EPTUS Politics Mega-thread - Page 6312
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Read the rules in the OP before posting, please. In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. | ||
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{CC}StealthBlue
United States41117 Posts
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LegalLord
United Kingdom13775 Posts
On November 25 2016 23:59 Anesthetic wrote: I don't understand why people think he is going to bring back american jobs when virtually every economist has said that if he implements half of the stuff he said then we are going to have a serious downturn in the economy. Keep in mind that economists are not without an agenda. As whitedoge has mentioned here before, a lot of the time all you need to do to understand what the general conclusion of economists will be is to follow the path of their funding. And the results can be that they give good analysis that sheds some light on issues, but at the same time is noticeably incomplete. Not to mention that economics is imprecise and even economists all have a large share of incorrect predictions. So they should be taken with a grain of salt, always. Specifically, the economists of prominence tend to focus towards US business interests, which absolutely benefit from the global economy, while underemphasizing the issues related to rural development. It's easy to say "we should just find a way to compensate the economic losers while continuing with globalist development." It's a whole different story to actually implement it. So yes, there is valid reason to be skeptical of the economic merits of Trump's policy suggestions, because a lot of them are deeply flawed. It appears that some people knocked some sense into him on the Paris Accords at the very least. However, "economists say you're wrong" is not a statement that should be considered without a proper level of skepticism. They have their own agendas they are pushing. | ||
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ChristianS
United States3187 Posts
On November 25 2016 16:03 LegalLord wrote: There is some irony in Trump being (rightfully) called out for his "rigged election" rhetoric then after he wins, the other side has a fair number of people who are just so desperate to avoid a Trump presidency that they are willing to throw every principle out the window just for the sake of a chance of beating Trump and/or having Hillary win. Just goes to show you that the reality of a moral high ground for this election never existed. Small nitpick: it's only hypocritical if the same people are doing it. If "a bunch of people" on the right favor conversion therapy, but "a bunch of people" also consider themselves log cabin Republicans, it's not hypocrisy, they're different groups of people that both happen to be on the right. Not to mention the non-equivalence between "some partisans not accepting the election result" and "the losing major party nominee not accepting the election result." If HRC endorsed the rigged election talk then we'd have an apples to apples comparison. As it is there's still plenty of room to look at Trump's talk of only accepting the outcome if he wins, or his 180 degree flip on the value of the Electoral College between 2012 and 2016, and conclude that Donald Trump has a unique lack of respect for our democracy. | ||
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chocorush
694 Posts
Even if the economy does take a hit, a better way to look at it is a welfare policy rather than a policy to increase productivity. Keeping jobs that are inefficient at producing goods is essentially a transfer payment to these individuals who do not have the skills or means to be employed elsewhere, and specifically is a tax on the manufacture of those goods. This distorts the overall output of the goods produced, but it also seems to have additional benefits that are harder to quantify, in that many of these people would rather feel like they are working for their money rather than just receive a welfare check. The overall effect on the economy is pretty hard to determine, because like welfare payments, the money transferred doesn't disappear from the economy, and is redistributed to people that tend to spend it rather than leave it saved. | ||
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Deleted User 3420
24492 Posts
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ChristianS
United States3187 Posts
