dagblog - Comments for "Fake News’: Wide Reach but Little Impact, Study Suggests"

Of course trade creates

PeraclesPlease — Thu, 11 Jan 2018 14:39:00 +0000

In reply to Your snide remark - "now say

Of course trade creates problems - I've never espoused unnanaged free trade. But I care more about whether peasants in the 3rd world starve or not, not if their pay keeps up with some Bollywood star or Jackie Chan or not. Billions of people pulled out of poverty, and all you can do is dwell on negatives - negatives that people including leaders recognize and are trying to ameliorate. Under those conditions, the benefits of carefully designed trade.

de Blasio was the campaign

rmrd0000 — Thu, 11 Jan 2018 14:18:40 +0000

In reply to Bernie Sanders swore in de

de Blasio was the campaign manager for Hillary’s Senate race. He was sworn in by Bill Clinton in his first inauguration.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/29/nyregion/bill-clinton-will-preside-at-de-blasios-inaugural.html

de Blasio endorsed Hillary, not Sanders, in 2016.

https://www.politico.com/story/2015/10/bill-de-blasio-endorses-hillary-clinton-215376

Your snide remark - "now say

HSG — Thu, 11 Jan 2018 13:56:59 +0000

In reply to If you read what you write,

Your snide remark - "now say you're wrong, Hal - it's a bit tough the first time, but it gets easier" - begs the obvious retort how would you know?

In any case, the charts that you post, as is your wont, tend to undermine your argument. Since the US conferred MFN permanently on China, inequality has risen by fits and starts but it is significantly greater now both in cities and the countryside than it was then.

Before and after 2000, income rose rapidly. Since your second chart's income scale is arithmetic not logarithmic it is impossible to tell whether the rise in net income has been increasing more rapidly since 2000 when competition from Chinese manufacturing began causing massive worker dislocation in the West.

Despite classical economists' embrace of "free trade" in the early 1990s, the consensus now is that it has generated a number of thorny problems - a major one is exacerbating inequality. From a Centre for Economic Performance research June 2017 paper on the likely costs and benefits of Brexit:

In particular, trade liberalisation has been followed by increases in inequality in both developed and developing countries (Goldberg and Pavcnik 2007) and the increased demand for skill has occurred primarily within industries, whereas Stolper-Samuelson effects are driven by between industry changes (Bekman, Bound and Machin 1998).

The empirical failings of the Stolper-Samuelson theorem have led researchers to consider alternative channels through which trade may affect wage inequality. Only a select few highly productive firms participate in international trade and, on average, these firms are more skill intensive and pay higher wages than domestically oriented firms (Bernard and Jensen 1995). Trade allows high-wage paying, exporting firms to expand and become more profitable, while causing lower-wage paying non-exporters to contract or shut down because of increased import competition (Pavcnik 2002, Melitz 2003, Trefler 2004). These 4 reallocation effects can increase the wage gap between firms leading to higher wage inequality (Yeaple 2005, Egger and Kreickemeier 2009, Helpman, Itskhoki and Redding 2010, Sampson 2014). Firm-level evidence supports the idea that trade increases wage inequality between firms (Verhoogen 2008, Amiti and Davis 2012, Helpman et al. 2016).

Other recent work has argued that trade may increase wage inequality through the offshoring of tasks that employ less skilled workers to developing countries (Feenstra and Hanson 1996, 1999) and through increased trade in capital goods that are complementary to skilled labour (Burstein, Cravino and Vogel 2013, Parro 2013). There is also growing evidence that trade has a negative impact on workers who live in regions that face rapid increases in import competition, such as areas of the US that are highly exposed to imports from China (Autor, Dorn and Hanson 2013).

In October last year, the IMF reported:

"It is important to emphasise that inequality has increased in the largest countries in the world: China, India and the United States," [the IMF's Vito Gasper] said.

"More broadly, if we focus on inequality within countries, we observe that over the past three decades inequality has increased in about half of the countries around the world, particularly in advanced economies," [added Gasper].

