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Actually you, like most of us, have a trade deficit with the grocery store and the movie theater, and a trade surplus with your employer. Which one is more enjo
by inigyou 2mo ago
Actually you, like most of us, have a trade deficit with the grocery store and the movie theater, and a trade surplus with your employer. Which one is more enjoyable to have?
- kemayo 2mo agoThe experience of the trade deficit with the grocery store and the movie theater is more enjoyable, overall. I get films and ice cream and a good time out of it. From my employer I get a lot of sitting in meetings -- they have to pay me to make me put up with that! My point is that reducing it entirely to "did I gain or receive cash-money from this?" isn't a particularly useful framing.
- jimkleiber 2mo agoI think it's what can happen when we shift more towards an exchange orientation and away from a communal orientation. Or in other words, as we see the world more win-lose and less win-win.
- inigyou 2mo agoYeah that's the point. If you can get away with having a trade deficit not balanced by a surplus, that's a good thing because you get more movies and ice cream for less meetings. Trade deficits are good, people are just sending you free stuff.
- tshaddox 2mo agoIt’s a silly question, since (short of a major life change or economic system change) you need the grocery store and the job to have decent quality of life. You need to trade your labor for money, and you need to trade your money for food. I would argue that there isn’t a huge difference in the fundamental nature of those two trades. Framing them in terms of “trade deficits” is pointing out which direction money is moving in each instance, but fundamentally they’re both just trades.
- Gangway0829 2mo agoIndeed that is true, which is the point of both OP(or at least my takeaway). Attaching a moral value to trade deficits or surpluses, as the current administration seems to be in favor of doing, is fairly nonsensical.
- edgyquant 2mo agoI dislike this analogy because a nation is not a person grocery shopping and anyway if a single grocery store was the only way to get food that would put me in a very lopsided relationship with them and the power dynamics in such a case are obviously bad for the person. Nations have interests and there’s a real conversation to be had that a country should ensure it has strategic industries so its existence is never at the whims of another.
- andruby 2mo ago> a real conversation to be had that a country should ensure it has strategic industries Then let that be the reason for tariffs rather than the bullshit argument of trade deficit = taking money.
- edgyquant 2mo agoIn academic and think tank circles it is. Too many people treat political theatre and, frankly, entertainment pieces as reflective of the actual policy debates when they are mass media designed to get clicks.
- preg_match 2mo agoRight but this is actual policy. The Trump Administration does actual policy built off poorly formed fiscal reasoning. That's why we see blanket tariffs. There is no strategy. Maybe some smart people, somewhere, would hypothetically have a strategy. Those people currently hold no power. It's not "political theater", it's our ACTUAL politics. It's just so ridiculous that it looks like theater. Which just means the situation is worse than you originally thought.
- javanissen 2mo agoThis is one view. Another view is that maintaining economic interdependence between countries — aside from making both countries richer via specialization and comparative advantage — is a great way to incentivize cooperation and prevent them from killing each other. Examples here: https://www.hoover.org/research/when-trade-wars-become-shooting-wars https://www.hoover.org/research/when-trade-wars-become-shoot...