Protectionism --- Free Trade Poll

Fenian, You post your resume and I'll post mine.

And sorry, trying to discredit 95 percent of economists--people who are learned about a subject and have advanced degrees--one by one, without addressing what they know from actual study, isn't going to hack it. This is not a political issue, when it is looked at from a rational, economic standpoint. Bill Poole is one of 12 Fed Board Presidents who understands trade. The other 11 do too. But feel free to call them whackos, also, and think you can dismiss them the way you just tried to dismiss Poole. He is not a political hack. Most economists aren't.

It is why economists ACROSS the political spectrum are in agreement about this. It's a basic tenet of the discipline. The only "economists" you will find arguing against free trade, are those being paid by specific industries to make make skewed arguments that look at costs without benefits (economics looks at net effects, not costs in a vacuum). And they are dishonest -- pocketing a paycheck to say what they are paid to say. They are also a very small minority, because most people who go to the trouble to get a PhD and put in the formal mathematical and statistical training involved in modeling complex problems have the integrity to do it well.

For once, I will actually use the term wingnut, because any economist you can find who says that open markets are a bad thing is so on the fringe--and so attacked by his peers--that he he is out of the mainstream as to be what you would dismiss as a wingnut (although the difference between you and I is that I will actually listen to what he has to say, and then find the 95 percent of his peers who can dismantled it).

The one who comes to mind is Alan Blinder, the former Fed Board Vice chairman. In 2001, he wrote, "Like 99% of economists since the days of Adam Smith, I am a free trader down to my toes." I have seen similar sentences written by dozens of economists of his stature.

By 2004, for reasons unknown--although they seemed to many to be steeped in the political rhetoric that blinds you--he had changed his ideas about open markets dramatically, and he has been taking a hammering by the academic and policy analyst community since.

I will point out that your "Bizarro" bullshit is the real condescension on the board. You haven't earned the right to talk to anyone that way, when you won't make a coherent statement about how what the world has known since Adam Smith is untrue. Economics is complicated. You can post about lost jobs or about poverty in nations caused by trading practices. But until you look at costs and benefits, and model it such that dozens (actually hundred and thousands) of possible factors that can be affecting the economies OTHER than trade policy are taken into account, you are taking something anecdotal and offering it is a false cause.

For example, free trade can lead to a world of hurt for displaced workers in the short term. But those workers very often don't stay unemployed very long. And what trade does is import higher-paying jobs--albeit in different jobs that often require displacement and then training. Their lives are disrupted and that is a traumatic cost for people. But in looking at how it benefits us in the aggregate, the higher paying jobs we end up with in the long-term and the lower prices benefit a magnitude of people who are made much better off for the policy. I won't minimize the trauma of being displaced. But fighting progress usually cuts off your nose to spite your face. The buggy whip industry vehemently opposed the internal combustion engine. And automobiles killed off entire other industries. In the long-run, we were better off for the progress, though.

Plus, for every restriction on exports or imports, there has to be a corresponding import or export that suffers. So when you protect one industry, you end up inadvertently hurting dozens of others that are interdependent. This is hard to explain without a lot of economics that requires a base of knowledge, but if you have any training in economics and have seen it modeled, it is inarguably true.

As another example, you said something on that other thread about the "systemic poverty for half the world" (sorry if I didn't get the words exactly right; I am not looking) that free trade leads to. Look at the third world, though, and model it to account for all the factors having bearing on various poverty-stricken country's economies. And you learn that the problems have not been open trade, which ends up benefiting countries in the long-term, without fail. It's almost always corrupt governments or dictators who plunder their own people--the bane of Africa, for example. Yet, you will make this distorted argument: you look at the poverty in a vacuum and tell people on here that it was the trade policy that hurt those countries. Those policies haven't hurt China or India, though, for example, because theyliberalized their governments, allowed us access to their markets. They reduced the corruption and state-run restrictions and allowed the benefits of opening their markets to filter through their economies. And as a result, they now have a manufacturing base that has increased GDP dramatically in those countries. And even though each still have a long way to go--huge populations, with most people still living in extreme poverty--both have rising middle classes that never existed and a standard of living that has increased dramatically for much of their populations over the last 10 to 20 years.

I don't know why I respond to you seriously, though. You think it's fine to give me the bizarro bullshit rather than legitimate responses. It's insulting. And the ignore the message and try to discredit the messenger crap is the way someone who doesn't have any substance posts.

Either way, you can NOT discredit Bill Poole. He's been a Fed Bank Regional President since the Clinton administration. He led the department of economics at Brown University, twice serving as chairman. He also taught economics at Johns Hopkins in the 60s and is a member of The Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars. He has written extensively--including some widely-read books on monetary policy. The National Association for Business Economics honored him with its highest recognition, the Adam Smith Award, a few years ago.

That doesn't even touch half of his accomplishments, which also include high-level economic positions at the Fed since the 60s and visiting scholar and visiting economist stints at places like the Reserve Bank of Australia.

The fact that you think you can dismiss him as unworthy of your response says a ton about you. 95 percent of the world that has studied economics are bizarros and wingnuts, according to you, and therefore, you can be dismissive. It's weak. I'm sorry the political rhetoric doesn't stand up to rational economics that is time tested. Bill Poole is actually educated about the topic, though, and I WAS happy to post HIS resume.

