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Free-Market Donald
Donald Trump was the most free-market-oriented president we’ve had since Ronald Reagan, and the economy showed it. Probably because of his rhetoric, many people don’t know about the Donald’s free-market proclivities. The people that don’t know about it seem to fall into two major categories:
- Ardent Trump supporters.
- Ardent Trump haters.
Protectionism prevents President Trump from being a free-market purist, but he was more marketed oriented than his four predecessors. Some, though not all, of that protectionism was justified for strategic and moral reasons.
It was the free-market side of his policies that made the economy roar. Rich, poor, corporations, workers, and people of all races benefitted. Not to mention all 37 genders. Of course, the Left will reverse it all in the name of Compassion.
It is heart-breaking to see Trump’s strongest supporters reject the free market.
Exhibit A is Tucker Carlson. Tucker has many virtues, particularly his Limbaugh-esque ability to highlight the Left’s absurdities. Tucker is an asset to conservatism, but he’s out to lunch on economics. I’m grateful it was Trump, and not Tucker, managing economic policy during the Trump years. Another example is Pedro Gonzales, who writes for American Greatness. Mr. Gonzales likes to blame all kinds of things on the free market, including the Texas power outages.
Many Republican Trump-haters see themselves as free-market supporters. Some are, but many supported Bush’s re-regulation of the economy and the bailouts he did at the end. They couldn’t distinguish between capitalism and crony capitalism.
And then there’s the oleaginous Mr. Romney … Where do I begin?
There will be many debates about what aspects of Trumpism we should keep. Willingness to fight back should be at the top of the list, and support for free markets should near the top.
Free market concepts might not get us elected, but their abandonment will get us un-elected. People respond to results, and screwing up the economy is always bad politics, especially for conservatives.
Published in General
This is because if we aren’t consuming, then our service based industry dries up. It is paramount that we flood the economy with welfare to keep people buying from Amazon on their apple phone or Microsoft computer. We can not have those companies contracting due to people getting jobs that make buying from those places out of their price range! We’ll give them welfare instead.
Yeah… it’s to cut back on welfare so people start looking for those jobs. Immigration and exporting industry for labor should not be options on the table when welfare is so high.
This comment would be non-operative if we had either run with a straight deflationary economy after the Soviet Union fell or if we had dealt with it directly some other way. It’s too complicated now.
The big problem is you can’t be militaristic and have a deflationary economy.
You are asking for central planning that is going to be tricky as hell. That’s why I say listen to Steve Bannon.
I don’t agree with this. Politically unviable, yes. But I think unraveling this would be pulling at the right strings simultaneously.
Problem is, it would be a long and difficult correction and with our rapid turn around politics and a populace rather hostile to any hardship, it won’t happen.
What specifically don’t you agree with? I’m basically agreeing with you.
They didn’t have the foresight to switch to a more libertarian economy and central banking policy when the Soviet Union fell, the world opened up, and computers + automation became big. Now we need to do every single thing Steve Bannon says.
I don’t think it requires too much central planning. At least no more than already exists. I also don’t think it would be impossible to undo.
I just don’t think our politics would allow for it, but I think is a different argument. Maybe one without distinction.
Wall Street Journal nonsense. There was a contraction of the money supply (1/3) that caused the depression. Trade with other countries was only about 8 pct of GNP.
They have to do something. Otherwise, you are going to do it with a UBI.
The whole mess is covered in this podcast, but this is incredibly dense, hard stuff.
https://investresolve.com/podcasts/mike-green-the-fourth-turning-and-reimagining-the-american-dream/
My simple solution is, Steve Bannon is right about everything.
How does one not lead to the other?
This stuff gets so complicated. I think he means when the central bank forces it.
Today, if they let the Americans have more purchasing power in the manner I’m talking about, it will blow up $13 million of emerging market debt. These idiots have set up a Rube Goldberg time bomb.
I’m no expert on this, but the Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930 enacted protectionist trade policies and record-high tariffs in the United States. From what I understand, European countries retaliated by doing the same thing and trade slowed down greatly in the 1930’s. Thus the Great Depression was ushered in. This is strong evidence of your point.
I found something rather astounding (to me) when I looked into this. The World Bank gives data that the United States currently trades with other countries at 26% of our Gross Domestic Product. That seemed pretty robust to me until I saw that nearly every other country on Earth trades at a higher percentage than we do. The Sudan was the only country listed with a lower percentage of trade than us.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.TRD.GNFS.ZS?locations=US
Not quite believing I was reading the statistics right, I looked at Wikipedia, with data a few years older. It also includes Pakistan, Argentina, Brazil, and Nigeria along with The Sudan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_trade-to-GDP_ratio
I’m guessing that this is because the U.S. has by far the largest per capita manufacturing output in the World, and that we make more of our own stuff than other countries do. Anybody else know?
Also, why would those few countries have such a low percentage of trade? Sudan has been at war, maybe that affects trade. I know Brazil imports very little oil because they run their cars on home-grown alcohol. Nigeria is a mystery because they are one of the largest countries in the World.
Trade = what we import
Export = what we send out (about 11% GDP in 2019)
GDP = consumption + business investment + government spending + net exports
A trade deficit lowers GDP. I note some things used in GDP can drive up a very toxic, yet high, GDP. Basically, government spending being part of the calculation makes GDP not a good indicator of economic health.
But people’s money goes further and we can dedicate our resources to higher value added products.
The way to do this is to just make Steve Bannon dictator of everything.
If you strip out Canada and Mexico, it’s about 10 pct.
