Progressives are economic retards

[Kuciwalker]

Whose fault is it they have neither? Certainly not the company's nor the government's. There is no "right" to a job.

Fail. He was disputing not the moral implications, but the empirical ones. It's irrelevant that "cheaper production means that the people in the first world can specialize in other higher value activities" if in reality those people can't.

[KrazyHorse]

The question then becomes "why aren't anti free-traders also Luddites"?

I don't know about any empirical study on the comparison between trade and technology, but there is some evidence that immigration produces less of an increase in inequality (per unit of productivity growth) than does technological advance.

[Kuciwalker]

Yeah, epmd is stumbling around the proper argument in his head, but he keeps missing it by a little bit.

[KrazyHorse]

There is no meaningful difference between a machine that transforms high-skill labor (robot designers) into cars by building the cars here and a machine that transforms high-skill labor (airplane manufacturers) into cars by putting the airplanes onto boats and then having the boats come back with cars in them.

One is called a "factory" and the other is called "free trade".

You could at least quote the original source for the analogy (as I did when I first posted this):

The Iowa Car Crop

A thing of beauty is a joy forever, and nothing is more beautiful than a succinct and flawless argument. A few lines of reasoning can change the way we see the world.

I found one of the most beautiful arguments I know while I was browsing through a textbook written by my friend David Friedman. While the argument may not be original, David's version is so clear, so consice, and so incontrovertible, and so delightfully surprising that I have been unable to resist sharing it with students, relatives, and cocktail party acquaintances at every opportunity. The argument concerns international trade, but its appeal is less in its subject matter than in its irresistable force.

David's observation is that there are two technolgoies for producing automobiles in America. One is to manufacture them in Detroit and the other is to grow them in Iowa. Everybody knows about the first technology; let me tell you about the second. First you plant seeds, which are the raw materials from which automobiles are constructed. You wait a few months until wheat appears. Then you harvest the wheat, load it onto ships and sail the ships eastward into the Pacific Ocean. After a few months, the ships reappear with Toyotas on them.

International trade is nothing but a form of technology. The fact that there is a place called Japan, with people and factories, is quite irrelevant to Americans' well-being. To analyze trade policies, we might as well assume that Japan is a giant machine with mysterious inner workings that convert wheat into cars.

Any policy designed to favor the first American technology over the second is a policy designed to favor American auto producers in Detroit over American auto producers in Iowa. A tax or a ban on "imported" automobiles is a tax or a ban on Iowa-grown automobiles. If you protect Detroit carmakers from competition, then you must damage Iowa farmets because Iowa farmers are the competition.

The task of producing a given fleet of cars can be allocated between Detroit and Iwa in a variety of ways. A competitive price system selects that allocation that minimizes the total production cost. It would be unnecessarily expensive to manufacture all cars in Detroit, unnecessarily expensive to grow all cars in Iowa, and unnecessarily expensive to use the two production processes in anything other than the natural ratio that emerges as a result of competition.

That means that protection for Detroit does more than just transfer income from farmers to autoworkers. It also raises the total cost of providing Americans with a given number of automobiles. The efficiency loss comes with no offsetting gain; it impoverishes the nation as a whole.

There is much talk about improving the efficiency of American car manufacturing. When you hve two ways to make a car, the road to efficiency is to use both in optimal proportions. The last thing you should wnat to do is artificially hobble one of your production technologies. It is sheer superstition to think that an Iowa-grown Camry is any less "American" than a Detroit-built Taurus. Policies rooted in superstition do not frequently bear efficient fruit.

[Kuciwalker]

I didn't know there was an original source. I was just copying you. But thanks.

[KrazyHorse]

I wish I was clever enough to come up with arguments like that.

[Drake Tungsten]

David Friedman obviously doesn't know much about Iowa if he thinks they're growing much wheat there.

http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/deptdocs.nsf/all/sis5219

[Kuciwalker]

[KrazyHorse]

The quote is from "The Armchair Economist". I am not familiar with the textbook referred to in my quote.

[KrazyHorse]

David Friedman obviously doesn't know much about Iowa if he thinks they're growing much wheat there.

It's kind of hard to tell what state you're actually over from 40000 feet up.

[KrazyHorse]

BTW Drake, your boy from Omaha really went to bat for us.

[Drake Tungsten]

Of course he did; you guys are paying him $15 a second. Tick, tick, tick...

[Aeson]

It's obvious that there are cases of exploitation of overseas workers. How common it is, and where to draw the "exploitation" line are rather unclear.

As for workers having choice, the choice of "starve because your ancestors or corrupt government sold/leased us all the land" or "work for us for whatever we want to pay you since your own government is in our pocket" isn't much of a choice and could certainly be construed as a form of exploitation.

[Aeson]

It's obvious that there are cases of exploitation of overseas workers. How common it is, and where to draw the "exploitation" line are rather unclear.

As for workers having choice, the choice of "starve because your ancestors or corrupt government sold/leased us all the land" or "work for us for whatever we want to pay you since your own government is in our pocket" isn't much of a choice and could certainly be construed as a form of exploitation.

[Drake Tungsten]

It's obvious that there are cases of exploitation of overseas workers.

The fact that you exploit foreigners with no other choice doesn't mean that American companies do.