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Exile Economics: If Globalisation Fails

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Re: Exile Economics: If Globalisation Fails

#51

Post by nahuel0x »

barbazoo wrote: post #38
nahuel0x wrote: post #7

Tariffs wars are the prelude to military wars. Capitalism breeds globalization and then his destruction.

> Capitalism breeds globalization and then his destruction. Do we have any precedence for the destruction part?

The Great War (WWI), before it there was a period that we call now the "First Globalization" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_globalization ), then the war erupts after commercial wars (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_War_(1906%E2%80%931908) ) . The killing of Franz Ferdinand was only the excuse, the base were the commercial and imperialist contradictions. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_war and https://news.cgtn.com/news/3d3d514e3459444f34457a6333566d54/...

WWII was also preceded by tariffs wars.

Re: Exile Economics: If Globalisation Fails

#52

Post by maxerickson »

cvwright wrote: post #48
maxerickson wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All you people doing Detroit discourse need to also explain why the county just to the north, Oakland County, is one of the richest large counties in the United States. I guess they have a lot of Pizza Huts or something?

Are you trying to imply something racist? Just come out and say it.

No, not being racist.

Southeast Michigan still has plenty of manufacturing is the point.

Re: Exile Economics: If Globalisation Fails

#53

Post by FirmwareBurner »

twoodfin wrote: post #17
diputsmonro wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is exactly why strategies like UBI are so important. Eventually the average American with no specialized skill will find that they cannot produce value when competing on a global scale. Our strategy so far has been to let them starve and tell them to "learn to code" or "become a machine operator/technician", but that strategy can only help so many people. We do not need as many technicians as laborers that the…

For this claim to work, you have to demonstrate why this time is different, why standards of living and disposable income have been rising in the West and all over the world for 50 years or more—all while technological progress was as fast or faster than today.

> standards of living and disposable income have been rising in the West and all over the world for 50 years or more

Standard of living has been steadily declining in most of Western Europe post 2009: stagnating wages, exploding costs of living, declining public healthcare, pension and welfare funds, with longer waiting queues and scarcity in public services, etc.

Hence why so many people are mad and see globalization as one of the main factors. They feel rug-pulled: those with inherited wealth can relax and cash in on this new status quo, those without now have to compete with Asia as they no longer have a moat that guaranteed a good and stable income from basic low-skill jobs.

Re: Exile Economics: If Globalisation Fails

#54

Post by FirmwareBurner »

rootjknak wrote: post #40
ryeats wrote: post #32

Would be more interesting if someone came at this debate from a game theory perspective with bad actors ignoring IP laws, manipulating currency values and implementing tariffs through policies that aren't directly taxing products but restricting who can play in markets. Yes tariffs are bad in a vacuum and I am not saying this article is false even when it's strawmanning some arguments to make it's case but it's seems…

It mentions it in the article, which technically references Lighthizer's book passage: " ‘A crucial mistake,’ according to Lighthizer, had been to let China into the WTO and treat it as just another country like America’s free-market allies. The result was that millions of well-paid jobs in US manufacturing disappeared, as more and more work was outsourced and offshored. " A close examination of the passage appears t…

>America’s free-market allies

No market is truly free. Once you have a free market it very quickly stops being free as dominant players monopolize it and shape the rules of the game causing the government to (sometimes) intervene to counter it and make it more fair, but it is never "free".

Re: Exile Economics: If Globalisation Fails

#55

Post by gessha »

mtrovo wrote: post #10
somanyphotons wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difficulty is that while we can move the job to where the cheaper (or specialized) labor is, we can't (currently) easily move the people around to where the job is. So lower skilled people living in areas surrounded by high skill/cost people can't easily find a better Cost-of-Living balance. They get trapped with no job to match their skill. To put it more bluntly - the people of Detroit simply aren't allowed to…

I think the idea would be that you can train people to move up the ladder into more productive roles, think about how China grew by eating the supply chain of western companies upwards. IMHO a bigger problem is the whole MBA mentality of stripping companies down to the bones, lots of huge companies are now just trademarks and vendors, to the point that's hard to prove what exactly is their advantage besides the brand…

> I think the idea would be that you can train people to move up the ladder

In an ideal world, yes, this would help/solve the problem. In reality, government and the private sector have done little about this.

Re: Exile Economics: If Globalisation Fails

#56

Post by walterbell »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #54
rootjknak wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It mentions it in the article, which technically references Lighthizer's book passage: " ‘A crucial mistake,’ according to Lighthizer, had been to let China into the WTO and treat it as just another country like America’s free-market allies. The result was that millions of well-paid jobs in US manufacturing disappeared, as more and more work was outsourced and offshored. " A close examination of the passage appears t…

>America’s free-market allies No market is truly free. Once you have a free market it very quickly stops being free as dominant players monopolize it and shape the rules of the game causing the government to (sometimes) intervene to counter it and make it more fair, but it is never "free".

(apologies to G. Michael Hopf)

  Free markets create strong companies.
  Strong companies create unfair markets.
  Unfair markets create strong governments.
  Strong governments create weak companies.
  Weak companies create free markets.

