Philosophy Now Forum

Accidentally? No. It was a bunch of sophomoric rubbish served up with some pretension about being the end result of one of your meta-cognitive adventures. It was deliberately written, but the below average quality was accidental.

So. As I was saying. You are determined to ignore expert advice simply because it says things you don't want to consider.

Just like the people who won't accept climate science and are willing to write that whole subject off as a dirty conspiracy concocted to support evil special interests - which is roughly how you described Economics. Or the Anti Vaxxers who can't accept that studies by experts don't tally with their specious insights. You all just take a lazy intuition and insist that it must be true because it feels so right to you.

I don't see why you are trying so hard to not acknowledge any of this? You openly despise expertise in this field gained by observation, you clearly prefer your own intuitions. I have no idea whether your meta-cognition took you into the area of unintended consequences at all, but it's too late for that now, this conversation has become hopelessly mired in your ego.

FlashDangerpants wrote:Accidentally? No. It was a bunch of sophomoric rubbish served up with some pretension about being the end result of one of your meta-cognitive adventures. It was deliberately written, but the below average quality was accidental...

Just for shits and giggles...

Tell me and the reader; what exactly counts as quality on your view? I mean, what standard of measure are you putting to use in order to determine what counts a quality report on the way things were/are and what doesn't?

FlashDangerpants wrote:
So. As I was saying. You are determined to ignore expert advice simply because it says things you don't want to consider.

This mistakenly presupposes that you're somehow privy to my mental ongoings, my motivations, and my knowledge regarding the matter at hand.

Just like the people who won't accept climate science and are willing to write that whole subject off as a dirty conspiracy concocted to support evil special interests - which is roughly how you described Economics.

I've said nothing of the sort. My claim was that economic jargon was created/used as a means to justify knowingly causing unnecessary harm to millions upon millions of Americans. Perhaps the "created" aspect sounds conspiracy theory like. It's not. Adam Smith didn't write The Wealth Of Nations to cause and/or justify such harm. However, everyone who knowingly causes it now... and they most certainly do. They use it as justification for causing it. That's precisely what you've been doing also.

For example, you've attempted to justify moving good paying American jobs elsewhere by virtue of talking in terms of productivity, low skill level positions, and added value. That framework neglects all of the positive effects/affects that those jobs had upon the country as a whole. Those effects/affects were/are valuable. It also neglects the fact that we write the rules which create and govern the socio-economic landscape. It neglects to take all sorts of relevant things into consideration.

You all just take a lazy intuition and insist that it must be true because it feels so right to you.

The irony...

I've said no such thing, nor does anything I've written necessarily lead to such a conclusion.

I don't see why you are trying so hard to not acknowledge any of this? You openly despise expertise in this field gained by observation, you clearly prefer your own intuitions. I have no idea whether your meta-cognition took you into the area of unintended consequences at all, but it's too late for that now, this conversation has become hopelessly mired in your ego.

Again with the invalid objections...

Make a case.

creativesoul wrote: I've said nothing of the sort. My claim was that economic jargon was created/used as a means to justify knowingly causing unnecessary harm to millions upon millions of Americans. Perhaps the "created" aspect sounds conspiracy theory like. It's not. Adam Smith didn't write The Wealth Of Nations to cause and/or justify such harm. However, everyone who knowingly causes it now... and they most certainly do. They use it as justification for causing it. That's precisely what you've been doing also.

That is batshit crazy conspiracy nonsense. I love the way you appear to think writing "sounds conspiracy theory like" alters that in some way.

creativesoul wrote:For example, you've attempted to justify moving good paying American jobs elsewhere by virtue of talking in terms of productivity, low skill level positions, and added value. That framework neglects all of the positive effects/affects that those jobs had upon the country as a whole. Those effects/affects were/are valuable. It also neglects the fact that we write the rules which create and govern the socio-economic landscape. It neglects to take all sorts of relevant things into consideration.

Actually I was trying to explain to you that you cannot exercise such control over how people live their lives, spend their money, and deploy their assets without suffering unwanted complications which undermine the entire project and inflict the majority of their harm on the poor. America isn't good at this sort of central economic planning, and all the countries you have to turn to in order to learn those skills are poorer than you are for entirely related reasons.

Your proposal isn't a bad idea because it would make me and my evil paymasters unhappy. It isn't even a bad idea because I'm not American so it is intended to hurt me in some way. It's a bad idea because it is fucking stupid and won't do what you want it to.

