I don’t think Dani Rodrick, Michael Pettis, Keynes, etc. are cranks. What I never hear from people in your camp is any acknowledgment that other countries industrial policies create a de facto US industrial policy. That was fine when the US was 50% of world GDP but with players the size of China (along with Japan, SK, Germany, etc.) conducting mass-scale industrial policies, the “free market” isn’t operating anymore. Of course the imbalances they are creating will eventually cost them in a big way but in the long run we’re all dead and the costs of those policies are born by people outside of elite areas and are massive. I’d love to see you engage in the ideas more. How can you operate as a free market when more than 50% of global GDP is produced by people conducting beggar thy neighbor policies?
Hello as well and I like your writing despite my disagreement here. My impression is that Rodrick sees our current populist issues as the result of an absolutist free trade agenda. A sentiment I agree with but he’s rather vague on solutions. Tariffs, industrial policy, capital controls, etc are all responses which have various good and bad effects but the core issue is the current free trade system is unsustainable politically.
<I> Perhaps we can restore low-skill, labor-intensive manufacturing to the Midwest, but all other Americans will pay a steep price for that, both in terms of higher costs, debt, fewer jobs that depend on cheaper inputs from abroad, and future prosperity. </i>
As an economist, and to distinguish yourself from a Yale lawyer, shouldn't you present some estimate of those costs versus benefits quantified in a cost/benefit analysis?
The most trenchant critique of globalisation in my view is that Adam Smith’s “natural sympathy” can only really be sustained at a societal scale where some collective sense of community exists. This can also be sustained (to some extent at least) at nationhood scale but at a global scale it becomes hopelessly attenuated.... to the point of non-existence. Although I know of no solution to this - in a world relentlessly globalised by the internet – recognising it has led me to question my former faith in laissez-faire capitalism. But looking to any kind of command economy as an answer, remains, of course, the delusional rabbit hole that it ever was.
I don’t think Dani Rodrick, Michael Pettis, Keynes, etc. are cranks. What I never hear from people in your camp is any acknowledgment that other countries industrial policies create a de facto US industrial policy. That was fine when the US was 50% of world GDP but with players the size of China (along with Japan, SK, Germany, etc.) conducting mass-scale industrial policies, the “free market” isn’t operating anymore. Of course the imbalances they are creating will eventually cost them in a big way but in the long run we’re all dead and the costs of those policies are born by people outside of elite areas and are massive. I’d love to see you engage in the ideas more. How can you operate as a free market when more than 50% of global GDP is produced by people conducting beggar thy neighbor policies?
Hi Dani Rodrick is not advocating the sort of industrial policy we are getting and he seems quite concerned about our China policy.
Hello as well and I like your writing despite my disagreement here. My impression is that Rodrick sees our current populist issues as the result of an absolutist free trade agenda. A sentiment I agree with but he’s rather vague on solutions. Tariffs, industrial policy, capital controls, etc are all responses which have various good and bad effects but the core issue is the current free trade system is unsustainable politically.
Be thankful that other Yale Law celebs - Stacey Abrams and Ronan Farrow - are not setting economic policy (yet).
<I> Perhaps we can restore low-skill, labor-intensive manufacturing to the Midwest, but all other Americans will pay a steep price for that, both in terms of higher costs, debt, fewer jobs that depend on cheaper inputs from abroad, and future prosperity. </i>
As an economist, and to distinguish yourself from a Yale lawyer, shouldn't you present some estimate of those costs versus benefits quantified in a cost/benefit analysis?
The most trenchant critique of globalisation in my view is that Adam Smith’s “natural sympathy” can only really be sustained at a societal scale where some collective sense of community exists. This can also be sustained (to some extent at least) at nationhood scale but at a global scale it becomes hopelessly attenuated.... to the point of non-existence. Although I know of no solution to this - in a world relentlessly globalised by the internet – recognising it has led me to question my former faith in laissez-faire capitalism. But looking to any kind of command economy as an answer, remains, of course, the delusional rabbit hole that it ever was.
Would it be worthwhile to define economic success at the different levels of society similar to your work on how regular folks assess risk?