Economics Thread
- Thread starter sturg33
- Start date
Jaw
It's OVER 5,000!
It shouldn't be earned equally, but it also isn't healthy for a large portion of it to be held by a fraction of a percent of the population. As long as corporations (and that fraction of a percent that control them) can teleport those jobs to the lowest international bidder without financial penalties, the imbalance will continue to increase.
Wealth is more concentrated now than when the 16th Amendment was passedat the end of the Gilded Age. Ironically, we've twisted that amendment from a heavy tax applied only to the very wealthy so that the middle class gets to pay a large part of it. I suppose that is better left to a different discussion.
Wealth is more concentrated now than when the 16th Amendment was passedat the end of the Gilded Age. Ironically, we've twisted that amendment from a heavy tax applied only to the very wealthy so that the middle class gets to pay a large part of it. I suppose that is better left to a different discussion.
acesfull86
Well-known member
“The employees that go from working in the sevice industry to working in manufacturing will do better in the tariffed environment.”
Why are we always fetishizing manufacturing jobs and why should I give their outcome more weight in a tariff environment than all of the losers?
There are dozens of job sectors and even more dozens of reasons why people lose their jobs, yet we regularly elevate one particular sector and one particular reason for their loss of employment. And our idea to help those people is to take action which causes others to lose and creates a deadweight loss greater than the gains.
Why are we always fetishizing manufacturing jobs and why should I give their outcome more weight in a tariff environment than all of the losers?
There are dozens of job sectors and even more dozens of reasons why people lose their jobs, yet we regularly elevate one particular sector and one particular reason for their loss of employment. And our idea to help those people is to take action which causes others to lose and creates a deadweight loss greater than the gains.
acesfull86
Well-known member
There will be losers because someone has to bear the brunt of the higher cost of labor. Higher prices, lower returns, capital not flowing to its most productive uses. The link on the last page suggested there is a $1.4 billon deadweight loss to the US economy every month thanks to Trump’s tariffs. If a manufacturing job can only be saved by the US economy subsidizing it to the tune of nearly $200k per job (from the link), then maybe it’s not worth saving and we should turn attention to better and cheaper ways to help these people.
Those other jobs you mentioned might be less susceptible to foreign competition, but there are surely dozens of other threats. If someone loses their job, why should I be more concerns if it was due to foreign competition than if it were caused by say a change in consumer preference that caused demand for the output of that job to shrink?
nsacpi
Expects Yuge Games
Actually, they benefit quite a bit from lower prices.
To the extent there are problems that prevent the middle class standard of living from rising, they are more industry specific than macroeconomic. We need to look especially at overhead in health care and education. The bureaucratization of those industries has pushed up the costs of a couple basic commodities that we all need. The number of people working as "administrators" in health care and education has skyrocketed. And those people don't really add much value.
The number of non-academic administrative and professional employees at U.S. colleges and universities has more than doubled in the last 25 years, vastly outpacing the growth in the number of students or faculty. I don't mean to denigrate these people. But they aren't adding much value. Certainly they are adding a lot to the cost of getting an education. The situation in health care with respect to the growth of administrative costs is similar. Someday a political candidate will run on a platform of doing something about these administrative costs. Who knows, maybe the voters will even be smart enough to realize this is a good idea.
Little factoid: Administrative costs account for 31% of healthcare spending in the U.S. and 17% of healthcare spending in Canada.
So we can either be smart and fix these problems. In doing so we would help improve middle class standards of living substantially.
Or we can be dumb and spend our energy on problems that are not really problems or that are orders of magnitude less important.
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acesfull86
Well-known member
Via The Hill from a few minutes ago:
President Trump’s trade wars are expected to reduce the average U.S. household’s income by $580 by 2020, according to a new study by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
That figure -- which does not include new tariffs scheduled to go into effect in September and December -- amounts to a significant chunk of economic growth. It is the equivalent of roughly $60 billion in lost economic activity
President Trump’s trade wars are expected to reduce the average U.S. household’s income by $580 by 2020, according to a new study by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
That figure -- which does not include new tariffs scheduled to go into effect in September and December -- amounts to a significant chunk of economic growth. It is the equivalent of roughly $60 billion in lost economic activity
sturg33
I
Waiting to hear if that is considered significant or crumbs...
nsacpi
Expects Yuge Games
it is a significant crumb
Jaw
It's OVER 5,000!
The bolded part is where I disagree with economists. The "more productive use" is hypothetical. That money might be used to indirectly finance some form of economic activity like a home purchase or a new small business, but it may also be placed in a tax shelter where it does nothing for the economy.
Either way, the domestic job is gone, at least some portion of monetary resources has been transferred from this country to another, and there has likely been some IP theft.
It’s all Obama dude
cajunrevenge
Well-known member
https://apnews.com/f26c8c00b2eb4f98b84cd6921cca2fdb
Next years budget we will be borrowing 1 trillion dollars. I cant wait for Democrats to be elected so this will be treated like it's the apocalypse.
Next years budget we will be borrowing 1 trillion dollars. I cant wait for Democrats to be elected so this will be treated like it's the apocalypse.
sturg33
I
It is a massive problem today.
But I've lost all hope any politician will do anything about because nobody has the stomach to take away something
acesfull86
Well-known member
Yeah, it’s over.
We’re dealing with people who believe if you say you’re going to increase spending 10%, then you only increase it 8%, that constitutes a spending cut.
Jaw
It's OVER 5,000!
It will have to be somehow addressed eventually won't it? Our ability to borrow can't last forever. I expect a run of billion dollar coins at some point, after the world has chosen other reserve currencies and hyperinflation has started.
cajunrevenge
Well-known member
Dow now loweele than January 2018. Negative growth over an almost 2 year span with Trumps recession coming up. Damn democrats.
covfefe