A race to subsidize industry out of a bid for competitiveness seems like over-all bad policy. I'm all for legislation to correct for market failures, but the existence of bad government in one nation hardly seems like a good reason for bad government here.
Comparative advantage is an important aspect of markets. It's how a market allocates goods and people find jobs that suit them.
Sometimes it has shitty consequences. But what exactly is the alternative? Steal the jobs back from impoverished Chinese who have limited job possibilities? And America is supposed to have a generation of college-educated worker bees take jobs that require little formal education? For China, it makes sense that they should foster jobs that are out of reach for the average worker. It doesn't make sense for Americans to fight to keep jobs the next generation is on average overqualified to do.
I think we vastly underestimate the amount of good we create by letting those jobs go. And I'm not talking about my relatively cheaper electronics, though I do love them. That's just the carrot we get in order to do the right thing. The good is the concrete increases in the standard of living for the rest of the world. (For similar reasons, I also find it hard to get so outraged at the disparity between healthcare prices in America and the rest of the world. While Canada might not deserve the huge price break, the third world definitely does. And America is rich enough, we actually can afford to subsidize them. [cue 10,000 nit-picking clarifications on healthcare.])
The problem is that means if America wants to still be the superpower deserving of being the richest nation in the world, we need to focus on our competitive edge. And that's way easier said than done because we're trained to be a nation of innovators. But right now we trapped in a wave of pessimism, trying to mimic the paths of previously successful people, without fully appreciating that each person who jumps on that bandwagon drags down the entire profession. Policy that defines how to be a unique profitable snowflake is something of a nightmare to create. And that problem makes such huge public crises of confidence that much harder to shake.
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Date: 20/1/12 09:00 (UTC)Comparative advantage is an important aspect of markets. It's how a market allocates goods and people find jobs that suit them.
Sometimes it has shitty consequences. But what exactly is the alternative? Steal the jobs back from impoverished Chinese who have limited job possibilities? And America is supposed to have a generation of college-educated worker bees take jobs that require little formal education? For China, it makes sense that they should foster jobs that are out of reach for the average worker. It doesn't make sense for Americans to fight to keep jobs the next generation is on average overqualified to do.
I think we vastly underestimate the amount of good we create by letting those jobs go. And I'm not talking about my relatively cheaper electronics, though I do love them. That's just the carrot we get in order to do the right thing. The good is the concrete increases in the standard of living for the rest of the world. (For similar reasons, I also find it hard to get so outraged at the disparity between healthcare prices in America and the rest of the world. While Canada might not deserve the huge price break, the third world definitely does. And America is rich enough, we actually can afford to subsidize them. [cue 10,000 nit-picking clarifications on healthcare.])
The problem is that means if America wants to still be the superpower deserving of being the richest nation in the world, we need to focus on our competitive edge. And that's way easier said than done because we're trained to be a nation of innovators. But right now we trapped in a wave of pessimism, trying to mimic the paths of previously successful people, without fully appreciating that each person who jumps on that bandwagon drags down the entire profession. Policy that defines how to be a unique profitable snowflake is something of a nightmare to create. And that problem makes such huge public crises of confidence that much harder to shake.