3 ms·

I pretty much agree with everything you wrote. The part that scares me is this: > It's a mistake for the Democrats to obsess over blaming and castigating those

by creato 6y ago

I pretty much agree with everything you wrote. The part that scares me is this: > It's a mistake for the Democrats to obsess over blaming and castigating those people, instead of focusing on convincing them, swaying them, educating them, peeling away voters and ultimately delivering real life improvements (the big part of that) if they truly believe they have a better path to offer for their future. What if there simply isn't a better path? Between automation and foreign competition, it might simply not be possible to return to an economy like the one we had post-WWII. This is where everyone comes along to tell me about UBI, but I think this is not addressing the problem. A lot of people don't want to be handed free money, they want opportunities to work and improve their lives. A slower treadmill is still a treadmill. I wonder if it is simply impossible to provide that, and maybe the current reality is close to the best this is going to get. I think maybe the best possible future is one where many (and eventually most) people live out their lives hooked up to an opiate IV and a VR headset.

erik_seaberg 6y ago
Foreign competition is a choice (by setting low tariffs). I happen to benefit from it, but it seems a lot of working citizens don’t, and they want more protectionism than they got from Trump.
- creato 6y ago
  I'm not one of the economists that knee jerk reject protectionism, but I don't think it would help that much either. Trading partners won't accept tariffs without reciprocating. The US might be big enough now to get away with this to some degree, but that won't last forever, and tariffs would probably accelerate that reduction in influence. I'm all for tariffs when there is some other goal that makes sense (for example I think tariffs should bake in the cost of environmental or other regulatory compliance we have that the foreign trading partner does not).
  - tomp 6y ago
    I think one of Trump’s biggest mistakes was (attempting to) wage a tariff war with Europe, instead of creating a larger coalition for an economic war against China. China’s not free trade anyways (not in terms of tariffs, but in terms of foreign businesses operating locally, and in terms of manipulating currency) so there’s only so much they can retaliate...
  - erik_seaberg 6y ago
    Yeah, free trade offers a larger pie to those of us who earn a slice of it.
Noos 6y ago
One of the things I worry a lot about is that the main issue is that there simply are too many people and too little jobs. Like we can only legitimately support a small amount of workers in any field; if we have more it drops earning potential to near nothing, like in most creative or labor fields. We also simply are too efficient to have multiple of a field any more too. We end up having one department store chain instead of four or five in an area; every market seems to solidify into 2 or 3 companies. Many jobs are virtualized to where those companies hire a fraction of humanity and have weak supply chains. I think what will happen is just over time we will have less people. People will stop reproducing in sort of an equilibrium until we reach a point where we balance out to the economy's needs. I don't think it will be top down, but people simply cannot afford to have kids in a part time gig economy.

by creato 6y ago

erik_seaberg 6y ago

Foreign competition is a choice (by setting low tariffs). I happen to benefit from it, but it seems a lot of working citizens don’t, and they want more protectionism than they got from Trump.

creato 6y ago
I'm not one of the economists that knee jerk reject protectionism, but I don't think it would help that much either. Trading partners won't accept tariffs without reciprocating. The US might be big enough now to get away with this to some degree, but that won't last forever, and tariffs would probably accelerate that reduction in influence. I'm all for tariffs when there is some other goal that makes sense (for example I think tariffs should bake in the cost of environmental or other regulatory compliance we have that the foreign trading partner does not).
- tomp 6y ago
  I think one of Trump’s biggest mistakes was (attempting to) wage a tariff war with Europe, instead of creating a larger coalition for an economic war against China. China’s not free trade anyways (not in terms of tariffs, but in terms of foreign businesses operating locally, and in terms of manipulating currency) so there’s only so much they can retaliate...
- erik_seaberg 6y ago
  Yeah, free trade offers a larger pie to those of us who earn a slice of it.

Noos 6y ago

One of the things I worry a lot about is that the main issue is that there simply are too many people and too little jobs. Like we can only legitimately support a small amount of workers in any field; if we have more it drops earning potential to near nothing, like in most creative or labor fields. We also simply are too efficient to have multiple of a field any more too. We end up having one department store chain instead of four or five in an area; every market seems to solidify into 2 or 3 companies. Many jobs are virtualized to where those companies hire a fraction of humanity and have weak supply chains. I think what will happen is just over time we will have less people. People will stop reproducing in sort of an equilibrium until we reach a point where we balance out to the economy's needs. I don't think it will be top down, but people simply cannot afford to have kids in a part time gig economy.