The New World Order?
Yes, the US is still the global hegemon, but this headline certainly caught my attention:
Australia snubs US by backing China push for Asian trade deal
Australia is throwing its weight behind China’s efforts to pursue new trade deals in the Asia-Pacific region amid a growing acknowledgement the US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement is dead in the wake of Donald Trump’s election victory.
Steven Ciobo, Australia’s trade minister, told the Financial Times that Canberra would work to conclude new agreement among 16 Asian and Pacific countries that excludes the US.He said Australia would also support a separate proposal, the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific, which Beijing hopes to advance at this week’s Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation summit in Peru.
Again, it’s far too soon to predict where we’ll end up under Trump. But there’s no doubt we are living in interesting times. For the first time in my entire life the US is no longer the world leader in the push toward globalization.
PS: Here’s tweet by a Danish economist who understands this country much better than most Americans:
Tags:
16. November 2016 at 07:16
And then there’s Bannon’s views on Asians:
https://twitter.com/AdamSerwer/status/798864752546025472
16. November 2016 at 07:35
Pretty good quote. Also I remember in the 90s when conservatives like Rush Limbaugh were in favor of NAFTA and free trade. How times have changed.
16. November 2016 at 07:47
Great tweet from Lars.
I was taught, and still believe, that eliminating tariffs on imports is good for a country even if unreciprocated. This is an economist POV.
But, 240 years after Adam Smith, we still live in a world that is awash in a mercantilist mentality that doesn’t see things this way.
Trump is certainly not an economist, and I’m sure his thoughts on the subject are those of a negotiator operating on game-theoretical principles, like not giving away something for nothing.
It’s not obvious to me that such an approach will increase trade barriers. Access to the US market is a great thing for mercantilists. Use that to lower their barriers.
16. November 2016 at 08:21
Scott,
that was one of my first thoughts, the US leaves Asia to be reorganized by its major power China, and Europe, by Russia. In both cases there are military and economic aspects to it. Asia looks like it’s just going to rally around China and create a “Second Life” kind of world. In this world, soon the US won’t be needed anymore, not economically and certainly not politically, after it so obviously proceeds in sinking itself. Europe, I wonder. Russia is too weak to really reorganize it. Russia might just remain content with keeping it unstable.
Putin and Xi score major victories without a fight because the US has decided to leave the country’s leadership to backwater amateurs and eccentric billionaires obsessed by vanity issues. As long as it was vanity tech projects a la space holidays it was harmless. But now it bleeds into politics. And the whole social agenda really is full of vanity projects, starting with the coming abortion rights ping pong. Britain does the same thing come to think of it, Farage is just another rich guy with a politics hobby. For these people, a thing such as leaving the EU is just a nice way to find meaning in life.
I might have been skeptical of the Bill Gates approach on spreading one’s wealth through humanitarian causes because even this is hard to get right as an amateur. But in the light of what other rich folks do when they want more than just money, I have never thought more highly of the Bill Gates’ of this world.
16. November 2016 at 08:22
And Bannon is just unfathomable.
16. November 2016 at 08:31
I like the quote, but unfortunately during Bush’s 2nd term, the Republicans and the Fed were quite Austrian. In 2003 and 2004, they kneecapped Fannie & Freddie because they believed two contradictory things – that home prices were irrationally high and that the quarter % subsidy of the GSEs to the mortgage market was driving prices higher. They explicitly took a tight posture in 2006 to reduce real residential investment, they succeeded, and to this day point to this as a success. Then, as the death spiral spun down, the Wall Street Journal, Congressional Republicans, Bush, and McCain/Palin insisted on liquidationism. Seems like textbook Austrianism at its worst to me.
16. November 2016 at 08:38
Come to think of it, with the anti trade spirit of Trump and the anti smart-people-who-are-not-white spirit of Bannon, maybe now the smart people will too leave the US, after manufacturing already did… making the TPP into a just-PP. Or who knows, maybe Silicon Valley and US Manufacturing will all reunite in Tijuana. The US will concentrate on manufacturing weapons and steel rebars to please the rust belters.
16. November 2016 at 08:48
Scott,
I’m a guy (like your nemesis Bob Murphy) who did not support Trump (just to get my cards on the table.) I’m also no fan of the alt-right, although that label gets thrown around a lot and I’m not sure that I would include Breitbart’s website as part of that phenomenon (for a better flavor of the alt-right, check out the website “The Right Stuff” and compare and contrast — then you’ll understand the difference and why the real alt-right is so vile.)
Anyway, as I long-time fan of your economic/monetary blogging (I don’t share your broader libertarian world-view) I wanted to at least try and push back against you in one major way — you claim that Trump is “racist” but I see no evidence for this claim. Why do you make it? Just to get us started, I don’t think it is racist to want to restrict immigration from certain countries like Mexico. It seems like common sense to me that as Pat Buchanan famously once said (and I’m someone who has all sorts of disagreements with Pat):
“If we had to take a million immigrants in, say Zulus, next year, or Englishmen, and put them up in Virginia, what group would be easier to assimilate and would cause less problems for the people of Virginia?”
16. November 2016 at 11:19
Australia has natural resources and China needs natural resources. This is good trade (Ricardian) and not bad trade (regulatory arbitrage).
16. November 2016 at 12:25
Republikeynsian economics: The government should run a deficit when a Republican is in the White House and a surplus when a Democrat is in the White House.
16. November 2016 at 12:44
Jeff,
I don’t know that Trump has proven himself to be a racist so much as he’s actively gone after the racist vote. His platform is quite literally built around keeping out the Mexicans and Muslims and fear-mongering to justify it. If we’re being honest with ourselves, we can probably agree that the KKK wouldn’t have had a celebration march if any of the other mainstream presidential candidates (including the primaries) had won.
16. November 2016 at 12:58
The TPP was originally conceived as a geopolitical check on China as much as a free trade agreement. That’s why China was excluded, which Trump didn’t even seem to know during the Republican primary debates. Trump is anti-China, especially on trade, which led him to erroneously oppose the China-excluding TPP. As a result, it now appears that China may actually gain the geopolitical edge by sponsoring a trade agreement that excludes the US. New meme: Thanks, Trump.
