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It is important to note that practically no economist believes that free trade is not a net positive for all countries. In a recent survey of economists, two qu

• hudibras 11y ago
  Question A was about consumers and Question B was about "on average, citizens of the U.S." Too bad this article, as it says right in the headline, is about workers and not consumers or the average U.S. citizen. Nice try, though.
  • noobermin 11y ago
    Therein lies the conundrum that we face: while the net is good for society, there will always be people who get burnt while rest of society benefits. You saw this at the advent of the automobile which left the horse and buggy industry in the dust and it is what we see now with "green" tech and fracking leaving oil and coal industries in the dust, not to mention the current hubbub of Uber/Airbnb vs Taxis/Hotels... Given a large enough N, there is bound to be a sizable subset[0] who will get hurt when society advances. It's hard to argue about this though with people that is better because it comes off as economist being elitist and unconnected with the person you're in fact hurting. The best corollary I can imagine for me is if there was an influx of cheap PhD labor for doing science and putting me out of a job or forcing me to take >20K per year. But would it be better for science? Of course! But it would suck for me... And I'm not sure of anything that could solve this problem. This is just the reality of the economics effects of any advancement. [0] Small subset normalized to the total N, but a large subset compared to say, the number of fingers on one's hands.
    • look_lookatme 11y ago
      Here's your [0]. https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=3Q3Y https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=3Q3Y
      • noobermin 11y ago
        I think this is a more representative graph[0]. I'm assuming that what you linked includes non-factory workers. [0] is specifically "Production and Nonsupervisory Employees" in Manufacturing. This is in no way weighted by the population at the time or the labor force at that time, but let's look at it this way. 8.5M around 2014 was about 5% of the total labor force in that year the US. I suppose 1 in 20 is a number of people if you're just looking at that one graph. Here[1] is an informative graph (it'd be better if it were normalized to the total). Manufacturing is a major piece still, but the total is growing as manufacturing is somewhat changing little (overall absolute increase by [0] but might looks flat compared to growth in other fields, shrinking as a fraction of the total private industry workforce per [1]) with what looks like increases in other fields, specifically in the "education and health services" part on the bottom of the graph. [0] https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CES3000000006 https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CES3000000006 [1] be it noted that this graphic claims to come from the same source as [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_United_States#/media/File:EmploymentUSbranchFredgr.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_United_States#/...
        • look_lookatme 11y ago
          We have more employed people than ever, yet we have regressed in terms of %of population between ages 25-54 participating in the workforce. We have lost 4,000,000 manufacturing jobs in 15 years, despite wages languishing (in real dollars) and productivity increasing. We have gained jobs in health -- this is to be expected with the aging boomer population. We have gained jobs in transportation/logistics -- this is to be expected given all the stuff made in Chinese factories we buy from Amazon. Very soon these jobs will be automated, trucks will drive themselves and warehouses will stock themselves. Worshippers at the altar of Free Market Economics (A Real Science) can wave around normalized, adjusted graphs all they want but if society doesn't figure out what to do with the people we graduate from high schools and colleges or layoff to pad quarterly earnings, we are going to have some serious issues on our hands in the next decade -- if not sooner.
• fixxer 11y ago
  Economists? Are those the same people that make assertions based on observations & models lacking legitimate control groups? Beyond the fact that social sciences are generally not scientific and highly subject to groupthink, I don't think they're wrong in the sense that comparative advantages exist in the Ricardian/Smith sense. However, if they dont account for currency manipulation, tax loopholes, and labour safety standards, I think those same economists lose a lot of credibility clinging to this fantasy that free trade as we know it is actually free.
  • bko 11y ago
    Currency manipulation: Devaluing your currency such that you can sell goods artificially cheap to your competitors. In other words, Americans not paying enough. Also known as quantitive easing when US does it. Tax loopholes: tax code In regards to labor safety standards, every country has a right to impose their own standards based on cultural norms. There is no universal set of standards that every country can agree upon. Would you really want to give up the autonomy with some universal code? As countries become wealthier, they value health and safety to a greater extent and the law changes accordingly.
