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Re: China

#341

Post by twgrp »

dang wrote: post #286
big_chungus wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because he's criticizing liberals and most people on HN are liberals. Most censorship ("hate speech" included) is code for shutting your political opponents up. HN makes this really easy by making comments hard to read by removing contrast with the background as they get voted down; post something too much against the grain and it'll get flagged and hidden by default. When you hand users the power to shut those with…

> most people on HN are liberals "There is a definite right-libertarian bias on HN" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21432833 "If you go against any kind of socially conservative or libertarian perspective it will get down voted and very likely flagged" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20643695 "chilling effect on discourse from leftists" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20804464 "a leftist can't have a s…

social (left|right) != economic (left|right). But you know that.

Re: China

#342

Post by dang »

twgrp wrote: post #341
dang wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most people on HN are liberals "There is a definite right-libertarian bias on HN" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21432833 "If you go against any kind of socially conservative or libertarian perspective it will get down voted and very likely flagged" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20643695 "chilling effect on discourse from leftists" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20804464 "a leftist can't have a s…

social (left|right) != economic (left|right). But you know that.

Sure, but I think our points are missing each other. Mine is that claims of HN's ideological bias are notoriously in the eye of the beholder. Once people run into a few things they dislike—which is inevitable—they imprint on the idea that the community is biased against them. There's nothing objective about it, and all sides do it. I wouldn't say all users do it, but I suspect the more ideologically committed you are, the more you are likely to. That is, it depends on the magnitude of one's ideological vector, but not the direction. I wrote about this yesterday if anyone cares: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21577584

Re: China

#343

Post by paggle »

I feel like the human rights angle might add enough political capital to the economic argument (that we should have used 50 years ago) to stop the fucking CEOs from mortgaging the country's economic future for an extra zero on their bonus checks.

TVs should cost $5000, washing machines $2500, etc... that will create a domestic repair industry, be better for the environment, create skilled jobs that don't require college, and improve our national self-sufficience and thus security, and deprive a totalitarian government of revenues.

Re: China

#344

Post by vkou »

Barrin92 wrote: post #38
mc32 wrote: post #2

>”It’s economically productive for the 1% to maintain a trade relationship with China. The financial incentives don’t help any Americans, and in fact, most of us are hurt by this relationship...” So true, since its inception with GHW, its execution and realization through Clinton and then once fully engaged the timid, supplicant responses from GW and BO, China has contributed to the stagnation of the blue collar work…

most of the job losses of blue-collar work are the result of automation, not foreign trade (this is a statement for which ample evidence exists[1]), furthermore on the aggregate Americans do benefit from trade with not just China but also other low-cost nations, which again is economics 101. If the United States were to produce goods at the level of domestic wages a small segment of the workforce would benefit, but c…

> he price for an iPhone could go from ~850$ to ~2000$[2]. Now imagine that this happens for every good that is produced largely in China and think again if bringing back a few ten thousand jobs is worth the total loss of consumer welfare in the states.

And it wouldn't matter one whit, because 90% of the expenses of the average American aren't going into buying consumer goods.

They go into buying transportation, medicine, education, food, and housing (With the price of housing rising to consume all of the middle class's economic surplus). None of those things are made in China.

Housing is the most fun one, because no matter how much people save, the price of houses rises to eat all of those savings. The only reason for why a house can cost a million dollars, is that people have saved that amount of money up. If that money weren't there, housing prices would be lower.

Re: China

#345

Post by koube »

CharlesColeman wrote: post #335
koube wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The scientific side of economics is the description of the properties and behavior of economics systems. The political side is what we should do with this information. I think I and the sources I've cited have kept largely to the former, and I'm the only one in the comment chain to at least throw up a graph. Call it what you want, but we should be able to make observations on systems. At the very least it's a step up…

> The scientific side of economics is the description of the properties and behavior of economics systems. The political side is what we should do with this information. No, sorry. It's not that clean cut. Your links had economists stating things like "America’s low-income households benefit the most from free trade and having access to cheap imports." But defining good as having access to cheaper goods is an intense…

> "America’s low-income households benefit the most from free trade and having access to cheap imports."

This is a description of a property or behavior of a system.