16. November 2016 at 14:21
https://twitter.com/PostOpinions/status/798715969032114176
16. November 2016 at 14:50
Sorry but again you’ve lost me. The only ones with tariffs and trade barriers are the…Asian countries!
The whole point of the TPP and “free trade deals” was to get the Asian countries to drop their tariffs.
So why does the US need a “free trade agreement”? We’re not the ones pushing these things, they are.
All this attempt at blaming Trump (a bit too early to get Trump derangement syndrome) seems misguided when you don’t even know what his administration will do. Paul Ryan has already said no to tariffs so it won’t happen because Congress won’t pass it.
But now we’re supposed to think that a bunch of protectionist countries agreeing to a trade deal between themselves is a push for “globalization”?
16. November 2016 at 14:53
“And then there’s Bannon’s views on Asians:
https://twitter.com/AdamSerwer/status/798864752546025472”
Bannon mentions Asians and says nothing disparaging…OUTRAGE!
Huffpo and silicon valley companies say all sorts of outright and completely overt racist things against whites…crickets.
Ok thanks for the double standard.
16. November 2016 at 14:54
Examples of Trump being racist off the top of my head:
* Saying a judge on Trump U case wasn’t impartial because he’s Latino (the judge was born in the US but that’s besides the point). Paul Ryan called this “textbook racism.”
* Generalizing illegal immigrants from Mexico as rapists and criminals. Sure, some of them are, just as some native born Americans are.
16. November 2016 at 14:56
“https://twitter.com/PostOpinions/status/798715969032114176”
Kind of how the Dems when they were in power who were outraged at the Fed’s actions and wanted it to follow policy in their favor. Trump hasn’t even said or done anything, and already you’re heaving a heart attack.
16. November 2016 at 14:59
Examples of Huffpo and the Obama administration and Hillary’s campaign being racist: Everything they say about white people.
You might want to actually listen to what Trump said on 60 minutes when he DID become president elect of the US on the issue of Mexican immigrants, instead of making up things he didn’t actually say (he didn’t generalize all Mexicans in those terms as you said. He said they send us their criminals, which isn’t a racist comment. It is a fact. And he said a lot more since then, which obviously you didn’t read on twitter where you get all your news).
Thanks for again proving your double standard.
16. November 2016 at 15:33
Would be helpful if you could point to just one thing Obama or Hillary said you consider racist against white people.
There’s no excuse for his comments about the judge in the Trump U case.
As far as me making up the quote, here it is:
“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
He does admit “some” are good people but this quote clearly says most Mexican immigrants are criminals. Of course, people on the right are not outraged when its Mexicans but when they are generalized they are. I see Trumps comment equally offensive as this:
“We are living in a volatile political environment. You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people — now 11 million. “
16. November 2016 at 15:41
I didn’t say “disparaging.” You did. I didn’t express any outrage either.
16. November 2016 at 17:07
I have a question for you…..I don’t understand how you can believe in the Efficient Markets based on the wisdom of crowds and not believe in the wisdom of the American electorate in choosing Trump over Clinton. How do you reconcile this?
16. November 2016 at 18:39
Wow, and I thought this comments section was bad before the election… but say, Art Deco, and even Harding at times, would at least post things that were internally consistent and based on some facts or logic. With types like AIG we’re completely off the charts now in terms of nonsensical. It’s beyond criticism. I mean, what do you say to someone who thinks you don’t need free trade agreements with countries that have… tariffs? That doesn’t find it odd at the least when some Bannon suggests that there’s a societal problem with the racial background of CEOs. etc.
BTW it’s annoying beyond belief when people can’t even keep to basic semantics. Examples:
“Mexico is sending us…”
Never mind the questionable continuation – “Mexico” isn’t “sending” “us” anything. Some Mexicans, by no means all, illegally cross the border into the US, oftentimes not to immigrate for good but to temporarily work here with the obvious consent for their employers. They’re not sent by anyone. The employers aren’t “us” either, but presumably US citizens who welcome the labor. In a perfect world, that should be the most normal thing: some people make a geographical move to find jobs with willing employers.
So how does this, in the minds of too many, morph into a process where “Mexico” is “sending” “us” something? Through statism and clannishness. Everything is believed to somehow come out of state or group action. Everything is believed to have group consequences. The rights of the individual are ignored. It is all discussed at the group level only. What some people do is seen as something that “they” do. What happens to some people is seen as something that happens to “us”. So there’s an “us” and a “them” the only thing that defines “us” and “them” is a presupposition of shared identity = a clan.
It’s a bit ironic that the HBD community, beloved by alt-right, quite rightfully sees clannishness as one reason why some societies have troubles with making the rule of law work. The clan comes before the law. But clannishness and identity is also what defines the populist right, alt- or otherwise. And only clannishness makes a phrase like “Mexico is sending us…” even possible. Only a clannish person can feel something when hearing it. For me the phrase is so wrong that I can’t even say “no” to it, because it’s not even wrong, it comes out of a faulty thought mode.
BTW Jeffrey Singer – to accommodate your spirit, what would be easier to integrate into California, 1 million Mexicans or 1 Million, say, Irish? Pretty tough to judge huh?
16. November 2016 at 19:13
Well…with 1.2 billion work- and business-oriented people, a strong culture, a growth-oriented central bank, is it not inevitable that China will lead Asia, and then the world?
The U.S. can play the expensive role of militarist dog-in-the-manger, but it will be a losing role.
If a military posture is necessary, then Taiwan, Japan, S. Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand should work on a serious alliance. They have nukes, and they have submarines.
China is going to invade someone knowing Beijing could get nuked? Seems like a rather large downside, no?
Better for the U.S. to butt out, and work on positive trade deals.
Given the PBoC and the Fed, it may be a generation, but soon it will be cheaper to make goods in the Second-World U.S. than in First World China. We can export to them, if they open to trade. Which they may not, but we can hope.
PS Taiwan has hollowed out the interiors of mountains to build airbases. It has the ability to make nuclear bombs.
PPS: Kevin Erdmann comments above are very insightful.
16. November 2016 at 19:23
Kevin Erdmann:
“…the Fed [was] quite Austrian.”
Kevin you have a special talent of eliciting multiple fallacies in just one statement.
1. “Austrian” is not the phrase for a central bank printing money at a rate you personally don’t like.