Batshit crazy. I like that.



Tell me, what is this idea that you believe that I have?

And...

Quote me and show me how anything I've stated isn't true.

One more thing I'd like to see from you is showing exactly how anything I've written thus far is based upon logical possibility alone. That is the common denominator that all conspiracy theories share along with many other unwarranted thought/belief systems. My position is based upon no such thing. Your claim that my position is on par with climate change deniers is nothing more than you (mis)attributing meaning to what I've written here.

There are some other things you've been skirting around that may be of interest...

We can get into how unwanted and/or unforeseen consequences play a role in all of this, but I suspect that you want to predict future possibilities rather than talk about actual cases. A discussion of the latter when had in light of the socio-economic landscape and all of the different economic recessions and depressions, market crashes, governmental bailouts, and what not justifies strong skepticism regarding the 'economic expert' opinions that were relied upon in order craft all if the legislation in question. What I mean is this:Presupposing sincerity in speech, there are are overwhelming amount of actual events that show how the economic experts were wrong, particularly when we examine germane legislation and it's effects/affects. Dead wrong.

Unless they knew what would take place all along. <--------- That is not my argument. It's one or the other. Either they knew what would happen or not. Lots of quantifiable harm did happen. No matter if they knew or not... it's unacceptable.

That again is the same sort of reasoning climate science deniers use. Climatologists don't predict particular weather events with accuracy, therefore it is all bullshit.

Most conspiracy theories are deeply unreasonable rather than logically impossible. It isn't logically impossible that the moon landings were a hoax, or that the queen of England is a secret alien lizard person, nor even some of the stuff about jews we have recently been treated to around these parts. It's just that you have to be mad to believe these things. You can add "Economics is nothing more than a justificatory method(a conceptual scheme created and intended) to justify causing unnecessary quantifiable harm to less fortunate working class people" to that list. "All climate scientists are competing for publication points by faking their alarmist data" is also one you can add to that list. Note the obvious similarity.

I can't imagine where you got the idea I am hoping to avoid discussion of actual cases. I already mentioned Italian labour laws and something or other about Germany. I can explain to you why protectionism has had such a dire effect in lots of places and industries. The Japanese rice industry springs instantly to mind, or the crazy situation in Tierra Del Fuego. We can cover those and many others. I think I can also provide some examples of instances where, if not protectionism exactly, what might count as excessive state support in some eyes, has on a limited term basis proven beneficial. But I cannot give you any where it was a good idea for a developed nation that wasn't recovering from a giant war. And even those successes tend to be cautionary tales in the end.

I can do all of that citing examples.

There is no secret that economic predictions about what direction each economy will go in next year and the one after that are usually off the mark. Those about what will happen in 10 years are invariably wildly off. It was originally nicknamed the Dismal Science for all the bad news it keeps delivering. But we still call it that because it keeps failing to predict stuff. Specific stuff that is.

Just so we are clear, economic growth happens when labour and capital move from less productive economic sectors to more productive ones. That isn't the sort of specific thing that economists get wrong, it's just a general fact of life. I can do examples if you can't think of your own, but that would disappoint me.

Over the short term you often can achieve rapid growth through captive funds and economic repression, but over the longer term you will suffer the effects of either misallocation of capital and labour, or else of perverse incentives (if not both). This again is a general truth, frequently observed. Well, perhaps that one is better described as being evident through implication rather than direct observation given it's a bit of an esoteric thing to claim to see as such.

A discussion of the socio economic circumstances of all the booms and busts there have been would be quite illuminating I'm sure. But you would need to consider the hugely greater suffering caused by the depressions of the 1870s and the 1930s than the last bout of trouble we had, and hopefully that will inspire you to consider the advisability of being an even wealthier society than we are now when the next one comes around. Hopefully without trying to reintroduce mass poverty for China and India - and calling me evil for not supporting that outcome.

I'm also not sure where you get the idea that economists shape a lot legislation from. America would have universal healthcare if you listened to economists. Your Social Security wouldn't be approaching bankruptcy. You certainly wouldn't use a hypothecated gasoline tax to fund your highway maintenance (let alone have left it idle for decades). You would never flirt with defaulting on your debts for the sake of political performance. Bush would never have got those tax cuts and Trump wouldn't be promising any. Your visa rules would be radically simpler and your tax code as well. You would never have initiated carbon cap and trade schemes because a carbon tax is an obviously better solution. Oh, and there's no way you would fund your schools through local property taxes, which is a horrible way to embed poverty into a poor neighbourhood by underfunding the schools that should be at least partially fixing the situation. Your cities would refuse to pay for NFL teams shiny new stadia as well because that is vulgar and unproductive subsidy of the not at all needy. Nobody would ever bid to host the Olympics - that would be inflicted as punishment for something. And there would be no discussion of trying to force a particular industry to work in particular way because the last election would have been a competition about who has the best plans to retrain workers for exciting new industries rather than how to make the death of coal a bit slower.