On November 26 2016 00:17 LegalLord wrote: Keep in mind that economists are not without an agenda. As whitedoge has mentioned here before, a lot of the time all you need to do to understand what the general conclusion of economists will be is to follow the path of their funding. And the results can be that they give good analysis that sheds some light on issues, but at the same time is noticeably incomplete. Not to mention that economics is imprecise and even economists all have a large share of incorrect predictions. So they should be taken with a grain of salt, always. Specifically, the economists of prominence tend to focus towards US business interests, which absolutely benefit from the global economy, while underemphasizing the issues related to rural development. It's easy to say "we should just find a way to compensate the economic losers while continuing with globalist development." It's a whole different story to actually implement it. So yes, there is valid reason to be skeptical of the economic merits of Trump's policy suggestions, because a lot of them are deeply flawed. It appears that some people knocked some sense into him on the Paris Accords at the very least. However, "economists say you're wrong" is not a statement that should be considered without a proper level of skepticism. They have their own agendas they are pushing. But the equivalent "knocking sense into him" here would be to back off on protectionism, which wouldn't bring back those jobs either. Donald Trump has this peculiar trait where unlike with other politicians, the best case scenario is that he doesn't mean a word he says. The "economists are biased" stuff is a bit problematic. It seems like this has been an increasing trend on the right, to see near-unanimous expert opinion go against them on something but to just respond "bias, you're wrong" and ignore them, without bothering to dig into what about their methodology was wrong or what evidence they think supports another conclusion. This case is particularly strange because economics is not a liberal-biased discipline, so presumably we have to criticize their bias as libertarian or cuckservative or something. And sure, economists have made some bad predictions sometimes, but that's usually with stuff that's kind of at the fringe of economics, and/or stuff that relies on some of their sillier assumptions like homo economicus (see Malthus's population bomb for an example of both). When you're dealing with something more central to economics (and trade could hardly be more central), their predictions are rooted in well-proven theories. To prove free trade isn't actually good, you'll have to contend with such rock-solid theories as Comparative Advantage or the Law of Demand. If those are proven to be not truth, but mere professional bias, I'll eat my hat. | ||
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chocorush
694 Posts
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LegalLord
United Kingdom13775 Posts
On November 26 2016 01:21 ChristianS wrote: The "economists are biased" stuff is a bit problematic. It seems like this has been an increasing trend on the right, to see near-unanimous expert opinion go against them on something but to just respond "bias, you're wrong" and ignore them, without bothering to dig into what about their methodology was wrong or what evidence they think supports another conclusion. That's where you're wrong about what is being said here. The point is that, if taking a spot judgment of their opinion, understand that they are not being impartial in their assessment and seek out a second opinion from a source that is qualified, but more critical of the position they take. It's the same concept as being suspicious of your doctor if they seem to be short-sighted and profit-motivated about the course of treatment they suggest for you. Experts, even a consensus of experts, are not beyond reproach. As it stands there are plenty of arguments from the economically inclined but less-than pro-trade, even on this forum, who oppose these trade deals for some reason or other. They tend to be harder to find because it's hard to be paid for pushing an opinion that the organization that employs you disagrees with. But they are definitely present and they make good arguments. | ||
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Orome
Switzerland11984 Posts
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LegalLord
United Kingdom13775 Posts
On November 26 2016 01:59 Orome wrote: There's definitely reason to not blindly trust a consensus of experts when the experts in question are economists. There are also arguments to be made in favour of protectionism. That still doesn't make Trump's proposed economic policies look good however. Absolutely. There's no argument about that here, yet. The hope, though, is that someone in his administration can distill his intentions into policies that are more reasonable. And that's something that can perhaps be hoped for. And his presidency is almost certainly the end of the TPP and TTIP for the time being. That's definitely a good thing. We'll see what comes of NAFTA - perhaps that does need some renegotiating for the benefit of all the countries involved. | ||
CosmicSpiral
United States15275 Posts
On November 26 2016 01:21 ChristianS wrote: To prove free trade isn't actually good, you'll have to contend with such rock-solid theories as Comparative Advantage or the Law of Demand. If those are proven to be not truth, but mere professional bias, I'll eat my hat. You are tackling two different ideas here and they don't necessarily line up with each other.
