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MiddleOne posted:There's been 2 world wars since then. Lol yeah sure, like I'm supposed to believe the Swedish PM doesn't have a secret plan to recapture St Petersburg in a locked suitcase
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Apr 10, 2017 15:03
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Electric Owl posted:What are opinions here on Krugman's championed New Trade Theory? Industrial policy is the general phrase used for this sort of interventionism, and is generally supported by economists on paper, unfortunately it doesn't really have a good track record in practice. Going down the historical list of things that count as industrial policy reveals a big list of failure. Japan is the only real success story and that turns bad after the 1970s, Latin American ISI protectionism had mediocre results at best, British socialist industrial policy in the 1960s and 70s was a gigantic failure and gave the phrase its present negative connotation. The closest you get to real success in a fully-developed country is Germany, and even there the level of active state planning in the present is very limited, it's more like the country is coasting on the effects of successful industrial policy of the past https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_policy
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Apr 11, 2017 04:08
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Electric Owl posted:Thx for bringing this to my attention. From the limited reading I've done on it so far Industrial policy seems to have met with limited success, but that's not necessarily a bad thing imo. Of course interventionist policy is less efficient and more costly than offshoring production to some country that has lower opp. costs, but that's beside the point. I guess I just fail to see how, for example, if the gov't protected the auto industry in the US, how that wouldn't lead to higher levels of gainful employment. Yes, it would be more expensive for Americans to buy a car and it would be costly for the gov't when compared to free market alternatives, but surely this would only be so in the short-run? It reminds me of when Ford paid his employees enough to buy a T-model for themselves; the wage/price differential eventually equalizes no? Yeah, it would increase employment (although with automation not by all that much) but it would probably retard quality and innovation in that sector. IMO doing some kind of intervention to shore up the competitiveness of America's manufacturing sector would be worthwhile, but that's only assuming the policies work, and they probably wouldn't increase employment to nearly the degree you want in any case. You're better off setting up a dedicated WPA-style government make-work program if you want that
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Apr 11, 2017 05:39
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wateroverfire posted:Like...the neoliberal agenda is supposed to be free trade and pro-business measures paired with redistribution to compensate the losers but policy makers mostly don't get around to the second part. no not really, the stuff about 'protecting the losers' was always a fig leaf wheeled out in panic when the public starts to complain too much, whether in the early 90s or today. there was not then and is not now actual political will to do anything like that, not least because it's basically impossible to predict who the losers will actually be, and the long-term loss of quality employment in general means many of the newly-unemployed will never find work of similar quality to that which they lost icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 20:13 on Apr 12, 2017 |
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Apr 12, 2017 20:08
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Fruits of the sea posted:I hope this is the right spot for this question: Theoretically the loss of purchasing power by the unemployed would be made up for in terms of money saved by the employer, theoretically allowing them to bounce back more quickly In reality of course economic downturns are caused by excess supply and too little demand and so that wouldnn't help at all, plus of course the social effects of having very high unemployment spikes
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Apr 13, 2017 22:10
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