All countries routinely ignore sensible economic advice. It's often unpopular so they have to. There is even an economic theory about that! It's called the Theory of the second best. Needless to say, not everyone thinks it is the best of theories.

FlashDangerpants wrote:That again is the same sort of reasoning climate science deniers use. Climatologists don't predict particular weather events with accuracy, therefore it is all bullshit.

That again is the same mistake you keep on making.

You have put forward yet another prima facie example of a non-sequitur(strawman, if you prefer). That's not my line of reasoning, nor does it necessarily follow from what I've written. I am quite well aware that it does not necessarily follow from the fact that economic 'experts' have been wrong about some things that they're wrong about everything(or that it's all bullshit). Furthermore, I most certainly do not think/believe that all economic jargon is bullshit. Thus, I could not possibly draw such a conclusion(of it all being 'bullshit') just because 'expert' economists have a documented history of being mistaken. QED

If you're actually interested in criticizing my position, may I suggest that you first come to understand it? I welcome valid criticism, despite how things may appear. However, if you do not first grasp what I'm writing here, then the only way you could be successful at criticizing my position is by virtue of sheer luck alone.

You have insisted that economic experts ought be listened to regarding matters of American jobs being outsourced. You've drawn the ill-conceived conclusion that I treat economists as climate change deniers treat climatologists. You are quite wrong. While climatologists are the experts on climate change, economists are not the experts regarding ethics/morality. Climate change deniers ignore the experts. I do not ignore all economists even though none are experts regarding ethics/morality.

We write the rules governing the socio-economic landscape, and those laws are legitimized moral thought/belief.

Most conspiracy theories are deeply unreasonable rather than logically impossible.

No argument here. However, this needs to be parsed out a bit more for clarity's sake alone(regarding my actual position as compared/contrasted to your (mis)interpretations thereof). Logical possibility is a measure of coherency/consistency. Coherency is the product of valid inference from premisses combined with consistent terminological use. The premisses are the problem area when it comes to that which is based upon logical possibility alone; and most conspiracy theories are. More specifically, the problem is what those premisses are grounded upon(or better yet the lack of ground).

I'm familiar with the common conspiracy theories that you've mentioned thus far, but I am being reminded here of the tv show Ancient Aliens. Ancient Alien 'theorists'(scarequotes intentional) are those 'experts' who claim that aliens have interacted with and/or directly influenced humanity and/or human knowledge in some way, shape, or form. There are all sorts of claims about this far-fetched notion. I once watched that show frequently for amusement purposes; as a fun bit of practice recognizing argumentative presuppositions 'in the wild'. Sad really. The writers of the show seemed to always put the suspect premisses right out front. The rest of the storyline 'followed' from those premisses. The show most often began by asking, "Could it be that 'X'?" (let 'X' be some outrageous statement tying aliens to worldly artifacts and/or events). The writers then continue to tell a story based upon logical possibility alone. That is clearly shown by virtue of the narrator immediately answering the aforementioned question by subsequently saying something along the lines of "...and the answer is a resounding 'Yes!".

I say, Yup... it's possible alright, but that alone does not warrant further inference. I mean, sure... it's logically possible that alien lifeforms have influenced humanity in all of those ways, but.... given all of the evidence... it is just as possible for an invisible pink and black unicorn to have been the source of influence, or a Menehune, or a unicorn, etc. Ockham's razor applies to such cases, as well as reductio ad absurdum(s). That same measure of critique applies to all utterly baseless conspiracy theories as well. My position here does not rely upon logical possibility alone.

I've asked upon multiple occasions, but you've failed to give adequate attention to the following question...

Show me how my position rests it's laurels(is grounded solely upon) logical possibility alone. The argument could be easily made that that is what all of the unjustified/unjustifiable conspiracy theories have in common. I've just set one out. That is not the case with my own position. You have offered no ground upon which to claim that my position and/or statement is on par with such things. Gratuitous assertions won't do.

You're sorely mistaken.