    • fixxer 11y ago
      At no point in my statement did I echo Trumpism or political rhetoric. I was speaking generally about things that are rarely included in the "free trade is great" line of thought. You are absolutely correct that every country has the right to set their laws and operate as they see fit. However, their trading partners have the right to consider the implications of those policies on their own objectives. I have no interest in changing anything. My opinion is that when someone says "economists nearly universally agree on X", I generally think the best course of action is to lift up one's feet to avoid stepping in bullshit. EDIT: Changed a word.
      • gnaritas 11y ago
        > My argument is that when someone says "economists nearly universally agree on X", I generally think the best course of action is to lift up one's feet to avoid stepping in bullshit. That's not much of an argument, in fact it's not one at all. You don't like or trust economists, ok, that's an opinion, but it's not an argument.
• eli_gottlieb 11y ago
  >It is important to note that practically no economist believes that free trade is not a net positive for all countries. Yes, on average it's a net positive. Of course, if you average +20 for capital with -15 for labor, you get +5, a "net positive" for "society overall", with the slight unexamined problem that capital and labor increasingly don't overlap. Economists have always said that some state action would be necessary to compensate the sections of the working class harmed by competition with cheaper overseas labor. The state, being run by ideologues trying to strengthen capital over labor, never took any of the corrective actions recommended by trade economists.
• nemild 11y ago
  I'm confused by your argument - you're right that most economists would agree that free trade provides holistic benefits, but most would also note that it imposes costs - and that the benefits are often widely dispersed, but the costs can be very concentrated. Is it wrong to write an article talking about the costs?
  • bko 11y ago
    Its fine to mention the cost to those small groups affected negatively. But just be clear that those groups are really special interests and having a policy to cater to those special interests at the, albeit small, cost to many leads to a lot of problems.
• jonknee 11y ago
  > I find it ironic that publications such as the NYT which often (rightfully IMO) put a lot of weight on the scientific consensus on issues such as climate change, are much more reactionary when it comes to issues such as free trade, relying more an personal antidotes and political rhetoric. I don't find it surprising at all, workers are real people out there. Economics is messy and when you're the one being marginalized you don't say "well at least on average the country is better off" when you can't feed your family. If climate change had as accurate a barometer as unemployment you would see radically different coverage.
  • bko 11y ago
    Economics is messy, but the free trade and consumer choice are very basic tenant of economics which lie at the foundation of economics. This is not one of the messier, controversial aspects of econometric models.
    • shawn-furyan 11y ago
      I don't think this is accurate. Piketty throws a big wrench in any assumptions which rely on increases in the average being disseminated widely throughout the economy. Economists have mostly made this assumption before Piketty, and the field hasn't really caught up to accounting for this effect. Globalization seems to be one of the major drivers of capital's advantage vs. labor in capturing a disproportionate amount of growth of late. So, wealth distribution is a controversial topic in economics right now that is highly relevant to the conclusions that can be drawn from econometric models that deal with global trade.
    • jonknee 11y ago
      The equations say we're better off overall, but not what to do with the marginalized citizens. It's not surprising that they are both vocal and talked about in the NYT. Imagine you get laid off and the rest of your former co-workers all got raises that together equal more than your former salary. Everyone is better off, but how does that help you feed your family?
      • 11y ago
• tryitnow 11y ago
  I sort of agree, but "free trade" and "anthropogenic climate change" are very different kinds of things. Climate change is not a policy whereas free trade is. A better analogy would be between "free trade" and "carbon taxes" or "free trade" and "renewable subsidies." Polling "experts" on policy issues is a different beast than polling them on scienfitific issues.