Brazil also pumps a lot of petroleum. Offshore oil rigs. They don’t need to import food. And what they grow is delicious.
Nigeria is an oil exporter but it is also the largest importer of French champagne.
Let’s look at two things that have happened simultaneously. The price of electronics has been on a downward trajectory for a long time, even as the products get better. At the same time, the price of a Hamburger at Carl’s Jr. has gone up.
The electronics deflation is due to improvements in efficiency. It would be even more deflationary if not partially cancelled out by monetary inflation. The price of the hamburger keeps going up, even in areas where there haven’t been minimum wage increases. Why? We haven’t become less efficient at making hamburgers. The remaining explanation is monetary inflation, causing the dollar to be worth less over time. This is what happens when you print money.
LOL! Before you said that, you sounded like a libertarian!
That’s part of what’s so frustrating on my end. I sense that people think I’m trying to make some complicated point, but I think it’s the other way around. My point is definitely not in the weeds of microeconomics (a science with which I don’t have quibbles) or macroeconomics (a “science” at which I generally scoff).
It’s as simple as this: a one-factory town losing that factory is an existential concern for that town and the people of that town. A former one-factory town getting a new factory could be revived by that in a way that’s not true of getting a Walmart (although getting a Walmart is preferable to nothing) or tourism or even nothing at all. Multiply that effect either way and it’s obvious: regardless of the interests of individual investors and regardless of the interests of consumers as an aggregate, actual communities have an existential interest in onsite production or some other sustainable/originating economic engine.
That’s it. I don’t see why the response isn’t “Well, duh, Ed, of course that’s the case you simpleton, why do you think you even have to say it”? I think I have to say it because not all conservatives recognize actual communities as a legitimate interest of their own in this economic process that needs to be represented. It’s only investors and consumers and no one else has any material interest, otherwise you’re some kind of statist/collectivist.
I do not favor a command economy but I know that Learn To Code is woefully inadequate as a response. Can we do anything to help these communities? If there’s an unavoidable conflict (and there are) how to we prioritize interests? We make economic policy decisions as a county, state, county, city: which decisions get us closer to where we want to be as a whole? Which maintain a good balance between the various interests?
So the obvious ones that most conservatives can agree with: less welfare, lower taxes, less government spending (which drives higher taxes, higher debt, and inflation). What about type of taxation? What about foreign policy and how to handle trade with countries which don’t have the same systems or values as we do which might lead to unhealthy distortions?
All of this is too complicated because there is so much big government all over the planet.
I see your frustration, but I don’t think people have been telling you on this thread that building a factory in a community should not be done. I think they have just been pointing out why it ‘t sometimes doesn’t happen. People in communities are free to do whatever they want. They can build factories or they can move to a community that has a factory. The thing is that they do stuff that makes economic sense for them. So far nobody has found it economically sensible to build an iphone assembly plant in Possum Trot, Kentucky.
I understand. However I also don’t see many simply acknowledging the basic proposition I’m putting out there. At best it’s, yes but… investors, consumers, people can do what they want, c’est la vie (Kevin Williamson, essentially), doing anything to address that particular perspective would be statist (libertarians).
Can’t we agree that iphone factory in Possum Trot, KY would be good for the citizens of Possum Trot, KY with some radiating benefits to surrounding areas too? Without qualification? Not in a direct investor sense or in a consumer pricing sense, but in a healthy community sense.
I did mean to drop out of the thread, and I don’t mean to belabor anything. I’ll think on it more and I’ll start a post if I come to any conclusions one way or the other. Otherwise have a nice weekend all!
The price of beef keeps going up in part because there is increased demand for beef as people’s incomes rise. Same for pork. Same for chicken. Not enough people are turning vegan to offset this.
Moore’s law is what has been operating on electronics.
And what of the subsidies the Chinese government has paid Apple to put in factories in China? There are no such subsidies for Possum Trot, Kentucky.
And the other thing is that it isn’t just an assembly plant that’s in China. The parts are made there too. And when that starts happening, the engineering that goes with it disappears from the US and goes to China. It’s a way of hollowing out knowledge from the US. And it isn’t generally taken into account.
This is mainly because the American political class and elites hate Americans, especially those in flyover country. They can not pass a chance to gut the country and help their globalist friends.
He doesn’t even talk about trade. Think about that.
Meat production has tripled over the past 50 years, and the world population has doubled. I don’t think we have a meat shortage. The prices of all commodities, including gold, have been going up almost in unison since 2000. This points to monetary inflation.
Moore’s law is increased efficiency.
I did a little digging and found that if the iphones were ever assembled in China, they are not anymore. They are all assembled in Taiwan, along with ipads and ipods. The different parts are manufactured in dozens of countries all over the world, including China, which manufactures the batteries.
https://www.lifewire.com/where-is-the-iphone-made-1999503
I know I promised to leave. I lied :D
I like this interview too. Not necessarily because I believe in any of the specific things or prescriptions, but because I also think that we need to start conceptualizing the ideal post-scarcity economy or else someone else will who doesn’t share our/my values. I don’t know that I’d call it post-scarcity, by the way. More like post-labor. If little ol’ me can no longer compete against, efficiency, automation, AI , innovation that’s ok but I still need to live. How do I (and everybody else) acquire the basics and whatever else I want if I don’t (can’t) work for it? Who decides? The few capitalists remaining who actually make things and control the spigot? Governments after having brought everything under state control? Will we become Minecraft where getting and building things on our own becomes easy, but we still need to actually do it ourselves?
If you let enough deflation happen i.e. the government gets out of the way, you don’t need to make that much money in nominal terms.