http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/book/gelman_quotes.pdf
Possibly the most fundamental distinction between economics and other fields is that, in economics, it seems to still be permissible to start with your conclusions and then work back from there.
This is only really true in the most contentious subjects studied in economics, and even then, I don't think economics is unique or even unusual in this respect. Unpalatable results go unpublished in many of the social sciences.
Sadly this doesn't make it distinct from other fields at all, at least within the social sciences. Much of sociology is built on explicit anti-positivism and anti-empiricism.
This isn't surprising; a tautology almost. But it doesn't really give us any answers. The real question is: is that a bad thing, and if so how bad is it?. Wealth inequality has been a constant of the human condition since the first farmers learned to aggregate more grain than others. But what, if any, deleterious effect does this actually have on society? And does the concentration of wealth lead to innovations only possible with such an ability to deploy capital in a highly targeted manner?
Bezos (a major political donor) lost a NASA contract for 10 billion to SpaceX. He freaked
So the US Senate, looking out for their buddy, simply added the 10 billion to their next budget directly for him:
https://theintercept.com/2021/05/25/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-s...
Just one small example
This doesn't sound like money for Jeff Bezos. It's money for NASA. What it sounds like is some tortured analysis of a bill that probably isn't going to pass by a journalist who also hates rich guys.
Ah, it was Steyer I think, just came to me.
I think calling this a "scientific consensus" is a bit inaccurate. There's very little consensus in economics (and one can argue about the level of science as well).
As the linked study (and many others like it) shows, it doesn't actually work in practice.
Wealthy people invest in things that wealthy people want to invest it.
(Democratic-ish) governments, for all their many issues, tend to invest in things that can be justified to much broader populations (yes, I know, lots of exceptions to prove the rule)
Increasing private investment and decreasing public investment isn't a "cancel each other out" situation.
Only if you only think about it. This is the danger of theoretical predictions without empirical backup: the path of the Laffer curve is dependent on more than just the tax rate, and is likely also historically dependent.
Every time someone dares to suggest that a policy designed to benefit elites will hurt others, a clown car full of economists drives up. They pile out, tripping over each other to explain to us how we just aren't smart enough to understand economics and how actually cutting taxes for the rich (for the Nth time) will create such extraordinary economic growth that everyone's boat will float upwards as a result.
Of course, they are wrong, but next time this topic comes around I guarantee the clown car will be there and in the meantime it behooves us to stockpile ammunition.
See also: shipping all the manufacturing to China.
How is this related? I enjoy not having to pay $2000 for a cellphone and $500 for a pair of sneakers
Also, the numbers you cite seem pretty dubious. Yes, if you want to do onshore manufacturing today, it's twice as expensive, but propagating that all the way into the cost of the goods assumes 100% of the cost is in manufacturing, that there would be zero economy-of-scale benefit from retaining our manufacturing base, and it assumes no benefit to your income from the increased economic re-circulation. Those... aren't neutral assumptions.
This is a separate matter from the one in TFA but the players and strategies are similar.
If manufacturing didn't go to China it would've went to Vietnam or another country with cheaper low skilled labor. Long term automation will eat those jobs anyways
* Subsidies for relocation
* Subsidies for retraining
* Subsidies for drug rehabilitation
All of which could have been funded by the greater economic growth generated by trade. If you want Americans to pay more for goods to subsidize the cost of living of groups of Americans, make it a transparent tax. Don't hide the cost in greater coats for goods.
Also where was this concern when these same issues were hitting poor urban regions throughout the 80s and 90s?
It’s related because economists and politicians say it’s good for everyone, when in reality it’s only good for the wealthy.
This is just a laffer-curve-style argument. Draw a graph. Point to one end, and mumble. Point to the other end and mumble something else. Say "We want to be here" while pointing somewhere on the curve.
While it remains unhappily true that lots of people are taken in by this sort of argument, it also remains true that it's an astonishingly weak sort of argument.
Because the motivation of a lot of the people arguing for "raising taxes on the rich" is to indeed leave the curve altogether.
Will small increases or decreases in tax rates fundamentally alter GDP? I think obviously not.
But those attempting to make a data-based argument for introducing MMT or a UBI with significantly nationalized elements of the economy (healthcare, energy, etc.) are laughable, when the evidence is so overwhelming that these ideas lead to adverse outcomes in the long-term.
I'm not attempting to straw-man, just to cut the meat to what people are actually arguing about (which isn't a couple percentage points in a tax rate). And it's important to flip it and be honest...and say, no, the data does indeed show without question that freer societies are way better -- and it's just that simple.
This is just absurd. "Better" is not a metric.
By the metrics most widely used worldwide, the Scandavian countries are "better" than the US, while also being "less free".
You may disagree with the metrics for "better", and/or you might disagree with the metrics for "less free", but the core point is that these things are not simple.
If we take, for the sake of argument, (edit: what I'm guessing is) your unstated major premise of a deontological approach to ethics, then yes, you're absolutely right, no amount of positive economic outcome could possibly justify forcibly depriving people of their rightful property, because the ends never justify the means.
However, for the sake of keeping the discussion sane, I'd argue it's important to come out and say that this is where you're coming from, rather than just saying that "this misses the fundamental issue." Because, to someone who prefers almost any other general approach to ethics, it is absolutely central to the fundamental issue. And you can't really just dismiss all those other ways of thinking by just ignoring them.