• kwhitefoot 11y ago
  If an engineer or physicist says they believe something about their field (not at the cutting edge) I tend to believe that they are right but economists, however smart and honest they might be, don't have the luxury of performing experiments so many of their pronouncements are either mere opinions or are arguments from first principles unsullied by attempts at verification.
• calibraxis 11y ago
  But economists aren't scientists. Most are employed to support government ideologies. And these IGM economists are handpicked by some committee. For example, they're supposedly "geographically diverse". That means: Berkeley, Chicago, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, Yale. Where's Dean Baker, one of the few who predicted the housing bubble crash & impact of 2007-2008? Stiglitz? Pettifor? Varoufakis? Piketty? Do they not have sufficiently "impeccable qualifications" even by bureaucratic credentialist standards? Pseudoscience and lying with statistics is the Economist Way. Consensus by a bunch of handpicked suit-wearing economists is nothing like the scientific consensus on global warming. "Globalization" and "free trade" are doublespeak; you have to prefix them with "corporate", like corporate globalization.
  • baddox 11y ago
    I don't understand your argument. This is an instance of the vast majority of scientists disagreeing with the policies of the vast majority of national governments.
• wazoox 11y ago
  I'll quote Nassim N. Taleb here : With [...] macroeconomic analysis working worse than astrology, microeconomic papers wrong 40% of the time, the appointment of Bernanke who was less than clueless of the risks[...], people are perfectly entitled to rely on their own ancestral instinct and listen to their grandmothers with a better track record than these policymaking goons. from https://www.facebook.com/nntaleb/posts/10153658794008375 https://www.facebook.com/nntaleb/posts/10153658794008375 There is excellent evidence that many countries became prosperous because of protectionism: UK, USA, S. Korea... See for instance the book from Ha-Joon Chang, "Kicking Away the Ladder" (a digest can be found here: http://www.paecon.net/PAEtexts/Chang1.htm http://www.paecon.net/PAEtexts/Chang1.htm ) The use of averages conveniently masks the fact that most people lose while a few fat cats grab all the gains. When a group of 1000 people earns collectively 1 million, it's of tremendous importance if everyone gets $1000 or if one gets 999001 and all the others 1$ instead. "Free trade agreements" generally looks precisely like the latter.
  • bko 11y ago
    Every American benefits from imports. Not just a few. The value of consumer choice could not be overstated. Besides, free trade puts competitive pressure on American corporations. The "fat cats" would love protectionist markets so they don't have to compete with foreign companies. This has led to much higher levels of service and more choices to all Americans.
    • douche 11y ago
      It's hollowed out the middle, not just the middle class, but the spectrum of products available to buy. You used to be able to buy decent quality, medium price products that were made in America. They might not be as high-quality as the very best, but they were a lot better than the foreign-made WalMart/Harbor Freight-grade trash. Now we've still got the high-end products, but everything else is almost indistinguishable cheap trash. The corporations don't really care whether they make something in Ohio or Shandong or Hanoi, as long as the differentials for labor and shipping come out positive. The biggest corporations are effectively post-national anyway.
• scarmig 11y ago
  Economists would also almost unanimously agree that trade creates winners and losers, within a given country. TANSTAAFL Often trade deals are sold with "some people will lose, more people will win, we can take some of the gains from the winners to compensate the losers and everyone wins!" The second half of that statement doesn't happen, largely because it's difficult to come up with effective programs that share the gains of the winners with the losers. On the whole I'm a free trade supporter. It's unsurprising, however, that the losers will get pissed off and start flocking to demagogues like Trump. That risk is concerning enough that I've decreased my support of free trade, for reasons of maintaining a healthy civic culture.
• raziel2p 11y ago
  > I find it ironic that publications such as the NYT which often (rightfully IMO) put a lot of weight on the scientific consensus on issues such as climate change, are much more reactionary when it comes to issues such as free trade, relying more an personal antidotes and political rhetoric. That's because economics is a social study, not a science.