It isn't logically impossible that the moon landings were a hoax, or that the queen of England is a secret alien lizard person, nor even some of the stuff about jews we have recently been treated to around these parts. It's just that you have to be mad to believe these things. You can add "Economics is nothing more than a justificatory method(a conceptual scheme created and intended) to justify causing unnecessary quantifiable harm to less fortunate working class people" to that list. "All climate scientists are competing for publication points by faking their alarmist data" is also one you can add to that list. Note the obvious similarity.

All are logically possible. That isn't a problem in and of itself. You're flogging a dead horse.

As already conceded, that particular claim is a bit conspiracy theory like. Apparently that concession wasn't enough. I'll say more:It overstates the case as a result of the "nothing more than" and "created and intended" bits. I've already addressed that. Apparently I haven't addressed enough. I'll say more:It would be a better put by stating that economic jargon is a justificatory method often used to dismiss and/or excuse causing unnecessary quantifiable harm to less fortunate working class Americans.

The American government has, as it's primary motive, a responsibility to every American. We write the laws that govern the socio-economic landscape. There is no justifiable reason for not writing laws and creating a landscape that allows everyone an opportunity to earn a living, regardless of socio-economic circumstances, regardless of innate cognitive potential and/or talent. Regardless of whether they're capable of ever having something other than low-skilled ability. The reality here is simple. There is a very wide range of innate potential(talent, cognitive capability, etc). There is also a very wide range of socio-economic circumstances from very poor, undernourished, and well below average mental ability to very wealthy, undernourished, and well below average mental ability.

We have the ability to create a socio-economic landscape that includes an opportunity for a much broader scope of Americans to be able to earn a living.

Economic jargon is often used in conjunction with the notion of 'the greater good' when justifying American legislation that does both, harm American workers and 'help' workers in foreign countries. The line of thinking there is one that attempts to place the individual as a bad guy when questioning the motives behind such pieces of legislation(me in this case). As though it is somehow wrong/immoral/unethical for a natural born American citizen to expect American legislators to avoid writing and/or passing legislation that unnecessarily harms Americans. It's not. As though it's wrong to expect American legislation to put Americans' needs first. It's not.

I can't imagine where you got the idea I am hoping to avoid discussion of actual cases. I already mentioned Italian labour laws and something or other about Germany. I can explain to you why protectionism has had such a dire effect in lots of places and industries. The Japanese rice industry springs instantly to mind, or the crazy situation in Tierra Del Fuego. We can cover those and many others. I think I can also provide some examples of instances where, if not protectionism exactly, what might count as excessive state support in some eyes, has on a limited term basis proven beneficial. But I cannot give you any where it was a good idea for a developed nation that wasn't recovering from a giant war. And even those successes tend to be cautionary tales in the end.

I can do all of that citing examples.

Well, no disrespect meant, but I've insufficient reason to trust the accuracy/truthfulness of your report(ing) upon those particular events. My suspicion that you wanted to talk prediction was a result of how I read you. Seems I misunderstood.

I'm certainly not opposed to talking about recent events. History has lessons. Let's look at recent history, seeing how that is precisely what this thread is about. Should we find that the casual chain of events requires our revisiting pre World War socio-economic situations then we can. Until then...

Are you aware of the Dow Jones inspired financial economic 'meltdown' of '07/'08, along with the emergency bailout and subsequent stimulus package due to the overwhelming amount of financial instruments that were based upon the projected interest rates of non-conforming mortgages? Everyone knows that really bad loans will never be satisfied. Some knew that they could sell them to innocent trusting people, none-the-less.

Are you aware of the 'expert' economic advice given to the president and both houses of congress at the time?

Just so we are clear, economic growth happens when labour and capital move from less productive economic sectors to more productive ones. That isn't the sort of specific thing that economists get wrong, it's just a general fact of life. I can do examples if you can't think of your own, but that would disappoint me.

There we go. Finally. A 'response' to the earlier question regarding our agreements(or at least what seemed that way to me).

It seems that you're bordering upon incoherency(at best). Earlier you took forever and a day to finally set out the definition of economic wealth, and what counts as becoming more wealthy. Let me remind you:Economic progress is equivalent to economic growth. Economic wealth increases when there are more products to choose from and the people can afford to choose them. Now you're claiming that economic growth happens when labour and capital move from less productive sectors to more productive ones. So either you're drawing and maintaining a meaningful distinction between economic growth and increasing economic wealth or you're conflating your own earlier conceptions. Both have fatal consequences.