Re: Exile Economics: If Globalisation Fails

#57

Post by churchill »

geysersam wrote: post #25
churchill wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US unemployment rate currently stands at 4.2% - despite all the hundreds of millions of jobs that have been outsourced to Chinese workers. Why isn't this gap larger? The reason is simple: as jobs move to places where they can be done cheaper, the market reorganizes itself! That's why horses, telegrams, and zeppelins are not missed. Better tech. has replaced them; these Americans got better jobs, mostly by moving…

But many of the jobs "lost" were replaced by jobs that produces less value and has worse salary. That's only natural. If there was a higher value job that could be done, it would already have replaced the "lost" job before it was lost. We can turn and twist and look at it from many different angles but the conclusion is the same: Global economic output increased and economic inequality in rich countries increased. I…

Yet, the average American can afford abundantly more stuff now, compared to when these jobs were in the US? How does that compute?

Buying 31-inch CRT TV in the 1990s would have set you back somewhere between $2-$3k, adjusted for inflation. But, because it's been outsourced to where it can be made more efficiently, a 32-inch HD TV costs just $99 from Amazon.

This is just one product. I could go on and on. If you want to mention housing, it's a political problem since zoning doesn't permit anything to get built.

The reason inequality increased is because Western governments (everyone, really) printed trillions into existence and it diluted the purchasing power of savers, the poor, and the middle class, and went into stock markets to bid up securities.

That's the problem, not China making affordable stuff that costs fewer hours of labor to buy.

Re: Exile Economics: If Globalisation Fails

#58

Post by bigbadfeline »

geysersam wrote: post #25
churchill wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US unemployment rate currently stands at 4.2% - despite all the hundreds of millions of jobs that have been outsourced to Chinese workers. Why isn't this gap larger? The reason is simple: as jobs move to places where they can be done cheaper, the market reorganizes itself! That's why horses, telegrams, and zeppelins are not missed. Better tech. has replaced them; these Americans got better jobs, mostly by moving…

But many of the jobs "lost" were replaced by jobs that produces less value and has worse salary. That's only natural. If there was a higher value job that could be done, it would already have replaced the "lost" job before it was lost. We can turn and twist and look at it from many different angles but the conclusion is the same: Global economic output increased and economic inequality in rich countries increased. I…

> I don't think it's meaningful to blame any other countries like China and Vietnam for this development.

Obviously, they sold what the buyer was asking to buy.

> Global economic output increased and economic inequality in rich countries increased. > critique against globalization/our current system of trade should be taken seriously.

Globalization promised increased economic output and delivered, I assume you're OK with that.

Then your serious critique must be directed towards the increased economic inequality. However, there's no reason to believe that globalization has anything to do with that, on the contrary, given a trickle-down distribution system, inequality would increase with or without globalization.

It's kind of obvious now that globalization was implemented the way it was in order to increase inequality and... blame "globalization" for that outcome. This little trick allowed the libertarian foundations of trickle-down and competition-is-for-losers to remain intact, out of scrutiny and boosted by a giant dose of steroids.

In other words, the critique against globalization is a coverup for more of the same.

Trade can be balanced without tariffs... why tariffs then? Simple, because tariffs are a tax on the population at large, not on the top tier of inequality who created this mess. The latter get... why, they tax cuts ofcourse.

Do you still blame inequality on globalization?

Re: Exile Economics: If Globalisation Fails

#59

Post by IAmGraydon »

wk_end wrote: post #24
IAmGraydon wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Tariffs wars are the prelude to military wars. You're basing this on what?

Well, the article says: Trade history is too often a sideline reserved for economic historians, yet any effective study of the past four hundred years ought to move it to centre stage, as a prime generator of war and peace, stability and chaos, prosperity and dearth. As Clausewitz might have said, shooting wars are trade wars carried on by other means. Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, for instance, came after the tsar…

That entire paragraph suffers from monocausal reductionism. For example, Napoleon's invasion of Russia, while linked to the Continental Blockade, was not purely an economic maneuver. It was equally rooted in geopolitics, prestige, and the shifting balance of power in Europe.

That said, besides pasting a paragraph from the linked article, I was asking what causal events you are basing your opinion on. Did you form the opinion solely from the article?

Re: Exile Economics: If Globalisation Fails

#60

Post by raincom »

churchill wrote: post #4

I read the book referenced - Robert Lightizer's No Trade Is Free: Changing Course, Taking on China, and Helping America's Workers - and it was eye-opening, if somewhat misguided. In it, the author blames China's industrial ascent for America's deindustrialization, the hollowing out of cities like Detroit, the fentanyl crisis, the looming challenge to American power in the Pacific, the intimidation of America's allies…

There is another element that is not addressed by politicians and governments. People need jobs in order to make a living (pay rents, insurance, etc). This is a feedback loop: more in wages lead to expensive housing and expensive insurance and labor. Free market is fine when there are no limits to what can be produced. However, land and specialists are not abundant.

Why not make the cost of living cheaper for every one?

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