It's a bit ironic that you cite the Law of Demand as a rock-solid theory that can be proven to be true. The Law of Demand assumes the relevant economic agents are homo economicus, which you also disparaged as a fringe idea. It assumes a far more simplistic and functional notion of value than say, Baudrillard's object system. | ||
TanGeng
Sanya12364 Posts
On November 26 2016 02:00 LegalLord wrote: Absolutely. There's no argument about that here, yet. The hope, though, is that someone in his administration can distill his intentions into policies that are more reasonable. And that's something that can perhaps be hoped for. And his presidency is almost certainly the end of the TPP and TTIP for the time being. That's definitely a good thing. We'll see what comes of NAFTA - perhaps that does need some renegotiating for the benefit of all the countries involved. I think this depends on the kind of American nationalism that we are operating under. A truly negative nationalism can energize very destructive political policies. There are many faces to American nationalism and mousy of it depends on the mood of the people in the day and age. I'll see if there are some links I can find that can seed deeper discussion or allow outsiders to get a better understanding of United States political environment. What ever this nationalism is, it certainly isn't the compassionate conservatism or the Wilsonian vision of the Bush era. Bolton isn't under consideration for precisely that reason. | ||
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LegalLord
United Kingdom13775 Posts
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CosmicSpiral
United States15275 Posts
On November 26 2016 02:15 LegalLord wrote: As one small example of a recurring and significant problem within economics, many of their theoretical ideas about the aggregate effects of a certain policy or other is that many of these policies affect multiple factors which work in opposite directions. Often what economists do is make not-always-justified simplifying assumptions, often made based on empirical data. It's far better than nothing - mathematical analysis based on faulty data can be better than just random assumptions based on a "we don't know so I'll believe what I want" approach - but it irks me when people take the word of an "expert" without any skepticism out of some extremely short-sighted and ignorant "it's science!" assertion that the experts themselves (except the most arrogant ones) would not be likely to take. The prime example of this would be the subprime mortgage crisis. | ||
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chocorush
694 Posts
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LegalLord
United Kingdom13775 Posts
Do people work more or less if their hourly wages increase? Well even on a very simple model where people only want two things, consumption and leisure, we get a conflict. There are two conflicting theoretical factors at play in even this simple model: an income effect (more money = you want to both consume more and have more leisure) and a substitution effect (leisure becomes more expensive since you make more money per hour working). The overall result depends on the relative magnitude of each effect and the answer would change greatly based on magnitudes. There isn't a theoretical answer to which effect is stronger. So what happens is economists turn to empirical data and try to fit their model to the real world data as a curve fit. In this case it turns out that really poor people work many hours just to subsist and reduce their hours if pay increases, but beyond that people who get more per hour tend to work longer hours. Now even for this very simplistic model, we've introduced some significant fragility. Anyone who has had any significant instruction in statistics would rightly conclude that this looks extremely problematic. For making any real world predictions, your errors will cascade in ways that will generally make your model have errors, perhaps being completely off the mark. And while those models are better than just making stuff up they are unreliable and should be taken with suspicion. Furthermore, a "consensus of economists" can very well be a game of groupthink not altogether unlike the factors that made people believe that Trump would surely lose this election (more careful people gave him a not very small chance). And this isn't even getting into the political factors tied into economists, their employment, and their education. | ||
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zlefin
United States7689 Posts
On November 26 2016 02:00 LegalLord wrote: Absolutely. There's no argument about that here, yet. The hope, though, is that someone in his administration can distill his intentions into policies that are more reasonable. And that's something that can perhaps be hoped for. And his presidency is almost certainly the end of the TPP and TTIP for the time being. That's definitely a good thing. We'll see what comes of NAFTA - perhaps that does need some renegotiating for the benefit of all the countries involved. I disagree on the end of TPP and TTIP being a definitely good thing. I believe they were beneficial, albeit only very slightly. I have no comment on other issues raised in the post or post chain. | ||
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TheTenthDoc
United States9561 Posts
It doesn't help that a lot of his "smart business people" that he wanted to work in his administration on policy really, really don't want some of his more...zealous...ideas to go through. | ||
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ChristianS
United States3187 Posts
On November 26 2016 02:07 CosmicSpiral wrote: You are tackling two different ideas here and they don't necessarily line up with each other.
