wco81 wrote:Oh and on that free trade article, that's Cato Institute propaganda. If you want to cite studies on trade or other economic issues, cite works by serious economists, not an advocacy organization whose sole purpose is to spread the maximal laissez faire ideology of its benefactors, who happen to have economic interests in promoting that ideology.
Absolutely pathetic and a clear indicator of just how little you know about this issue. Try reading and then debating what is said in the article, instead of coming up with some outlandish claims about the authors. Unfortunately for you, there's nothing in the article that any serious, respectable econmist would disagree with because it's all based on a wealth of empirical evidence.
You're way out of your depth here. You know as little about economics as a fool like Dobbs who constantly claims the trade deficit is costing American jobs when unemployment actually goes down when the trade deficit goes up, and vice versa. That's not an opinion, it's an empirical fact.
Last edited by Feanor on Sat Nov 25, 2006 5:05 pm, edited 3 times in total.
wco81 wrote:Oh and on that free trade article, that's Cato Institute propaganda. If you want to cite studies on trade or other economic issues, cite works by serious economists, not an advocacy organization whose sole purpose is to spread the maximal laissez faire ideology of its benefactors, who happen to have economic interests in promoting that ideology.
Absolutely pathetic and a clear indicator of just how little you know about this issue. Try reading and then debating what is said in the article, instead of coming up with some outlandish claims about the authors. Unfortunately for you, there's nothing in the article that any serious, respectable econmist would disagree with because it's all based on a wealth of empirical evidence.
You're way out of your depth here. You know as little about economics as a fool like Dobbs who constantly claims the trade deficit is costing American jobs when unemployment actually goes down when the trade deficit goes up, and vice versa. That's not an opinion, it's an empirical fact.
I never claimed trade deficits caused unemployment. It would depend on whether you're talking about the short-run or the long-run and even in the latter case, you're going to have to cite better studies than the Cato Institute's narrow view of the numbers, which may or may not correlate.
Look I could just as easily have cited claims by think tanks on tyhe other side of the political spectrum rebutting just about everything Cato claims.
Trade deficit isn't only a reflection of capital flows. Ironic that just last week, the dollar hit its lowest point in about 18 months and some Chinese official was complaining about their investment in dollars.
You can cite all the numbers you want. But you still have to account for whether jobs outsourced or lost through globalization will be replaced by jobs which provide the same standard of living. We may have more jobs than when US started signing all these free trade agreements. But a lot of those new jobs are service-sector jobs, which don't pay as well.
Current account deficit is almost 7% of GDP, which these economists don't think is insignficant.
Then there is the prospect that debt service to our foreign lenders will increasingly take up our economic output, even if we take some of the measures suggested to try to mitigate some of these numbers.