Growth is equal to progress, remember? That was according to you. I'm merely seeing it through.

If economic growth is equal to economic progress and economic growth happens when labour and capital move from less productive economic sectors to more productive ones, then it only follows that we can effectively and rightfully call the intentional outsourcing of American jobs by American companies 'economic progress'.

QED

creativesoul wrote: Show me how my position rests it's laurels(is grounded solely upon) logical possibility alone. The argument could be easily made that that is what all of the unjustified/unjustifiable conspiracy theories have in common.

That question doesn't make any sense. Are you asking me to show that your position is logically possible but factually incorrect, or that it's logically impossible? Why did you put a (redundant clause) in parenthesis? If I am arguing that you are factually mistaken with a set of logically possible statements, am I not already meeting the standard you set here? It seems to me that the problem is you refuse to consider any fact asserting objections to your case on the grounds that nothing factual can possibly challenge your superior logical deductions, even though your superior logical deductions look exactly like the conclusions teenagers come to when they think about how unfair the world can be without understanding any of the causes.

creativesoul wrote:You've drawn the ill-conceived conclusion that I treat economists as climate change deniers treat climatologists. You are quite wrong. While climatologists are the experts on climate change, economists are not the experts regarding ethics/morality.

Climate science doesn't address ethics or morality. It predicts certain effects on climate of things such as carbon emissions, and then people decide that those sound bad as a separate, non science thing. People who object to being told unpleasant truths about climate will often say that the scientists are duplicitously misrepresenting facts in order to further a hidden agenda though.

Economics is likewise not there to address ethics or morality. They tell us that if we make this or that decision, we can expect this or that outcome. If the outcome is poverty, people are liable to say that poverty is a bad thing and we should have less of it. But poverty = bad is not an expression of economics any more than drowning polar bears = bad is an expression of climatology. Some people object to being told things they don't like about economics, they will often say that economists are mendacious servants of a hidden master.

This isn't flogging a dead horse. You are simply moving the goalposts to make one branch of enquiry do things that none of its peers must in order to justify dismissing it on grounds that are not valid for any of them. Zoology doesn't state that parasitic organisms which eat us alive from the eyeballs out are evil, but that is no reason to say there are no experts on the subject of animals.

creativesoul wrote: As already conceded, that particular claim is a bit conspiracy theory like. Apparently that concession wasn't enough. I'll say more:It overstates the case as a result of the "nothing more than" and "created and intended" bits. I've already addressed that. Apparently I haven't addressed enough. I'll say more:It would be a better put by stating that economic jargon is a justificatory method often used to dismiss and/or excuse causing unnecessary quantifiable harm to less fortunate working class Americans.

Do you remember the words with which you dismissed me when I tried to rephrase my description of increasingly wealthy societies?
"...I assume that one writes what they mean. I presuppose sincerity in speech..."

But I am nicer that you are, so I will allow it. Not that it matters...

I don't care how other, lazier people, misuse economic concepts. Where you are dealing with me, I will from time to time assume certain ethical matters such as increased poverty is bad. However when I say that economists warn us that killing NAFTA would be bad for ordinary working class Americans, I do so not to justify grinding people not terribly different from myself into poverty. I say so on the grounds that killing trade deals increases the costs of imported goods that represent a greater share of the incomes of the poor than they do of the rich. That it invites reactions from your foreign trading partners that are ultimately bad for both nations. I do so because I understand something you do not, which is that trade, at least in the round, is not a zero sum game of exploitation. That if you distort your economy to give protection to those who stand to lose one sort of job, you ultimately deny a greater aggregate of opportunity to a wider group.

creativesoul wrote:The American government has, as it's primary motive, a responsibility to every American. We write the laws that govern the socio-economic landscape. There is no justifiable reason for not writing laws and creating a landscape that allows everyone an opportunity to earn a living, regardless of socio-economic circumstances, regardless of innate cognitive potential and/or talent. Regardless of whether they're capable of ever having something other than low-skilled ability. The reality here is simple. There is a very wide range of innate potential(talent, cognitive capability, etc). There is also a very wide range of socio-economic circumstances from very poor, undernourished, and well below average mental ability to very wealthy, undernourished, and well below average mental ability.

We have the ability to create a socio-economic landscape that includes an opportunity for a much broader scope of Americans to be able to earn a living.

