6 ms·

I think a number of people who voted for trump don't trust wonks because for a LONG time (many of) the wonks kept insisting that when we off-shored low paying j

I think a number of people who voted for trump don't trust wonks because for a LONG time (many of) the wonks kept insisting that when we off-shored low paying jobs, high-paying jobs would come back to the united states. I'm not saying we should try to get every low margin job back in the states, but maybe we should plan out a REASONED tariff policy that protects SOME low margin jobs. Investing in education might not be a bad idea either.

jfengel 7mo ago
That wasn't really the wonks. That was the message from Big Business. A reasoned tariff policy is a pretty good idea, but a scattershot one is much, much worse. Unfortunately, that reasoned tariff policy is not easy to write. The good low-paying jobs are part of a system. You need to bring back whole industries. You can't build just one factory; you need many. It requires the government to subsidize and coordinate the industries as they get going, not just throw a tariff at it. They may not trust the wonks, but if they can't recognize that what they did vote for was a spectacularly idiotic idea, then we've got much deeper problems.