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Economists are now admitting that they were wrong about globalization

foreignpolicy.com

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

#241

Post by danenania »

CydeWeys wrote: post #209
andrekandre wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

also if it’s a fixed value (say $1000 a month), it 1. doesn’t cover the rising costs of medical care and insurance (in the us at least) 2. won’t keep up with inflation 3. sets up private markets to potentially inflate prices “because people have 1000 dollars extra to spend” UBI in concert with price limits for basic goods and services, insurance reform, and medical costs limits might have a chance.... but then you ar…

I'm skeptical of UBI too, but I think it would work best with the following combination: 1. UBI (including some fractional amount per child) 2. Free universal healthcare (i.e. Medicare is no longer age-limited) 3. Better education & free public universities 4. Some kind of higher tiers of UBI for disabled people who really need it (judged strictly) And then get rid of every single other means-tested benefit (includin…

It seems to me that you are focusing on the costs of UBI (which are admittedly very large) and the edge cases where people might be lazy or irresponsible without also giving proper consideration to the massive and transformative benefits that it could bring.

How much would UBI reduce the crime rate? How much would it increase the rate of entrepreneurship? How much would it reduce anxiety and depression? How much would it increase average education levels? Upward mobility? Democratic participation and voter turnout? Volunteer work and charitable giving?

No one knows the answers to these and many other similar questions, but it seems plausible to me that the cumulative effect could produce drastically more wealth than it costs to implement.

Our country (not to mention our world) is facing many extremely severe and worsening problems, many of which are rooted in economic inequality. We are, in my opinion, highly unlikely to solve these problems by incrementally chipping away at them, and the prospects for leaving them unsolved look increasingly bleak. So I think we need to be willing to consider big solutions if the cost-benefit analysis is favorable, even if they do require huge investments. We know UBI is technically affordable based on the amount of wealth that exists in our country—the question is whether it would really work (something we can test), and then if it would, whether we can summon the political resolve to make it happen.

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

#242

Post by rXoX »

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…

Me too. At the very least you'd expect them to be given huge severance packages of a few hundred million dollars, as per American incompetence/fraud in the financial and tech sectors.

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

#243

Post by rXoX »

armitron wrote: post #125
NeedMoreTea wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the truth is, on balance free trade is better for the world and for every nation in it; Well not quite. Free trade is better for every nation after they have achieved development and wealth. Pretty much all of whom got wealthy by pointedly ignoring free trade. There's a decent book from 10 or 15 years ago by Ha-Joon Chang called Bad Samaritans that explores globalisation, free trade and in particular the insistence…

This x1000. Everybody interested in economics should read Ha-Joon Chang and study the South Korean phenomenon. Those who haven't and still feel obliged to put down their 2 cents praising free trade / markets are talking out of their asses. The fact that people are still willing to listen to Krugman (even this FP article is sympathetic) rather than cast him out as a colossal buffoon - not quite Alan Greenspan status b…

Chang's great.

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

#244

Post by barry-cotter »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #238
barry-cotter wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counter example: Hong Kong. It had no industrial policy whatsoever and went from a bombed out ruin in 1945 to the first world in 40 years based on unilateral free trade, while taking in massive numbers of refugees from China. Completely executed trade policy works but so does free trade if you have rules of law and security of contract and property.

Not at all. Hong Kong built herself upon stealing and producing cheap copies of firstly plastic toys and items. In the 1960s "Made in Hong Kong" was an insult for the shoddiest crap of all - just like all the rest at some point. They ignored IP, trade, subsidy and all the other world rules to steal and copy their way up the food chain. She also had the unique position of the free-port whilst being allowed better acce…

Making cheap tat cheaper than others with no government involvement is not an industrial policy. The government in Hong Kong did not direct or subsidize any industry. Export led industrialization just happened because of a policy of unilateral free trade, because people were trying to make money so they made what they thought would sell and doubled down on the things that worked. While the initial wave of refugees were more highly educated than the average Chinese and that probably continued to be true most of the refugees were always illiterate peasants.

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

#245

Post by StanislavPetrov »

bnjms wrote: post #110
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?

I hate hearing this. I don't even understand how good unions are an inherently anti-conservative thing. I cannot understand why the US would fail to build up countries in its sphere of influence in order to encourage gratitude. A crutch can help you grow and recover or it can hobble you, and everything I've ever heard about our influence in central and south America has suggested we've hobbled them. -- I hope I'm jus…

> I cannot understand why the US would fail to build up countries in its sphere of influence in order to encourage gratitude.

Because unfortunately its much more profitable to exploit them.

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

#246

Post by skunkpocalypse »

mips_avatar wrote: post #47

Can we please get Paul Krugman off the New York Times editorial board? Or at least include a disclaimer that he doesn't know much about most of the things he writes about. He got his Nobel prize from a career working in a pretty specific scope. I am tired of people taking his articles as works of a god.

Or you could just do this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paul_Krugman&oldi...

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

#247

Post by tjpnz »

Same deal with neo-liberalism actually. It wrecked New Zealand in the 80s and most politicians will at best admit it was flawed, yet it still continues to this very day because it's become institutionalised and utterly entrenched in our political system.

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

#248

Post by CryptoPunk »

jandrese wrote: post #233
CryptoPunk wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>That gap ends up mostly as profit that is absorbed by the ultra-rich. The statistics don't bear this pessimistic hypothesis out. Global wages have increased faster over the last 20 years than at any point in history, and the global poverty rate has declined at similarly unprecedented rates. Globally there has been no change in income inequality either.

Interesting premise, but the data doesn't support it very well. https://wir2018.wid.world/files/download/wir2018-full-report...

I don't want to download a pdf from a random website. Do you have source that I would recognize?

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

#249

Post by NeedMoreTea »

barry-cotter wrote: post #244
NeedMoreTea wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all. Hong Kong built herself upon stealing and producing cheap copies of firstly plastic toys and items. In the 1960s "Made in Hong Kong" was an insult for the shoddiest crap of all - just like all the rest at some point. They ignored IP, trade, subsidy and all the other world rules to steal and copy their way up the food chain. She also had the unique position of the free-port whilst being allowed better acce…

Making cheap tat cheaper than others with no government involvement is not an industrial policy. The government in Hong Kong did not direct or subsidize any industry. Export led industrialization just happened because of a policy of unilateral free trade, because people were trying to make money so they made what they thought would sell and doubled down on the things that worked. While the initial wave of refugees we…

I know HK is often held up as a miracle of complete and total laissez-faire, but that is largely myth.

1949 through to about 1970 whilst there was no formal economic policy, there emphatically was subsidy. The administration was providing social housing for those refugees, education for their children, infrastructure programs that were often more ambitious than in the UK - providing complete new industrial towns, and land reclamation. There was a policy to limit cost of living increases as far as possible as the fledgling industry relied on low labour cost to compete.

There were also export restrictions on textiles and clothes - the backbone of the HK economy up until the seventies, perhaps longer. Those restrictions were certainly in place with the UK and Europe, not sure about the wider world.

The large subsidy during development merely wasn't direct to industry. Yet with textiles and cheap plastics, the two industries that formed the bulk of HK's exports, they happened to be two with low startup capital costs. As a result the HK economy was heavily skewed toward small and medium businesses and low startup costs.

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

#250

Post by matthewdgreen »

Roboprog wrote: post #140
matthewdgreen wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are Trump’s tariffs a lever for ?

To make domestic products price competitive with sweatshop products

Is it your view that the tariffs (and the proposed new deal with China) is doing that effectively?
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