I don’t have confidence that economists have fully figured out how economies work or what the relevant trade offs are. Economics is somewhere between the social “sciences” and real science in terms of methodological reliability.
I’m not a Marxist, but I’m also not a religious zealot. I believe in aerospace engineers enough that I’m comfortable getting into a metal tube that’s 35,000 feet in the air. But I don’t have similar confidence in the postulates of economists.
> And if that hurts Americans. that sucks for them
The whole point of government is so people can vote to override anti-social individual behavior like this.
You don't have to go all the way. Just experiment with a VAT and lowering corporate taxes.
> I don’t have confidence that economists have fully figured out how economies work or what the relevant trade offs are. Economics is somewhere between the social “sciences” and real science in terms of methodological reliability.
What economists have is better than vague feelings about the dignity of working in a factory as opposed to a service job.
> The whole point of government is so people can vote to override anti-social individual behavior like this.
Is that the point of the government? Not in the American tradition. Americans are remarkably invididualistic. If that's anti-social, well, the experiment has been running for a few hundred years and it's worked pretty well. I don't believe the past 20 years have been so bad that the US should start acting like a third world country.
> What economists have is better than vague feelings about the dignity of working in a factory as opposed to a service job.
You've got it backwards. If people have the feeling that there is more dignity working in a factory than delivering Door Dash, that's a preference that should be factored into the economic analysis. Similarly, economic analyses considers factors like labor laws and environmental laws as detracting from "comparative advantage," even though it probably better reflects peoples' preferences for those things to be a minimum standard that no country is competing on. And it's certainly relevant that being a manufacturing powerhouse provides a long-term military advantage compared to a services-based economy. Prior to World War II, the U.S. had largely demilitarized. It built the world's largest military within a couple of years, because of its industrial capabilities. Those are real-world considerations, but aren't factored into simplistic comparative-advantage analyses.
What I posted there was a bit muddled. Economics is attempting to be a science. To the greatest extent possible, it should not be value-based. Politics is value-based, and it has priority over economics when it comes to making decisions. But if your politics is "we need more manufacturing in the US" then you should listen to economists in pursuit of that goal.
Bringing back manufacturing with tariffs is like banning fossil fuels to combat climate change. It's not good policy.
> To the greatest extent possible, it should not be value-based. Politics is value-based, and it has priority over economics when it comes to making decisions. But if your politics is "we need more manufacturing in the US" then you should listen to economists in pursuit of that goal.
I agree with this completely. But I think most economists simply disagree with this goal and aren’t thinking of ways to advance the goal. So we’re stuck with tariffs, which at least is something we have used in the past to support industry.
I would posit that this attitude is at the root of a lot of the distrust of and consternation at experts. If people say: “we want a society with more manufacturing/fewer immigrants/etc.,” the expert response is “you’re stupid to want that.” They’re not thinking of ways to leverage their expertise in service of those outcomes.
Mainstream economists also widely agree corporate taxes and capital gains taxes are bad: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/19/157047211/six-.... Should we eliminate those taxes and have everyone pay a large VAT?
I don’t have confidence that economists have fully figured out how economies work or what the relevant trade offs are. Economics is somewhere between the social “sciences” and real science in terms of methodological reliability.
I’m not a Marxist, but I’m also not a religious zealot. I believe in aerospace engineers enough that I’m comfortable getting into a metal tube that’s 35,000 feet in the air. But I don’t have similar confidence in the postulates of economists.
> And if that hurts Americans. that sucks for them
The whole point of government is so people can vote to override anti-social individual behavior like this.