That's a very grand spiel. It changes nothing about the facts though. You don't have a very good grasp of how to do that stuff, and you don't want to take advice from the people who devote their careers to studying it. Carving out protected economic niches for the favoured isn't a great way to unleash innate potential(talent, cognitive capability, or any other).

creativesoul wrote:Economic jargon is often used in conjunction with the notion of 'the greater good' when justifying American legislation that does both, harm American workers and 'help' workers in foreign countries. The line of thinking there is one that attempts to place the individual as a bad guy when questioning the motives behind such pieces of legislation(me in this case). As though it is somehow wrong/immoral/unethical for a natural born American citizen to expect American legislators to avoid writing and/or passing legislation that unnecessarily harms Americans. It's not. As though it's wrong to expect American legislation to put Americans' needs first. It's not.

Wrong tack. I'm telling you that you can only grow your economy in the way you want by utilising the talents of the workforce to do more valuable work than they used to. And also by allowing investment to find the greatest returns. Both workers and investors have always had to adapt to changing markets and always will. America and Britain got rich by leading that charge.

At every point, somebody wanted to stop the process and hang onto something they already had. I can make the claim pretty well that this understandable desire usually inflicts costs on others who probably should not be expected to bear them, and as often as not also fails those who sought the protection in the long run. I can also cite a set of important objections here - I am not a laissez faire free market evangelist.

One day, we probably will be able to hand off nearly all the work to robots and live off their labour, which will be very nice. But until then, it's all about new skills and new industries just like it has been for the last two centuries or so. So if you want to help those guys, you need to help them with that.

creativesoul wrote:

...
I can do all of that citing examples.

Well, no disrespect meant, but I've insufficient reason to trust the accuracy/truthfulness of your report(ing) upon those particular events. My suspicion that you wanted to talk prediction was a result of how I read you. Seems I misunderstood.

With equally fraudulent respect, you have Google. I have no intention of lying to you, that is not to say there are no alternative interpretations of what I present. For what it's worth, where I know of any that merit mention, I would do so.

But protectionist claims that trapping certain moneys in the USA is good for the economy of the USA are surely intended as factual statements. So examples of why they might not be factual should be relevant to you if you are serious about reconsidering mistaken assumptions. And if you are not, then this thread was just a vast act of wasteful vanity on your part. Even if you reject every other word I write - I cannot see how you can pretend that is not true.

creativesoul wrote:I'm certainly not opposed to talking about recent events. History has lessons. Let's look at recent history, seeing how that is precisely what this thread is about. Should we find that the casual chain of events requires our revisiting pre World War socio-economic situations then we can. Until then...

Are you aware of the Dow Jones inspired financial economic 'meltdown' of '07/'08, along with the emergency bailout and subsequent stimulus package due to the overwhelming amount of financial instruments that were based upon the projected interest rates of non-conforming mortgages? Everyone knows that really bad loans will never be satisfied. Some knew that they could sell them to innocent trusting people, none-the-less.

Are you aware of the 'expert' economic advice given to the president and both houses of congress at the time?

Dow Jones inspired? I'm tempted to watch you stumble through whatever you think that might mean.
It was the projected securitised risk of those mortgages not the interest rates of them. I'm not sure if you are aware, but the projections were correct and all bar a tiny handful of those instruments returned exactly the advertised rates. In essence, the market was rational prior to the panic, which was irrationally based on a loss of faith. One mistake for which economists are validly criticised, and which none of them to my knowledge denies, is that they are stuck with macroeconomic models that presuppose an unrealistic level of rationality, and there is no easy resolution to that problem (trust me, there is definitely a Nobel prize available for whoever does concoct a good fix, but several have been handed out even for deficient ones). As Keynes said about a much older financial crisis - The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. Which is why the banks lost everything, but Blackrock made a killing.

I don't know the 'expert' advice you are referring to. It may have been wrong, experts can be wrong sometimes especially under unprecedented circumstances. The general workings of trade to lower costs and increase wealth for all concerned is not unprecedented at all though, so you should take my advice and continue to participate in the process that made your country wealthy enough to weather that great storm pretty well.

creativesoul wrote:

Just so we are clear, economic growth happens when labour and capital move from less productive economic sectors to more productive ones. That isn't the sort of specific thing that economists get wrong, it's just a general fact of life. I can do examples if you can't think of your own, but that would disappoint me.

There we go. Finally. A 'response' to the earlier question regarding our agreements(or at least what seemed that way to me).