2. Austrian economics is in fact wertfrei. It doesn’t include a single prescription or norm. It is entirely descriptive. Nobody can “act like an Austrian”. That is like saying a person is acting like mathematics or a person is acting like chemistry.
3. What you are stumbling towards trying to say is what an “Austro-libertarian” would do. That is, someone who understands Austrian theory, and who is ethically a libertarian. If a central bank were to “act Austro-libertarian”, it would actually shut itself down. It would close its own doors.
I think I am starting to understand why Sumner often favorably cites your writings. Truth doesn’t make a lick of difference in what you say. What matters more is politicking, propagandizing, and pretending to do economics.
Sumner is a political strategist. He chastised Bob Murphy for writing too much on economics.
Neither of you are economists. You are apologists whose sole effective role is to advance monetary socialist ideology.
16. November 2016 at 20:54
Major.Freedom,
I used to be quite taken by Austrian economics. I still like its roots and Hayek has made a lasting impact on me. That being said, reading your comments here reminds me of why I left it behind. Austrian Economics as preached today is a fossilized approach that stopped developing meaningfully since Mises. It is completely inflexible and dogmatic. It is a nice example of a “pure” philosophy since it has more regard for formal beauty than for the messy realities that so often don’t want to fit out pretty models. But by refusing to evolve in the light of new evidence, it also refuses to be relevant.
16. November 2016 at 21:08
This is what I mean by primary source material, Bannon speaking to a conference at the Vatican in 2014;
https://www.buzzfeed.com/lesterfeder/this-is-how-steve-bannon-sees-the-entire-world?utm_term=.xhjGAJOKb#.fqx3Ak4Ee
I’d really e interested in hearing Scott’s analysis of what Bannon himself says he believes.
16. November 2016 at 21:13
————quote from Bannon————
When Vladimir Putin, when you really look at some of the underpinnings of some of his beliefs today, a lot of those come from what I call Eurasianism; he’s got an adviser who harkens back to Julius Evola and different writers of the early 20th century who are really the supporters of what’s called the traditionalist movement, which really eventually metastasized into Italian fascism. A lot of people that are traditionalists are attracted to that.
One of the reasons is that they believe that at least Putin is standing up for traditional institutions, and he’s trying to do it in a form of nationalism — and I think that people, particularly in certain countries, want to see the sovereignty for their country, they want to see nationalism for their country. They don’t believe in this kind of pan-European Union or they don’t believe in the centralized government in the United States. They’d rather see more of a states-based entity that the founders originally set up where freedoms were controlled at the local level.
I’m not justifying Vladimir Putin and the kleptocracy that he represents, because he eventually is the state capitalist of kleptocracy. However, we the Judeo-Christian West really have to look at what he’s talking about as far as traditionalism goes — particularly the sense of where it supports the underpinnings of nationalism — and I happen to think that the individual sovereignty of a country is a good thing and a strong thing. I think strong countries and strong nationalist movements in countries make strong neighbors, and that is really the building blocks that built Western Europe and the United States, and I think it’s what can see us forward.
You know, Putin’s been quite an interesting character. He’s also very, very, very intelligent. I can see this in the United States where he’s playing very strongly to social conservatives about his message about more traditional values, so I think it’s something that we have to be very much on guard of. Because at the end of the day, I think that Putin and his cronies are really a kleptocracy, that are really an imperialist power that want to expand. However, I really believe that in this current environment, where you’re facing a potential new caliphate that is very aggressive that is really a situation — I’m not saying we can put it on a back burner — but I think we have to deal with first things first
————endquote———–
Not exactly the raving of a loon, is it. In fact, it’s far more astute than anything I’ve ever heard Hillary Clinton say about Putin.
16. November 2016 at 21:19
More from the Q&A after Bannon’s speech;
————-quote————
[Question]: The first question was, you’d reference the Front National and UKIP as having elements that are tinged with the racial aspect amidst their voter profile, and the questioner was asking how you intend to deal with that aspect.
Bannon: I don’t believe I said UKIP in that. I was really talking about the parties on the continent, Front National and other European parties.
I’m not an expert in this, but it seems that they have had some aspects that may be anti-Semitic or racial. By the way, even in the tea party, we have a broad movement like this, and we’ve been criticized, and they try to make the tea party as being racist, etc., which it’s not. But there’s always elements who turn up at these things, whether it’s militia guys or whatever. Some that are fringe organizations. My point is that over time it all gets kind of washed out, right? People understand what pulls them together, and the people on the margins I think get marginalized more and more.
I believe that you’ll see this in the center-right populist movement in continental Europe. I’ve spent quite a bit of time with UKIP, and I can say to you that I’ve never seen anything at all with UKIP that even comes close to that. I think they’ve done a very good job of policing themselves to really make sure that people including the British National Front and others were not included in the party, and I think you’ve seen that also with tea party groups, where some people would show up and were kind of marginal members of the tea party, and the tea party did a great job of policing themselves early on. And I think that’s why when you hear charges of racism against the tea party, it doesn’t stick with the American people, because they really understand.
I think when you look at any kind of revolution — and this is a revolution — you always have some groups that are disparate. I think that will all burn away over time and you’ll see more of a mainstream center-right populist movement.
————endquote————
What was that again about being the voice of the alt-right?
16. November 2016 at 21:26
Steve Bannon, anti-semite?
————-quote———–
Benjamin Harnwell, Human Dignity Institute: Thank you, Steve. That was a fascinating, fascinating overview. I am particularly struck by your argument, then, that in fact, capitalism would spread around the world based on the Judeo-Christian foundation is, in fact, something that can create peace through peoples rather than antagonism, which is often a point not sufficiently appreciated. Before I turn behind me to take a question —
Bannon: One thing I want to make sure of, if you look at the leaders of capitalism at that time, when capitalism was I believe at its highest flower and spreading its benefits to most of mankind, almost all of those capitalists were strong believers in the Judeo-Christian West. They were either active participants in the Jewish faith, they were active participants in the Christians’ faith, and they took their beliefs, and the underpinnings of their beliefs was manifested in the work they did. And I think that’s incredibly important and something that would really become unmoored. I can see this on Wall Street today — I can see this with the securitization of everything is that, everything is looked at as a securitization opportunity. People are looked at as commodities. I don’t believe that our forefathers had that same belief.
