Comments for NAFTA and Free Trade Do Not Belong in the Same Sentence at http://www.cepr.net , comment 1 to 11 out of 11 comments http://www.cepr.net Sun, 19 May 2013 03:42:58 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/nafta-and-free-trade-do-not-belong-in-the-same-sentence#comment-16005 Great piece of meat in the opinion section of the WSJ today on inequality, "Income inequality could be a sign of real pathology in authoritarian societies where entrenched groups use government-granted privileges to protect themselves from competition. By and large, that's not the case in the U.S., where most see the market actually increasing the competitive advantages of the educated, skilled, hardworking, and talented." WOW! What a great nugget of misleading, pollyannaish poppycock. Holman Jenkins Jr. must not be a reader of your blog. He fails to provide any numbers or evidence for any of his claims, but resorts to classic falsehoods like competition always produces equal outcomes! The market solves all problems! Create the impression that all outcomes are just as things stand, claim that government intervention ("redistribution") is inherently wrong and only punishes the "hardworking, educated and talented", then attack. It's a great obfuscating tool Repubs like to whip out. - Stephen Wed, 18 Apr 2012 16:15:43 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/nafta-and-free-trade-do-not-belong-in-the-same-sentence#comment-16002 probably the most blame should fall on greenspan, bernanke, & paulson. the repeal of glass-steagall, along with the repeal of mark to market accounting rules, & the enactment of the commodities modernization act laid the framework for the unsolvable mess we are in today. okay, gw bush, clinton, obama & reagan also as much to blame as the 3 rascals above. also the ratings agencies such as moody's, standard & poors & best buy who were giving aaa ratings to wallstreet cos the very week they collapsed. yes there are some terrific economists around like stiglitz, krugman & baker, but as a general rule they stink. the reason they stink is not because they are incompetent (although many are), it's mostly because they make money by lying. they make used car salesmen & realtors look honest. - mel in oregon Wed, 18 Apr 2012 12:40:19 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/nafta-and-free-trade-do-not-belong-in-the-same-sentence#comment-16001 [quote]Just heard Obama say this exact thing ion Ohio, that plenty of companies are trying to hire and cannot find workers with the right skills...hence the need for job training. [/quote] pete, just because business managers say that they can't find workers with the right skills doesn't mean it's true. If there were large skill mismatches in the labor market, then we should be seeing hours worked and earnings accelerating in the sectors in which the skill mismatches are occuring. But we are not seeing this. Here's a scatter plot of the year-over-year growth rate in hours worked and real weekly wages for all of the NAICS three-digit subsectors for which data are available: [img]http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/9602/subsectorearningsandhou.png[/img] Most of the subsectors are concentrated in the -2% to 2% range. In fact, there are only 6 subsectors in which hours worked and real earnings have both grown by more than 3% over the past year. They are: oil & gas extraction, petro and coal mfg., mining support,textile mfg., elec. retail trade, and clothing retail trade. Collectively, these 6 subsectors make up only 2.8% of the overall labor market. Not a whole lot of evidence for widespread skill mismatches. - JSeydl Wed, 18 Apr 2012 11:45:39 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/nafta-and-free-trade-do-not-belong-in-the-same-sentence#comment-16000 "When I here the term 'free trade' espoused, I laugh. There is no such thing as 'free trade' and there never has been unless you get at economy at a very localized level with people exchanging good/services." Consider 50 states...no tariffs, it is unconstitutional for a state to tax goods coming from another state, and there is free labor movement. I think this is pretty apt version of a free trade zone. Differences arise when states offer tax incentives and things like that. Or consider the European Common Market. Started with a NAFTA like agreement, no tariffs on goods, then they added labor too. Artificially (i.e., with national borders) separating resources is simply inefficient in economics text. Separating people by using nationalism is a very deadly game...saw this in the mid 20th century. Anyway Dean knows the gains from trade, he wants free labor movement too, so that Mexican nurses and doctors could lower our health care costs. These 1r; doctors ( and our high costs nurses) are the main difference between health care costs in U.S. and Europe. - pete Wed, 18 Apr 2012 11:05:07 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/nafta-and-free-trade-do-not-belong-in-the-same-sentence#comment-15999 the moral of the last post was supposed to be that the friction is induced by rule-makers in order to benefit the already-wealthy. - David