It seems that you're bordering upon incoherency(at best). Earlier you took forever and a day to finally set out the definition of economic wealth, and what counts as becoming more wealthy. Let me remind you:Economic progress is equivalent to economic growth. Economic wealth increases when there are more products to choose from and the people can afford to choose them. Now you're claiming that economic growth happens when labour and capital move from less productive sectors to more productive ones. So either you're drawing and maintaining a meaningful distinction between economic growth and increasing economic wealth or you're conflating your own earlier conceptions. Both have fatal consequences.

Economic progress is a pretty standard term for economic growth. I dropped it because you insisted on an alternative meaning of progress that made the matter annoying.
I never wrote that "Economic wealth increases when there are more products to choose from" that was just you trying to use slight vagueness n my language to justify an obviously preposterous interpretation. Please see the part above where you want to rephrase a poorly worded claim and stop being an utterly obnoxious wanker unless you are certain of your perfection in all things.
Try to also be less stupid, and consider what "happens when" actually means.
Consider it a precondition not a definition. Given your relentless pedantry, I shouldn't have to explain that to you.

creativesoul wrote:Growth is equal to progress, remember? That was according to you. I'm merely seeing it through.

Again, in a post where you have begged permission to restate something, this is irresponsible and merely gives me the opportunity to dismiss you as a cheap hypocrite.

But try to remember that progress can and does mean movement forwards as opposed to movement away from an objective.
I am willing to say that the objective towards which economies tend to progress is greater aggregate wealth, and that increased poverty is therefore regressive.
This is in my view acceptably in line with 'totally standard JARGON!!!' (scare quotes intended) that describes a tax which falls more heavily on the poor than the rich as regressive.
And I would like to push it a little further with a view that disrupting trade in such a way as to hurt the poor heavily while the rich suffer only mildly may also be described as regressive. Although I will accept that in this last matter I have strayed a little, and you may choose to dismiss it if you don't agree.

FlashDangerpants wrote: I do so because I understand something you do not, which is that trade, at least in the round, is not a zero sum game of exploitation. That if you distort your economy to give protection to those who stand to lose one sort of job, you ultimately deny a greater aggregate of opportunity to a wider group.

I think that is what people are beginning to doubt. Economists - who are interested in general truths - tend to talk about large units, like nations. Yes, one might feel that if one's nation in aggregate is growing in wealth, everyone will share that to some extent, through redistribution. Or that if my own part of the national economy is suffering, then other parts will be prospering and will give my children opportunities. But this may not necessarily be the case.

The impression is rather that although the economy is growing as a whole, the benefits are going only to a small number and not being redistributed. That although a wider group might be prospering, that group is of people on the other side of the world. More crudely, while the rich are ruthless in benefiting themselves, the rest of are expected to passively accept a relative decline in the interests of humanity.

If you think this, then it isn't irrational to simply wish to give the existing system a kick. You do not have a plan, only the hope that when the pieces settle you will have grabbed a bigger slice of the cake.

It is like buying lottery tickets. It is a bad alternative to saving for the wealthy, but if you are poor you cannot save, or can save so little it makes no difference. Your only hope is to gamble.

Economists are interested in things of all sizes. At the scale of world trade and national domestic product - the macroeconomic scale - they perhaps do focus on things which only affect our daily existence quite obliquely. But Microeconomists can easily focus on intricate details of transactions too fleeting for our attention (think of the way an advertiser pays a fraction of a penny for you to not really notice their advert on a web site). Microeconomics is rapidly becoming the more important area - partly because it is a lot easier to work out what is true and false with some actual detail there. Macroeconomics starts to lose lose its predictive powers if you go far beyond beyond "trade promotes growth" to work out exactly how useful it happens to be for instance (the answer lies somewhere vaguely between quite a bit and rather a lot).

This ebb and flow of winners and losers from change is nothing new. Marx wrote his stuff because it looked to him in those days that the poor would never gain tangible material benefit from the changes evident then. It must have been very easy then to look at the great wealth of the rich in their mansions compared to the poverty of the diseased children with rickety knees and persistent malnutritional coughs and to assume that this level of poverty must be the eternal lot of the downtrodden.

Nowadays the diseases of poverty in the rich world are no longer those of insufficient calories - they are diseases of excess. Part of that is because all that economic growth brings down prices relative to wages. you must fall through more than one net to starve in modern London. The London that Marx inhabited had lots of manufacturing jobs - something for which many modern types have an unrealistic fetish. It benefited from giant captive markets of an empire - literally forcing India to swallow our exports and guaranteeing huge trade surpluses. Yet the poor still dropped dead of cholera and tuberculosis because they lived in unsanitary squalor. Look at the trade policies we are being offered by populists today - those facts ought to be impossible if their advice is worth listening to, which is why it is not.