————endquote————
16. November 2016 at 21:50
Patrick,
I don’t think of Bannon as a loon. Seeing your quotes above and seeing the link where he says to Trump that you got to be careful letting too many Silicon Valley CEOs become South Asian or East Asian, Bannon is more of the intellectual spearhead of “white supremacy lite”. This makes him all the more dangerous and of course he is completely in line with Putin. This is very much what Putin would believe, right after his core belief, Russian exceptionalism, that Russia as a matter of course should be allowed to to things that others cannot.
I, as a white person, feel slandered by people like Bannon, or here in these forums, Art Deco, Harding, Heitor, Ribeiro, presumably AIG if (s)he is white etc., because soon enough to the outside their opinions will stand for all whites. I as a white person I will soon have to apologize for these less than savoury elements of my ethnicity. They make my life a LOT harder. I will be discriminated against a lot more often now that white = dangerous, again.
Another irony of course is that in Europe the identarian thing is not an ethnic thing. It’s “French” against “Polish” against “English”. And if Nations or States in the US, should once again be allowed to imprison within their borders, milk, and militarize their captive citizens, what stops us to go down to regions? Valleys? Cities?
Parochialism never ends splitting itself into smaller and smaller units of “identity”. Cosmopolitanism, or Globalism, is self evident and the only libertarian option. All else are forms of slavery, voluntary for the 51% nationalists, involuntary for everyone else.
16. November 2016 at 22:10
Great post mbka. I agree completely.
17. November 2016 at 02:56
It’s sad that the US has given up it’s leadership role, but at least globalization is still happening despite us. It would be worse if everyone else gave up as well.
17. November 2016 at 05:11
Prof. Sumner, if Republicans truly followed Keynes when in power, right now, they should do more fiscal consolidation, given the economic cycle.
To all: what is globalization, and why do we need it? Can’t every country (or every US State for that matter) keep their own idiosyncrasies and still be part of the global economy ?
17. November 2016 at 05:28
‘…letting too many Silicon Valley CEOs become South Asian or East Asian.’
Which was NOT Bannon’s point. He was pointing out to Trump that plenty of foreigners educated here stay here. I.e., that Trump was wrong.
And, since that comes from a SECONDARY source–someone claiming that Bannon said that–and out of context, we don’t even know if he really said it. In contrast; his speech and answers to questions are PRIMARY. I.e., actually from Bannon’s mouth. This is elementary.
The rest of your comment is pure self congratulation.
17. November 2016 at 05:55
On the matter of racism, a lot of it is just racism-accusation-weariness. It has been so way, way overdone. When one looks for actual evidence of the scale of actual racism, the evidence is that it is a relatively minor and decreasing problem. David Duke, for example, got 3% of the vote in Louisiana. Scott Alexander has a lot more at a post I strongly commend.
http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-wolf/
Breitbart is online tabloid journalism. Polemical, online, tabloid journalism. It has all the faults one would expect from that, but reading off headlines, for example, is a less than reliable basis for judging articles.
One gets sick of the constant accusations. I mean, really sick. I do a post about multiculturalism and bang, get a comment about “again” quoting Thomas Sowell “I am not a racist” signal. http://skepticlawyer.com.au/2016/11/03/multiculturalism-is-an-experiment-that-might-fail/comment-page-1/#comment-274455
I know what a nonsense smear it is for me, and have seen enough overdone or simply false accusations on others, and so racism accusations acquire a huge discount factor.
17. November 2016 at 06:00
Ooops, posted the comment on the wrong post. Oh well, I posted it against at the right one.
China is our biggest trading partner. Trying to get them as tied into the international order as possible has been an Australian foreign policy aim for decades now.
The danger in The Donald seeking to pull the US back is in making what the lines are very unclear, because that makes miscalculations much more likely.
Also, expect to see Japan and India getting even more chummy than they already are.
17. November 2016 at 06:10
Scott,
I’m wondering if you’ve read Scott Alexander’s piece “You’re Still Crying Wolf,” and what you think of it.
Best,
Jacob
17. November 2016 at 07:10
Patrick,
so if Bannon only meant to point out that plenty educated foreigners stay in the US, then how do you interpret that Twitter post “when 3/4 of Silicon Valley CEOs are from South Asia or from Asia, I think … A country is more than an economy. We’re a civic society.”
In the wider context, back in 2000 plenty enough newspapers thought very little of GWB. France’s Le Monde called him “The idiot” in a headline. At the time I thought, that’s just unwarranted and mean. Give the man a chance with his compassionate conservatism. He sounds intelligent enough when he speaks. I WAS WRONG. I won’t make that mistake again. I won’t give credit to people who don’t deserve it. If it walks and quacks like a duck, it likely is, a Donald, or a Bannon.
Lorenzo,
I do have some sympathy for your point of view. In Germany the spurious racism accusation equivalent is called “pulling out the Nazi club” and many are tired of that too. But here, the damning thing about Trump isn’t so much what he believes – he may well not be a racist, or have any strong beliefs whatsoever – but that he encourages toxic tendencies in society. He makes toxic thoughts like racism acceptable again, and this he really does with full intent at his rallies. He shifts the Overton window of acceptable discourse.
In this context, do you remember arch-conservative Bill Bennett of the 90s, eventually disgraced for a bad online gambling habit. He said something very interesting. He had this concept of “constructive hypocrisy”. That even though we know the founding stories of the US or the glorious ideas we have about democracy, aren’t literally true, it is in our best interest to pretend that they are. Well the Trumps and Bannons do just the opposite. They just tell everyone, it’s ok to be a pig. Go ahead, everyone’s a pig, it’s OK. And I say, yes we are all faulty but it’s not OK. At least, we should try.
17. November 2016 at 07:14
Thanks Tom.
Benny, I also remember those days.
Brian:
“Trump is certainly not an economist, and I’m sure his thoughts on the subject are those of a negotiator operating on game-theoretical principles, like not giving away something for nothing.”
That’s giving Trump way too much credit. He doesn’t know anything about past trade deals. To the extent the deals were bad, they were bad because other countries gave way too much to the US. If you asked Trump what was wrong with TPP, he would not be able to answer. He’s in way over his head.
mbka, Keep in mind that it’s quite likely that Trump is just a passing fad. I don’t see Trumpism lasting for more than about 2 years.