Wed, 18 Apr 2012 11:04:45 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/nafta-and-free-trade-do-not-belong-in-the-same-sentence#comment-15998 This (somewhat recent paper) gives evidence that these agreements always favor the wealthier nation(s) in the pact (and the current Euro debacle provides more empirical evidence of the same). [url]http://www.uh.edu/~bsorense/out_inc_oct13d_08.pdf[/url] For similar reasons (aka government rules) (see Dean's points about patents and wage protections) the upper 1% have been the the nearly-sole beneficiaries of the the GDP increases of the past 30 years. - David Wed, 18 Apr 2012 10:59:45 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/nafta-and-free-trade-do-not-belong-in-the-same-sentence#comment-15996 When I here the term 'free trade' espoused, I laugh. There is no such thing as 'free trade' and there never has been unless you get at economy at a very localized level with people exchanging good/services. NAFTA was about large US multinationals (and to a lesser degree Canadian firms) getting access to much cheaper Mexican labor that is not unionized, easier Mexican environmental laws, and several other factors to drive down input costs. Nothing more. With the end of the Cold War in '91, US multinationals saw a golden opportunity to break the long-standing compact between labor and capital & increase their cut of the profits. - MG Wed, 18 Apr 2012 10:06:38 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/nafta-and-free-trade-do-not-belong-in-the-same-sentence#comment-15995 The irony of this fact is that these are the same economists who are now telling us that all of the unemployed construction workers are unemployed because they don't have the skills to compete in the labor market. I know DeLong, Krugman and Baker all argue its lack of demand not structural...but... Just heard Obama say this exact thing ion Ohio, that plenty of companies are trying to hire and cannot find workers with the right skills...hence the need for job training. - pete Wed, 18 Apr 2012 09:21:53 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/nafta-and-free-trade-do-not-belong-in-the-same-sentence#comment-15987 [quote] While many economists failed to understand what was going on, there were plenty of others that did. [/quote] Plenty? "Some few voices" says Perry Mehrling of Columbia; elsewhere a list was made of those, such as Dean Baker, Steve Keen, Nouriel Roubini, et al., who recognized the bubble for what it was. Less than 1% of all economists, for sure. That is [i]vast[/i] incompetence. George Soros helped found an institute devoted to correcting the mistakes of the profession, of which a large part was (and still is) conceptual, with another large part due to the social and political aspects of the profession (the vast political bubble will burst soon). But it wasn't just political, economists on the whole were woefully incompetent, yet some (such as Minkiw and many of the UChicago school) and remain in denial that they got duped by their political leanings, money, and subconscious (instead of relying on their intellect). Competent economists weren't duped, but that's less than 1%. Making a mistake (once) is forgivable; failure to learn from a mistake is not. - David Wed, 18 Apr 2012 03:36:37 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/nafta-and-free-trade-do-not-belong-in-the-same-sentence#comment-15983 To lay the housing bubble implosion at the feet of the profession of economics is a bit much. While many economists failed to understand what was going on, there were plenty of others that did. It's not clear that even universal agreement that there was a bubble would have made a difference. Economists are routinely ignored by our elected leaders and our free press. Our purchased press simply presents the views that it finds to dovetail with its (usually short-term) interests. There's no shortage of intellectual whores in any profession who are willing to say what the buyer wants to hear. Long story short: this was a failure of competence by our political system; those few leaders who aren't driven by personal avarice are hopeless outgunned by those who are, and the collective ignorance, know-nothingism, and xenophobia of the electorate doesn't give much hope for the future. - John L Wed, 18 Apr 2012 02:41:56 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/nafta-and-free-trade-do-not-belong-in-the-same-sentence#comment-15980 [quote]The line "all economists agree" carries much less weight these days because almost the entire economics profession somehow failed to see the $8 trillion housing bubble, the collapse of which wrecked the economy.[/quote] The irony of this fact is that these are the same economists who are now telling us that all of the unemployed construction workers are unemployed because they don't have the skills to compete in the labor market. This would be like a homeowner lighting off a firework in his garage, subsequently burning his house down, and then suing the fireworks company for not manufacturing fireworks that are safe to ignite in garages -- and then winning the lawsuit. - JSeydl Wed, 18 Apr 2012 01:26:45 +0100