Every generation seems to stumble across the same set of Malthusian terrors. Technological Unemployment will ruin us all (see the original Saboteurs and Luddites of the 19th Century, or Keynes' 1930 essay Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren. The fact that one has been predicted so many times doesn't protect us from yet another round of the robots are coming to get us. The Aliens Act of 1905 was passed to prevent Jews fleeing poverty and persecution abroad from usurping working class trades in Britain, this was already known to be nonsense by then because the influx expanded the economy (of course), yet here we are today going round the same stupid complaints that have changed only to target Poles and Romanians over here and Mexicans over there.

In the same vein, everyone seems to think China is becoming a dominant economic threat to every other country today, just like they did with Japan in the 80s, and America at the turn of the 20th and also (I shit you not) Argentina once upon a time. But the rise of these terrible competitors who will devour us, such as Imperial Germany and Tsarist Russia have tended either to be overblown or else not actually a problem. When America got rich and displaced us as the world's consumer of last resort and their currency replaced ours as the one to hold all your foreign reserves in, Britain dropped a rung in a meaningless international competition, the country and its people continued accruing new wealth anyway. We found new stuff to sell to the Americans because they could afford more of our expensive shit. The same will be true of America if China actually does replace it in those things. Unless they are idiots and ignite a trade war just to not lose willy waving privileges at the World Bank.

To gamble with that sort of thing, with hopes of coming our personally enriched but with the wager being the wealth of the country you inhabit, might feel like a good plan to those who feel they have nothing much of anything to lose. But that would be a grave miscalculation. They are liable to find out they used to have more than they reckoned, it would be sad if they learn this by losing it.

If Britain's reckless gamble with leaving Europe is followed by other high risk choices such as one of those big industrial policies where the government steps in to "sort everything out", and harsh immigration rules, I have transferable skills and I can fuck off to work abroad. Those people who placed all their chips in the wrong heap are mostly stuck here. Should they find their state can no longer afford to pay them a pension until they are 85, they will have gambled more than they imagined.

FlashDangerpants wrote: To gamble with that sort of thing, with hopes of coming our personally enriched but with the wager being the wealth of the country you inhabit, might feel like a good plan to those who feel they have nothing much of anything to lose. But that would be a grave miscalculation. They are liable to find out they used to have more than they reckoned, it would be sad if they learn this by losing it.

I was speaking to a lady who had come to London from one of the old Soviet states. I remarked that many of those who voted for Brexit and other populist policies did so because they thought they had 'nothing to lose'. She replied that this was something only people in rich and stable countries would say; people in much of the world know things can always get worse.

Where was I again?

Oh yeah, prior to flashdangerpants' rhetorical drivel, I was discussing the Trump situation in a way meant to highlight to some rather specific underlying causes of his win; namely the forgotten average joe/jane living throughout the country. These are real people in real places who used to believe(and justifiably so) that if they followed the rules and worked hard, that it was possible for them to be able to live comfortably without unnecessary financial worries. That belief was supported by the fact that there were once many more good paying jobs available for a much wider swathe of less fortunate folk; folk just like them. That is no longer the case. Let's talk about that...

One major contributing factor which tremendously influenced the recent American election was the carefully planned quite intentional reduction of American and multinational(including American interests) companies' labor costs. What I am pointing at, what the recent election hinged upon, are the socio-economic consequences of outsourcing good paying American jobs. While there ought be little to no doubt about that happening, there is much discussion and contention regarding whether or not it was the right thing to do, and more importantly whether or not it is the right thing to keep doing, especially given those consequences. Such a discussion would be effectively bare without also highlighting exactly how this has all come to take place.

The main aspect of discussion needs to be clearly put. I've mentioned it before, but it bears repeating:We make the rules which govern our economic landscape. They are nothing more and nothing less than legitimized(literally) cultural/societal(and most relevantly) moral/ethical norms.

FlashDangerpants wrote:...You are determined to ignore expert advice simply because it says things you don't want to consider...

Assuming sincerity in speech...

This is a prima facie example of yet another false belief about me - and evidently it is a quite powerful operative one - coming from one who has ignored multiple attempts of mine to correct his/her gross misunderstanding of my own statements; of my own thought/belief; of my own worldview.

Oh, the irony...

Oh fuck off.