Kevin, The problem was that they didn’t kneecap Fannie and Freddie. What they should have done is destroy them.
Jeffrey, You said:
“If we had to take a million immigrants in, say Zulus, next year, or Englishmen, and put them up in Virginia, what group would be easier to assimilate and would cause less problems for the people of Virginia?””
That’s the wrong question. If you want to restrict immigration to people who are well educated, that’s your prerogative. But that would lead to MORE immigration of Muslims. The proportion of doctors who are Muslim is much higher than their share of the general population. Recent immigrants from Africa have done quite well, because many are well educated. What makes Trump racist is that he talks about people (negatively) as Mexicans and Muslims, not as human beings. If I cared about the level of human capital in the US, I’d rather have a million Zulus with college degrees, than a million Scotch-Irish. (And don’t misquote me, I’m not anti-Scotch Irish,I ‘m just talking about the implication of the arguments made by anti-immigrant people.)
Now if you want to argue that campus SJWs are also racist, you’ll get no pushback from me.
AIG, You said:
“All this attempt at blaming Trump (a bit too early to get Trump derangement syndrome)”
Please read the post next time before commenting. Nowhere do I “blame” Trump, indeed I say it’s “far too soon to predict”
It’s really tiresome responding to commenters who fail to read the post.
engineer, You said:
“I have a question for you…..I don’t understand how you can believe in the Efficient Markets based on the wisdom of crowds and not believe in the wisdom of the American electorate in choosing Trump over Clinton. How do you reconcile this?”
Oh, did Trump get more votes that Hillary?
In any case, even if he had gotten more votes, you’d be misunderstanding the EMH. I absolutely do believe in democracy, and I’ve said several times that I prefer to be governed by who the majority selects, rather than who I favor. I still believe that. But as a part of the electorate, I’ll still fulfill my role of providing information, trying to change minds. I’m wearing a different “hat” when I comment. I’m wearing the hat of a stock analysis on Wall Street.
Patrick, I judge people by their actions. He’s the publisher of Breitbart. Are you defending Breitbart?
In any case, when did nationalism suddenly become respectable? We were all taught in school that it led to war, as when Putin attacked Ukraine. Is nationalism now a part of the GOP’s ideology?
Jose, That’s right. I think Lars later clarified it as “vulgar” Austrianism and vulgar Keynesianism.
Patrick, No, that’s not what Bannon is saying. In the final sentence about “civic society” he clearly implies that Asians will undermine a civic society.
17. November 2016 at 07:35
Sumner quotes Lars Christensen, who from his Twitter feed appears a vainglorious man who looks good in glasses and likes to hobnob with the self-described important. What a bull sitter. Apparently Christensen was a former student of Sumner’s which explains the mutual love. On Christensen’s Twitter page is the backwards looking tautology MV = PY (V is volatile and since money is largely neutral, the money supply follows PY, as any 19th century banker could tell you, with the real bills doctrine being an appropriate response by any banker).
Move along, nothing to see here…
17. November 2016 at 07:51
Jacob, That’s a very good post, as usual for Scott. But what’s his view on saying that Mexican American judges are not qualified to judge his case? Paul Ryan called that a “textbook definition of racism”. That seems right to me.
And why do so many of his fans like him precisely because he says non-PC things about Muslims, Mexicans, etc?
17. November 2016 at 07:52
Ray, You said:
“Apparently Christensen was a former student of Sumner’s which explains the mutual love.”
Former student? What will you come up with next? 🙂
17. November 2016 at 08:53
‘…so if Bannon only meant to point out that plenty educated foreigners stay in the US, then how do you interpret that Twitter post…’
I again point out that that Twitter post is not from Bannon.
17. November 2016 at 09:00
‘Patrick, I judge people by their actions. He’s the publisher of Breitbart. Are you defending Breitbart?’
He’s also the financier of Seinfeld.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
As for defending Breitbart, I’d first have to study the site. You know, get the facts, make a balanced analysis of them. The usual drill.
I suspect that makes at least two of us. In the meantime, I’ve provided you with quite a bit directly from Bannon, along with a link to HIS action in giving a speech to a group of religious scholars at the Vatican. I think a fair minded scholar would want to deal with that. Especially since I’ve made it so convenient for you.
17. November 2016 at 09:03
‘Patrick, No, that’s not what Bannon is saying. In the final sentence about “civic society” he clearly implies that Asians will undermine a civic society.’
Did you notice the ellipsis just before the ‘civic society’ comment?
17. November 2016 at 09:05
In this world, soon the US won’t be needed anymore, not economically and certainly not politically, after it so obviously proceeds in sinking itself.
The total fertility rate in the Far East is shy of 1.78 children per woman per lifetime. The affluent states in the Far East have rates ranging from 1.19 to 1.42. China does somewhat better, with 1.56. This is a chronic condition, by the way. You’re not seeing fertility recoveries like you’ve seen in Russia (to a degree), France, or Britain. The rate in Japan has been below replacement since 1974. What the heck, you can import Cambodians, right?
The American rate is 1.86. It has been depressed in recent years. It was above replacement rates as recently as 2007.
17. November 2016 at 09:07
But what’s his view on saying that Mexican American judges are not qualified to judge his case? Paul Ryan called that a “textbook definition of racism”. That seems right to me.
Ryan’s a tool.
The judge in question has certain political affiliations.
17. November 2016 at 09:08
If you asked Trump what was wrong with TPP, he would not be able to answer. He’s in way over his head.
The text hasn’t been published. The page count’s enough for a prudent man to toss the whole mess into the recycling bin.
17. November 2016 at 09:14
But that would lead to MORE immigration of Muslims. The proportion of doctors who are Muslim is much higher than their share of the general population.
No, the home country prompts and the various and sundry screens at work now construct an immigration pipeline from some loci which is heavy on professional people. If you reconstruct the admissions criteria you’re not necessarily going to replicate the current pattern in how the social profile of those admitted compares across global regions. Muslim immigration in to Europe doesn’t generate an especially educated settler population. Quite the contrary.
17. November 2016 at 09:22
In this context, do you remember arch-conservative Bill Bennett of the 90s, eventually disgraced for a bad online gambling habit. He said something very interesting. He had this concept of “constructive hypocrisy”. That even though we know the founding stories of the US or the glorious ideas we have about democracy, aren’t literally true, it is in our best interest to pretend that they are.