> But defining good as having access to cheaper goods is an intensely political statement

This would be apolitical in all but the most semantic of arguments. "Buying the things I want to buy" is assumed to be a good thing by the vast majority of people.

Re: China

#347

Post by erik_seaberg »

kick wrote: post #47
keiferski wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure these economists have spent time in the Rust Belt, then. Entire cities were economically destroyed from the offshoring of jobs to China and other low-cost areas.

Modern economists are completely out-of-line with reality on many things, "life outside of George Mason University" being one of them. Pick your flavor of elitist sub/urbanism, it doesn't matter, none are substantially different. (HN's poor Markdown formatter transfers asterisks cross-paragraph, so what was originally "George Mason University (asterisk)" and "(asterisk)Pick your flavor" just made everything between i…

No markdown, just https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc.

Re: China

#348

Post by remarkEon »

Barrin92 wrote: post #60
remarkEon wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>increase in price I, and I’m sure many many others, would be willing to pay a little more if I know that money is staying here and supporting families in this country. I can do without more plastic crap from China, and I consider it strategically important that high tech manufacturing comes back to the US. For defense reasons, among others. I’m sure someone will link the Wikipedia page with some neat plots from “eco…

Well you may be fine if you have a lot of disposable income, but many poor Americans will not. Which is of course the opposite story that the OP tried to tell. If you are a minimum wage US worker paying hundreds of dollars more for basic goods is a drastic cut into your quality of life. This mercantilism on display here will be extremely harmful to people in America who rely on low cost imported goods just for the sa…

Yeah I don’t agree with any of this. I find it really fascinating that, after WWII, the US finds itself in this self-imposed fatalism where we can “never” compete with the rest of the world on manufacturing because of labor costs. It’s also a little odd because in multiple threads at a near daily pace I see people advocating that we explicitly cut back on consumption spending for environmental reasons (reasons I find very compelling). China is also one of the, if not the, world’s biggest polluter.

The Apple example is a good one, but, again, I find it very hard to believe that an 80% (or hell even 90%) automated manufacturing footprint here in the US is a) infeasible and/or b) undesirable relative to the status quo.

I’m tired of the fatalism about this issue. It’s pathetic and signals that America is near collapse if we are essentially just giving up on our industrial base and willing to be reliant on cheap consumer goods from China.

Re: China

#349

Post by bart_spoon »

siffland wrote: post #126
lazaruzatgmail wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

which means he is voting to keep the incumbent in This is a binary choice dem or repub any other choice is a vote for the incumbent

I have someone I work with who quite literally mocks people for voting for a 3rd party and actually tries to "shame" them for it, usually using a line like "which means he is voting to keep the incumbent in" (usually with more colorful words about the incumbent and the voter). Voting 3rd party exercises your right to say you don't like either of the other 2 candidates. I will not argue which candidate it will help, b…

Well unfortunately the idealism in voting 3rd party (which I understand) to make a statement can't really stand up to the realities of game theory and the American political landscape.

> this line of thinking is detrimental to our voting process and wrong to rub in peoples faces.

Our voting framework is detrimental to our voting process. The line of thinking that a 3rd party vote is a vote wasted is simply an assessment of reality.

There are only two realistic candidates for President in a given US election. And no matter the reasoning, a vote for third party is equivalent to a half vote for both major candidates.

If you truly find equally unappealing, then a third party vote is a (very quiet) way to voice that opinion. Otherwise, you are giving a half vote to your least preferred option.

Re: China

#350

Post by perennate »

brobinson wrote: post #332
DataGata wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

South Korea achieved democracy when their GDP per capita was $4k. China's GDP per capita is approaching $9k. When will they be rich enough that they yearn for democracy?

The PRC will most likely not escape the Middle Income Trap before their population pyramid massively inverts. No other country has aged so quickly at such a large scale before. Their population and working age groups are at the largest they will ever be right now and will steadily decline starting in 5-10 years. I think collapse of the current government is more likely than a peaceful ROC-esque (Taiwan) transition fr…

I'd argue that the ROC transition was not peaceful at all. Thousands of civilians were killed in the February 28 massacre [1] and tens of thousands imprisoned in the ensuing White Terror [2], and martial law did not end until 30+ years later. But now I think Taiwan is by far the leading democracy in east Asia.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_28_incident [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Terror_(Taiwan)

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