based policies on trade and skilled work force immigration is how much the left has supported them. The right has long held a "capitalist laissez-faire" approach to economic policy, and has been open about that. But what I cannot wrap my head around is the paradoxical message of the left. On the one hand they have long been known for supporting and using government intervention to protec…

I think its more nuanced than this. Being pro-worker and anti-tariff is not a contradiction if you don't think tariffs will actually help workers.

Democrats have more or less embraced that markets can work and policy makers have picked battles accordingly. I'm not sure what full throated free market policies US Democrats have put forward that overreach their GOP counterparts, although they have certainly become very complacent.

Re: Economists are now admitting that they were wrong about globalization

#165

Post by CharlesColeman » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 10:57 PM UTC

pnutjam wrote: post #82

bryanlarsen wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such a strategy failed utterly in Canada. They moved a government department from Ottawa to Miramichi, New Brunswick for similar reasons. All the skilled bureaucrats used their reputations to get transfers to a different department so they wouldn't have to uproot their family, and the department was rebuilt around a core of incompetents. I'm sure the locals they hired weren't so incompetent, but rot starts from the t…

More and more it seems like some sort of UBI or welfare system is the only real option. Give people an income floor and don't worry if they flourish above that, at least to a certain extent.

> More and more it seems like some sort of UBI or welfare system is the only real option. Give people an income floor and don't worry if they flourish above that, at least to a certain extent.

Except: 1) UBI is unproven and 2) it strikes me as a bit of a band-aid solution designed mainly to avoid confronting certain ideological assumptions.

Re: Economists are now admitting that they were wrong about globalization

#166

Post by yorwba » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 10:59 PM UTC

mdorazio wrote: post #152

yorwba wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Starting at the bottom of another career hierarchy at the age of 40 is a complete disaster, you will be out-competed by 22 year olds who cost alot less, are easier to train, have less grievances about a low salary, are okay with the bottom rung, and do not have huge expectations. Only if those 40 year olds believe they're entitled to higher pay just because they're older. The number of available jobs in a given car…

In general this isn't tenable for two reasons: 1) Older workers have naturally benefited from annual pay increases over the course of decades, so that even if they're in a non-senior role, they would take a sizable pay cut if forced into a new career entirely. 2) Older workers often need higher salaries because they have families to support (along with the many costs associated) which young workers do not. It's a nat…

1) How much of those pay increases is just keeping up with inflation? What's the income multiple earned by a manufacturing worker with 20 years experience vs. a fresh hire in the same role?

2) It's true that supporting a family requires a higher salary, but younger people can have families, too, and in any case retraining for a job that allows you to barely scrape by is better than nothing. Better to get mostly screwed than to get completely screwed.

Re: Economists are now admitting that they were wrong about globalization

#167

Post by khrbrt » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 10:59 PM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #118

khrbrt wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CIA under Eisenhower overthrew the government of Guatemala when trade unionists were elected on the promise of eight hour workdays and better conditions for field workers. What do you think the country would be like today if we hadn't killed the union leaders and installed a dictator friendly towards US business?

In that alternate history, I don't think that the subsistence farmers would be middle class. That doesn't mean that I think the US was in the right. I don't. But it does not follow that all the problems in Guatemala are our fault.

They would be making closer to 3000 every two months instead of 300. It wouldn't be a utopia, but it'd be a lot better than if we hadn't bled Latin America dry for our benefit.

My point is that a factory moving overseas isn't some platonic transaction. There is a history and a context to why labor is so cheap and regulations are so lax.

Re: Economists are now admitting that they were wrong about globalization

#168

Post by cmrdporcupine » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 10:59 PM UTC

Mobility of capital without mobility of labour. Surprise, it's not just.

Re: Economists are now admitting that they were wrong about globalization

#169

Post by CharlesColeman » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 11:03 PM UTC

tomatotomato37 wrote: post #108

harryh wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is generally thought of as immoral to rend one person in order to help one other. Not when it comes to buying things, which is what this situation is. Blue collar workers in the US (or other developed nations) don't have a moral demand on you to purchase their labor at the same rate forever. If someone across the street (or across an ocean) is selling the same product for less money it's perfectly fine to buy it f…

The thing is that US workers have a lower bound on the fee they can charge for their labor, due to minimum wage laws. Those laws were enacted because we as a country believe there's a moral duty to ensure a minimum quality of life for it's working citizens (and in extension humans in general). Letting industries who would historically underpay US workers to instead just underpay some other countries workers defeats t…

> The thing is that US workers have a lower bound on the fee they can charge for their labor, due to minimum wage laws. Those laws were enacted because we as a country believe there's a moral duty to ensure a minimum quality of life for it's working citizens (and in extension humans in general).

Also: things cost more in the US. You can't survive on 3rd world sweatshop wages in the US, even if they were permitted by abolishing minimum wage laws.

Re: Economists are now admitting that they were wrong about globalization

#170

Post by jeffdavis » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 11:04 PM UTC

generatorguy wrote: post #139

repolfx wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Phoenix failure wasn't really a software failure, if I recall correctly. It was more that when everything moved to Miramichi the people who understood the byzantine government pay systems basically didn't follow and the result was people with no clue of what they wanted or how to do it being heavily involved. No software firm can succeed in those conditions.

Oracle / IBM had an existing working payroll system to copy. All they had to do was reimplement it in modern hardware and software. Some government employee in Miramichi might not have been happy because oracle didn’t listen to what they thought they wanted but if the contract has been to deliver a system that produced the exact same output as the old one oracle/ibm would have no excuse for not having a successful pr…

I'm not so sure it's easy to represent the exact behavior of a complex system.

What would your estimate be to: "rewrite facebook in language L, with the same behavior, bugs and all".