He wasn’t disgraced, merely embarrassed. He didn’t gamble online. He visited casinos. His vice was slot machines of all things. Bennett has scant history as a purveyor of original concepts in any discipline. He’s not an ‘archconservative’, just an ordinary Republican. He hasn’t held any public office in 25 years. He has a radio show distributed by Salem.
17. November 2016 at 09:26
I, as a white person, feel slandered by people like Bannon, or here in these forums, Art Deco, Harding, Heitor, Ribeiro, presumably AIG if (s)he is white etc., because soon enough to the outside their opinions will stand for all whites. I as a white person I will soon have to apologize for these less than savoury elements of my ethnicity. They make my life a LOT harder. I will be discriminated against a lot more often now that white = dangerous, again.
Cry me a river.
And when you’re done, you can explain why you cannot distinguish between the perspective offered by Harding, Heitor, and your’s truly.
17. November 2016 at 09:28
Scott,
You complain that nobody here wants to talk about economics and everyone wants to talk about Trump.
So I make a comment about economics, with a tangential reference to Trump, and you just want to talk about Trump in your reply. Replace Trump with “garden-variety mercantalist with a talent for negotiations” if you like. I am interested n your considered response.
I mean, if you want to talk about economics.
17. November 2016 at 09:43
What’s being done to Steve Bannon has a pedigree. It includes Saul Alinsky;
‘Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.’
As well as Orwell;
————-quote———–
Before the Hate had proceeded for thirty seconds, uncontrollable exclamations of rage were breaking out from half the people in the room. The self-satisfied sheep-like face on the screen, and the terrifying power of the Eurasian army behind it, were too much to be borne: besides, the sight or even the thought of Goldstein produced fear and anger automatically. He was an object of hatred more constant than either Eurasia or Eastasia, since when Oceania was at war with one of these Powers it was generally at peace with the other. But what was strange was that although Goldstein was hated and despised by everybody, although every day and a thousand times a day, on platforms, on the telescreen, in newspapers, in books, his theories were refuted, smashed, ridiculed, held up to the general gaze for the pitiful rubbish that they were — in spite of all this, his influence never seemed to grow less. Always there were fresh dupes waiting to be seduced by him. A day never passed when spies and saboteurs acting under his directions were not unmasked by the Thought Police. He was the commander of a vast shadowy army, an underground network of conspirators dedicated to the overthrow of the State. The Brotherhood, its name was supposed to be. There were also whispered stories of a terrible book, a compendium of all the heresies, of which Goldstein was the author and which circulated clandestinely here and there. It was a book without a title. People referred to it, if at all, simply as the book. But one knew of such things only through vague rumours. Neither the Brotherhood nor the book was a subject that any ordinary Party member would mention if there was a way of avoiding it.
In its second minute the Hate rose to a frenzy. People were leaping up and down in their places and shouting at the tops of their voices in an effort to drown the maddening bleating voice that came from the screen. The little sandy-haired woman had turned bright pink, and her mouth was opening and shutting like that of a landed fish. Even O’Brien’s heavy face was flushed. He was sitting very straight in his chair, his powerful chest swelling and quivering as though he were standing up to the assault of a wave. The dark-haired girl behind Winston had begun crying out ‘Swine! Swine! Swine!’ and suddenly she picked up a heavy Newspeak dictionary and flung it at the screen. It struck Goldstein’s nose and bounced off; the voice continued inexorably. In a lucid moment Winston found that he was shouting with the others and kicking his heel violently against the rung of his chair. The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp. Thus, at one moment Winston’s hatred was not turned against Goldstein at all, but, on the contrary, against Big Brother, the Party, and the Thought Police; and at such moments his heart went out to the lonely, derided heretic on the screen, sole guardian of truth and sanity in a world of lies. And yet the very next instant he was at one with the people about him, and all that was said of Goldstein seemed to him to be true. At those moments his secret loathing of Big Brother changed into adoration, and Big Brother seemed to tower up, an invincible, fearless protector, standing like a rock against the hordes of Asia, and Goldstein, in spite of his isolation, his helplessness, and the doubt that hung about his very existence, seemed like some sinister enchanter, capable by the mere power of his voice of wrecking the structure of civilization.
————-endquote————
17. November 2016 at 10:04
Speaking of defending Breitbart, something called the Zionist Organization of America, does just that here;
http://zoa.org/2016/11/10342353-zoa-criticizes-adl-for-falsely-alleging-trump-advisor-bannon-is-anti-semitic/
————-quote———–
It is painful to see Anti-Defamation League (ADL) president Jonathan Greenblatt engaging in character assassination against President-elect Trump’s appointee Stephen Bannon and Mr. Bannon’s company, Breitbart media. ADL/Greenblatt essentially accused Mr. Bannon and his media company of “anti-Semitism” and Israel hatred, when Jonathan Greenblatt/ADL tweeted that Bannon “presided over the premier website of the ‘alt right’ – a loose-knit group of white nationalists and anti-Semites.”
In fact, as pro-Israel writer (and orthodox Jew) Joel B. Pollak wrote, Mr. Bannon is “an American patriot who defends Israel & has deep empathy for the Jewish people.”
ZOA’s own experience and analysis of Breitbart articles confirms Mr. Bannon’s and Breitbart’s friendship and fair-mindedness towards Israel and the Jewish people. To accuse Mr. Bannon and Breitbart of anti-Semitism is Orwellian.
—————–endquote————-
17. November 2016 at 10:30
“I absolutely do believe in democracy, and I’ve said several times that I prefer to be governed by who the majority selects, rather than who I favor. I still believe that.”
OK, glad to hear that. I was thinking that you thought that Trump’s election was due to incomplete or wrong information getting to the electorate resulting in a group-think bubble of alt-right thinking that would soon burst.
17. November 2016 at 10:51
Scott and others,
I got a lot of good responses to my comment to Scott, so I thought I’d be a gentleman and provide some feedback:
1) Randomize says “I don’t know that Trump has proven himself to be a racist so much as he’s actively gone after the racist vote. His platform is quite literally built around keeping out the Mexicans and Muslims and fear-mongering to justify it.” The problem here is that while there may indeed be racists who hate Mexicans and Muslims there are those of us who want to keep out Mexicans and Muslims for perfectly valid public policy reasons that have nothing to do with hate of the other (and indeed, focus instead on love of our fellow citizen and what is best for the common good.) Likewise, if a Democrat passes an affirmative action program they may have the best of intentions (to help poor minorities) or they may hate white people and want revenge for something that happened in the past; all we can do is judge policy X, Y, or Z on its merits.