I understand that you are emotionally committed to the notion that international trade is an unmitigated good. My sense is that this stems from your career. That is fine. Cheerleading and hype are an essential part of any business. But at some point even the sewer company president has a moral and intellectual duty to step back from the open waste pit and acknowledge how badly it stinks.

If you read what you write,

PeraclesPlease — Thu, 11 Jan 2018 05:04:00 +0000

In reply to Your claim that trade is

If you read what you write, you didn't debunk anything - you just claimed it.

Here is a chart showing ratio of top quintile to liwest quintile in China. They're nearly constant at 5.5 urban and 8 rural, which means as China total income rises, the bottom continues to rise. You may nit like the ratio, and China is trying to address the plight of the poor, but it's happening.

Now say you're wrong, Hal - it's a bit tough the first time, but it gets easier.

Plus 1 showing steady rural gains over the years, but also their income gap with urban areas (rural income vs. urban disposable income), but we of course know why urban incomes are rising - largely through trade, eh?

And now for something about

Flavius — Thu, 11 Jan 2018 04:24:06 +0000

In reply to Fake News’: Wide Reach but Little Impact, Study Suggests

And now for something completely different.

DELETED UNREADABLE

Yeah. That's what I argue -

HSG — Wed, 10 Jan 2018 13:42:43 +0000

In reply to Trump also periodically

Yeah. That's what I argue - all we need is single-payer. Do you see how you have to distort and mischaracterize my arguments in order to defeat them? Do you do that consciously or is it just ingrained at this point?

Your claim that trade is

HSG — Wed, 10 Jan 2018 13:39:37 +0000

In reply to In the 70's under Mao before

Your claim that trade is driving growth in the 3rd world is based on the fact that GDP per capita is growing in those countries. I pointed out that rises in income per capita don't mean much if all the new wealth is going to elites. You claimed that couldn't be the case. I responded that it could of course be the case if wealth and income inequality are rising. You said they're not. I showed that they are.

Now, I don't argue that there hasn't been a significant reduction in poverty in the third world. I don't even claim that trade hasn't been a factor. What I claim is that those improvements could have been achieved without harming tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of Americans and without nearly all of the benefits going to the rich and powerful in both developed and developing nations.

You really really really hate it when you're claims are debunked. Not weird. Just sad.

Bernie Sanders swore in de

artappraiser — Wed, 10 Jan 2018 08:45:38 +0000

In reply to Hal, I no longer care about

Bernie Sanders swore in de Blasio. He is adjusting to 2018.

More like they have always been bosom buddies as to policy and message preferences.

Not venturing into whether that's good or bad, just that it is. DeBlasio has always preferred to think of himself as a "progressive" more than a Dem, he just curried favor with Dem leaders for power

What I am trying to say is: he was always a Bernie/Hal type guy in his heart. More along that line @ Politico Magazine Dec. 26

In the 70's under Mao before

PeraclesPlease — Wed, 10 Jan 2018 05:20:00 +0000

In reply to You write here: "I never

In the 70's under Mao before Deng Xiao Peng, the party in China indeed controlled everything, so yes, incone equality was likely worse than today. As the graph I posted notes, it's gotten worse from 20 years ago, but everyone has more money, and they're trying to help out their huge entrenched rural poor.

So yes, you caught me talking about inequality - once - in response to you, way own in the comments after a very lengthy discussion, since you said "

but I consider "free" trade to be one of the biggest drivers of the two gravest threats humanity faces - extreme wealth and income inequality and anthropogenic global warming

everything fits as I tried to say - those topics are your priority, not mine. Because that thread was on *my* lengthy post on GDP growth and the 3rd world rising out of poverty, where I didn't mention inequality once, and it's not till halfway thru the comments that it comes up.

You're a weird dude.

Hal, I no longer care about

rmrd0000 — Wed, 10 Jan 2018 03:37:19 +0000

In reply to Why can't you answer the

Hal, I no longer care about your questions.

While you engage in nonsense a demented authoritarian is in office, 90% of Bernie supporters voted for Hillary because she was the best option.You are stuck in 2016. Bernie Sanders swore in de Blasio. He is adjusting to 2018.