It's a bit ironic that you cite the Law of Demand as a rock-solid theory that can be proven to be true. The Law of Demand assumes the relevant economic agents are homo economicus, which you also disparaged as a fringe idea. It assumes a far more simplistic and functional notion of value than say, Baudrillard's object system. It seems i spoke imprecisely, so a couple clarifications are in order. When i said "trade is good" as a simplistic distillation of the economics on the issue, I meant good in the sense that economists usually talk about it, a sort of utilitarian perspective. That is to say, there are winners and losers from free trade, but the winners gain more than the losers lose, so more value is produced overall. In theory, rather than implementing a protectionist scheme you could just redistribute the winners' gains to the losers and everybody would be better off (although in practice redistribution schemes don't usually work out). The other clarification is that homo economicus is not a fringe idea in economics. It's a pretty central assumption, in the same way that volumeless particles with perfectly elastic collisions is central to the ideal gas law. The assumption is false, but its conclusions are still approximately correct, and you can then go back and talk about where your false assumption caused problems. In the case of the Law of Demand, the conclusion still seems pretty universal. Even though people don't really act like rational self-interested agents, thst approximation still seems to predict how their purchasing behavior varies with price quite well. Edit: On November 26 2016 01:48 LegalLord wrote: That's where you're wrong about what is being said here. The point is that, if taking a spot judgment of their opinion, understand that they are not being impartial in their assessment and seek out a second opinion from a source that is qualified, but more critical of the position they take. It's the same concept as being suspicious of your doctor if they seem to be short-sighted and profit-motivated about the course of treatment they suggest for you. Experts, even a consensus of experts, are not beyond reproach. As it stands there are plenty of arguments from the economically inclined but less-than pro-trade, even on this forum, who oppose these trade deals for some reason or other. They tend to be harder to find because it's hard to be paid for pushing an opinion that the organization that employs you disagrees with. But they are definitely present and they make good arguments. Another place in which I think I was imprecise. I agree that you should not take experts' opinions as absolute fact without scrutiny at all. I just think that rejecting expert opinion entirely with the one-word rejection "bias" is a very dangerous road to take, and one that has become more and more common on the right of late. It's how they get themselves tangled up in rejecting climate change, supporting conversion therapy, and – more recently – thinking that some apparently catastrophic economic policy, like defaulting on the national debt or starting a trade war with China, might not actually have all the terrible consequences the economics say it would. I think it's possible with a basic understanding of a field to understand what predictions it makes well, and what predictions it makes poorly. I'm a chemist, and I can say that chemists are very good at predicting reaction rates and the impact of adding starting material or product to a solution. They're only pretty good at predicting what the reaction product will be with a given set of reactants mixed together. And they're pretty bad at predicting macro-effects like, for instance, what effect a given drug would have on the human body. Similarly, the economic prediction that protectionist policy would hurt the global economy is, to my amateur understanding of economics, rock solid. It depends largely on basic economic principles like comparative advantage or the law of demand, both of which have ample theoretical and experimental evidence. The prediction that the US economy specifically would be hurt is slightly weaker, but still pretty strong. The prediction of whether the white working class would be better or worse off is much harder. The "rising tide lifts all boats" adage works in reverse, too, of course, so it might be that everyone would be harmed. Or maybe the country as a whole would be harmed, but there would be winners and losers, and the working class would be among the winners (although, in this case, the winners would not gain as much as the losers lost, so if we found a way to redistribute the winners' gains to the losers, everyone would still be poorer). | ||
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LegalLord
United Kingdom13775 Posts
On November 26 2016 03:08 ChristianS wrote: It seems i spoke imprecisely, so a couple clarifications are in order. When i said "trade is good" as a simplistic distillation of the economics on the issue, I meant good in the sense that economists usually talk about it, a sort of utilitarian perspective. That is to say, there are winners and losers from free trade, but the winners gain more than the losers lose, so more value is produced overall. In theory, rather than implementing a protectionist scheme you could just redistribute the winners' gains to the losers and everybody would be better off (although in practice redistribution schemes don't usually work out). The other clarification is that homo economicus is not a fringe idea in economics. It's a pretty central assumption, in the same way that volumeless particles with perfectly elastic collisions is central to the ideal gas law. The assumption is false, but its conclusions are still approximately correct, and you can then go back and talk about where your false assumption caused problems. In the case of the Law of Demand, the conclusion still seems pretty universal. Even though people don't really act like rational self-interested agents, thst approximation still seems to predict how their purchasing behavior varies with price quite well. You went wrong when you tried to draw an equivalency between a theory in chemistry and a theory in economics. One of those sciences is far more precise than the other. And chemistry doesn't do anywhere near as many of those bizarre "curve fit the theory to the data and assume it works" approaches. They modify their theories and confirm it through experiments that allow them to test the validity of their theoretical approach. | ||
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