2) Mike gave me two examples of Trump’s racism:
* Saying a judge on Trump U case wasn’t impartial because he’s Latino (the judge was born in the US but that’s besides the point). Paul Ryan called this “textbook racism.”
– The problem here is that Trump explained himself — he was worried that the judge would have a hard time being impartial not just because he was Mexican, but because he belonged to a “pro-Mexican group” (which turned out to be a Latino lawyers association, but you get the idea) and Trump was worried that his immigration positions would clash with Curiel’s worldview making Curiel biased against Trump;
* Generalizing illegal immigrants from Mexico as rapists and criminals. Sure, some of them are, just as some native born Americans are.
– Trump claimed (as mbka explains) that “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best.” — we can test this claim against reality by analyzing the human capital of Mexican immigrants. Are they all college graduates? Highly skilled? Do they commit crimes at the same levels as they relatives back home? Etc. I suspect that the answers are no, no, and yes and because Mexican crime is higher than U.S. crime, none of these answers is good for the U.S.
3) mbka is worried about Trump’s tortured syntax — I agree he is not the most sophisticated wordsmith! Specifically, you say:
“BTW it’s annoying beyond belief when people can’t even keep to basic semantics…And only clannishness makes a phrase like “Mexico is sending us…” even possible.”
Only libertarians suffering from aspergers syndrome have a problem understanding the basic point Trump was trying to make. Mexico could do a better job of policing its borders and preventing millions of illegal immigrants from getting to the U.S. in the first place — that’s obviously what Trump means. And it would not be a “perfect world” to let individual citizens (or businesses) hire whoever they want because labor is not like buying a widget — human beings need to live and raise families in real communities and that creates problems when the labor force a business is hiring are immigrants that have trouble integrating into the host society. So the surrounding community has a stake in immigration policy just as it has a stake in all sorts of political questions that aspergery libertarians try to wish away from the political realm as if there weren’t real differences between people and how we want to live our lives.
P.S. Obviously the Irish would have an easier time integrating into California, even in this late, decadent stage.
4) Scott,
Not surprisingly, you gave me the best answer when you said:
“If you want to restrict immigration to people who are well educated, that’s your prerogative. But that would lead to MORE immigration of Muslims.”
Yes, in general I favor high-skilled immigration. But that’s not all. I worry about other issued related to assimilation and certainly the Muslim religion would be a big concern. I’m not convinced that Islam and modernity can get along O.K. or if they can, it might take a bloody battle and more terrorism to figure this out and I’d rather the U.S. not be part of that war. I have a ton of respect for Reuel Marc Gerecht, the former CIA officer who now writes about the Middle East for TWS. Here he is disagreeing with me about Muslims in America:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/muslims-in-america/article/2005120
I didn’t find his piece convincing (although I link to it to show you I try and read different perspectives on these issues) and two sentences in particular from the piece stood out for me:
“The FBI tore the Mafia apart in part because it was easy to spot individuals who were involved and might be turned. (Would anyone today, looking back, want to close the door to Italian Americans because the Mafia was a cottage industry among Sicilians?)”
I’ll raise my hand every day even though I’m the grandson of Sicilian immigrants (in part.) I think Reuel is way too cavalier about the terrible human costs involved in thinking about ethnic group differences and the difficulties of assimilating foreigners in a foreign land. Lots of Americans were killed by the mob and were impacted by Italian-American crime and if we could have made a significant impact on that crime by reducing the amount of Italians we took into America during the turn of the 20th Century (even if that means I’m living as a civil servant in Messina right now) then we should have reduced the amount.
I just think you don’t think hard enough about native well-being, long-term stability of native communities and the fragility of host institutions when faced with a massive (or waves of massive) foreign immigrants. No man is an island!
17. November 2016 at 10:56
BTW, I don’t think the fact that Hillary won the popular vote means that the majority of Americans favored her. The voter turnout in battleground states was much higher than in solid blue or solid red states. Obviously, voters knew that their votes in those states were not going to make a difference. Especially in California, where most of the elections were between two Democrats, which greatly suppresses Republican turnout….In addition, I would guess that the difference in turnout among WWC voters had an even greater differential between battleground and solid blue states…and those are overwhelmingly Trump supporters. I’m sure the paid statisticians are hard at work looking at this.
So, the only popular vote that matters was in the battleground states, which Trump won rather decisively.
17. November 2016 at 11:23
@engineer
the only popular vote that matters was in the battleground states
This theory sounds reasonable but did Trump really win the popular vote in all close states combined and if so by how much? I guess it also depends on how you define “battleground state”.
17. November 2016 at 11:50
Saying a judge on Trump U case wasn’t impartial
I see it in a similar way. Cases like this can be a reason for recusal.
But I also read that this judge granted Trump’s motion to delay the trial until after the 2016 presidential election. Trump University was one, if not the achilles’ heel of Trump’s campaign. In fact Trump got really lucky that he didn’t get someone like Comey on the case.
17. November 2016 at 12:13
Hi Scott,
I can’t speak for Scott Alexander, but I’ll try to channel him a little here…
The Judge Curiel thing may have been ugly, but it wasn’t “openly racist.” Trump didn’t say that Mexican American judges can’t do their jobs in general, just that in the current circumstances this particular judge should have opted out of judging *his* (Trump’s) case, because Trump had been campaigning on building a wall and making Mexico pay for it and Judge Curiel is “Mexican.” Objectively, there was no reason why any judge should have given Trump a summary judgement in that case, Trump was wrong to call him “Mexican” (he’s American of Mexican descent), it may have played well with people who *do* believe things like “Mexican judges can’t do their jobs in general,” and of course Judge Persky may *not* have been biased against Trump on account of his campaign… hence, it was ugly and stupid… but none of that rises to the level of “open racism” on Trump’s part. It just doesn’t.