 

Fenian, Actually I replied to mustang. And I began by saying "a lot to try to explain." I can't distill what would require a lot of study and understanding of mathematics and statistics and an ability to look at hundreds of factors simulteneously in ways most people don't intuitively take to, into simple message board posts. So I try to do it in short, to-the-point ways. I will use what one or two people have to say. I chose someone like Bill Poole, actually, because that speech fit a point I was trying to make and his chops are beyond question. The irony is that if I want to make a point about free trade, I can choose ANY reputable economist because there is such agreement about this -- it's like "the sky is blue." Those economists get frustrated because of political rhetoric that feeds the public, which doesn't have the understanding of how markets interact and are unable to see things beyond short-term consequences to realize long-term gains. But if you asked most people, would you be willing to sacrifice for a few months right now, to raise your standard of living for the next decade, they would say yes.

I will also use one or two examples, made as to the point as possible, as I can. I get criticized for overposting about these topics--you mock me. The problem is that they are complicated topics, not suited to a quick message-board post. And I'd rather try to offer a bit of reason and point people to places where they can learn more if they want, rather than just reading some false things that you post and turn it personal or political and call you bizarro or a wingnut or a foof the way you respond to me over and over again.

I don't know what more to say to you. I won't insult you. I'll continue to post about things I am passionate about and know something about. I actually DON'T offer myself up as an expert. I give details and examples and take the longer way of doing it: I'll link to what the Regional Fed President has to say, instead of offering up my version of it.

I won't mention that the guy is "very far on the right," because that is perjorative and it is untrue. You are so blinded by ideology that everyone is left or right and has to be on a "side" of something. Some things don't have sides. They're just true. You are not for or against gravity, for example. The economic community--the honest economic community--is not ideological when it comes to the ideas that have been proven. You offered up Robert Rubin as your example. As much as Rubin was politically motivated and nuanced in how he presented things, at his core he is lock step with a guy like Bill Poole when it comes to free trade. When Rubin was Treasury Secretary, he was the one who urged Congress to set aside environmental and fair labor condition concerns in supporting NAFTA and CAFTA. Rubin is an economist and he argued, as 95 percent of them would, that such concerns "do not relate to the economic realities of the countries involved." He cautioned that the United States could find itself at a disadvantage as other countries that don't insist on such conditions move ahead with their own global trade agreements.

This was not just shit he pulled out of his ass. It was based on modeling that shows how things play out when you start trying to impose restrictions on trade under the guise of free trade. Usually the concerns are not based on any economic realities -- they are claims made by people who look at once piece, rather than the big picture. And usually, the concerns make the problems the critics want to address worse because they don't allow a class of workers in a poor country access to the better paying jobs and higher standard of living that can most better their lives and eventually give them the leverage to demand better working conditions.

 

Stoney, Economics is not political. It's a rational pursuit. It's the people who make political arguments instead of relying on what has rationally been studied--the people looking for to point out "the losers," rather than looking at the net effect of policy and whether the winners outweigh the losers to such an extent that we ultimately end up better off for it, that are "left wing" or "right wing."

I have an interest in economics. I have studied it and written about it. That is the extent of my resume that I will reveal. Personally, no one who knows me would call me right wing. I identify with PETA, for example... I don't wear any leather or eat animal products. Is that right wing? I am a civil libertarian. There is nothing more sacred to me than the Bill of Rights--liberty, freedom of speech and thought, etc. Does that make me right wing?

You are attaching your value judgment of "right wing" to what I post. But what I am posting is not rooted in a political ideology. It is rooted in rational economic study. It's not even politically based, when it comes to something like trade. Because this is not "theory" as some economics is. I'm not sure how to make the point in a way even Fenian will accept. EVERY damned survey of the economics community regarding "free trade" comes up with staggering numbers of 90 percent (usually closer to 100 percent) operating with the understanding that open markets raise the standard of living of countries. It leads to higher-paying jobs and cheaper goods and a boost in gross national product. I'm not out on a limb or some fringe thinker. And this isn't even just a random guy's "thinking." You can model economies to very sophisticated degrees using regression analysis to predict outcomes and determine the magnitude of effect different factors have on an outcome. And through that kind of complicated modeling--and no Fenian, I can't explain it in a short message board post--it's been shown over and over again that free trade, when you remove things antithetical to it as well as far-reaching factors that can skew results, is beneficial to an economy without fail.

I'm not right wing, though. I try to look at things rationally. If you want to criticize something I have posted, show how I have misunderstood or show that I am not being rational. It is actually the way to convince me of something, because rational thought is pretty much my church -- not political ideology that has to be shoehorned into a box to the point of irrationality.

 

cranberry, You just miscaracterized me. And yes, it was insulting, because you have posted similar nonsense many times, even though I respond similarly to how I am about to:

I understand--actually economics taught me this--that the world has scarce resources and how we allocate those resources satisfy or dissatisfy people's ideas about equality and equity -- which are subjective ideas. Sometimes we allocate things in ways that people find acceptable. Other times we screw it all up. There have been ways of handling (or actually, not trying to overly handle) the economy that I believe leave more people better off than other methods that have been tried throughout history.

It doesn't mean that everything somehow becomes egalitarian or that everyone has everything they want or need. It just means that we take what the world offers us and allocate it as efficiently as possible. And everyone still isn't happy. The benefit is that more people are happy than when we do it wrong, because we get the most bang for what the world has given us.

One thing, cran. Why not stick to posting your ideas instead of posts like that--which you unfairly attach my name to--that have nothing to do with anything I've said or believe, and have no basis in rational thought?