Plenty of folks in the media, including journalists I respect and read regularly like Matt Yglesias, not only called Trump’s comments “open” or “explicit” or “blatant” racism, they also misquoted Trump entirely. That’s not only inaccurate, it’s also crying wolf. And that’s true whether it’s Paul Ryan or Vox dot com or anyone else saying it.
I also recall that in the same week Trump made the Curiel comments there were liberals galore linking Judge Alan Persky’s alleged inability to render an appropriate sentence in the Brock Turner rape case to, in part, Persky’s race and gender. Many liberals even petitioned for Persky to be removed from the bench, in part yes because of his race and gender. Yet very few liberals seemed to notice the double standard, or even that a non-crazy person might *wonder* if there *could* be a double standard, let alone make the case that there wasn’t. Again, this was all in the space of one week, and one media cycle. They can’t even blame political amnesia here.
(One lonely exception to this was that week’s episode of the Slate Political Gabfest, in which Emily Bazelon and John Dickerson agreed that Trump’s comments about Judge Curiel were totally racist, and then transitioned almost immediately, in a matter of minutes, to the Persky-Turner case, in which Emily in particular suspected that the light sentence for the white male former Stanford athlete Brock Turner had something to do with Judge Persky being a white male former Stanford athlete himself, or something. The word “privilege” was thrown around. And then John Dickerson noticed the double standard almost immediately, and pointed it out. The three of them all had a brief moment of cognitive dissonance, waved their hands, never really made the fine distinctions necessary to separate the one case from the other in terms of what is racist and what’s not, what’s sexist and what’s not, and why — which to be honest wouldn’t even have been *that hard* in the lexicon of American liberals — and then they just dropped it, and moved on. They never *really* dealt with the contradiction. Kudos to John Dickerson for noticing it, but by and large nobody else in the media even seemed to notice anything that needed reconciling, and nobody I’ve read has done it in the time since.)
Understand how all of this looks to people who are not already just like the journalists engaged in these discussions… It looks… Bad.
On why his fans like his lack of political incorrectness… His fans are a lot more heterogeneous than the most boilerplate media narrative gives them credit for. Some of them are surely “deplorables,” but Scott Alexander dealt with the evidence suggesting that actual “deplorables” are just not very numerous — a lot of people, including myself to be honest (and I did not and would not vote for Trump), find it easy to enjoy political incorrectness without being openly racist, and without perceiving open racism in Trump. Nor is this even really a Trump thing — plenty of people enjoy political incorrectness on the left, too, which is also more heterogeneous than is commonly acknowledged. (e.g. If Trump is an Islamophobe, then so is Bill Maher…)
See Asra Q. Nomani for example, a lifelong liberal Muslim woman of color and Georgetown professor and… Trump voter. Her number one issue is, evidently, ISIS. She thinks that ISIS is a blight on our collective conscience and needs to be dealt with… Firmly. And for her, Hillary’s position, and Hillary’s rhetoric, just didn’t cut the mustard. If Asra enjoys and appreciates Trump’s lack of political correctness towards Muslims, then… What? Does that make her a racist? An Islamophobe? How about a sexist — or is she a feminist?
Now remember that approximately one out of three non-Christian, non-Jewish, non-atheist voters (Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, etc.), and one out of four highly educated (postgraduate) voters, and one out of four female voters, are Trump supporters, like Asra Q. Nomani. Are we to suppose that they’re really into Trump’s lack of political correctness because they’re racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic, and/or anti-Semitic? Or, does non-PC simply not equate to “deplorable”? Note that we could also take the position that they *are* deplorable if they like that rhetoric, but that many Trump supporters actually don’t like the rhetoric and think he comes off as a moron and a bigot, though they don’t quite believe that he is. Even in that case, much of the standard media narrative about Trump and his supporters is wrong.
Finally, I know you didn’t say otherwise, but FWIW… neither Curiel nor non-PC rhetoric about Muslims has anything to do with lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender people, or Jews. (Lest we fall down any “racism and/or Islamophobia implies homophobia and anti-Semitism” slippery slopes…)
**********
I dont agree with 100% of Scott’s post, I’m just trying to respond to your questions in his absence.
I do agree, however, that there are so many things wrong with Trump that we really don’t need to stretch any arguments up to or beyond their breaking points, and that plenty of people, including Paul Ryan, have done exactly that, which helps Trump and needlessly harms people like Scott’s patients, and even friends and family of mine, who have much less to fear than I think they do even if Trump is 80% as bad as they think.
Best,
Jacob
(a Jewish independent in his 20s who’s only voted once, for Obama in 2008, and would have voted for Hillary if he hadn’t been registered in New York, and isn’t fully comfortable with most “-isms,” in case anyone was wondering)
17. November 2016 at 12:18
PS — sorry, meant to say that Emily Bazelon and David Plotz agreed that etc etc, and that 4 in 10 women voted for Trump. I’m typing this on a phone and did a crappy editing job.
17. November 2016 at 13:36
In any case, when did nationalism suddenly become respectable? We were all taught in school that it led to war, as when Putin attacked Ukraine.
Or when Lincoln was against the South leaving the nation. What an evil man. I mean what do you even mean with your Putin example? No nation, no war, are you that naive? What does this even mean? To verify this you could imagine a study that proves that there are far less wars in the pre-nation era than in the era of nations. I bet quite the opposite is true. By the way: To which school did you go again?
Is nationalism now a part of the GOP’s ideology?
Since when is it not a part of the GOP ideology?
Nationalism in the US is the believe that the US and its inhabitants are a nation. A nation based on legal and rational concepts, a common language and even a common culture.
Why is there a a star-spangled banner at nearly every American corner? Why do Americans sing their hymn all the time? Why do many Americans think they are a special nation and a shining city on the hill? Damn those nationalists, they make America look bad. Damn those Americans, they ruined America.
17. November 2016 at 13:55
Pethokoukis: “Trying to figure out what Trump really thinks about the Fed”
https://www.aei.org/publication/what-trump-really-thinks-about-the-fed
17. November 2016 at 16:25
i dont really why the tumpistas are doing. they are still defending their guy, when in reality it doesnt really matter. for now. and wont be remembered even when it might. you really wonder they think that banging their heads against their ‘opponents’ at this time will help them. it wont. those that were against Trump will stay that way for the forseable future. and likely will actually grow (unless miracles happen and things just break right). if we didnt believe you before the election, we wont now.
17. November 2016 at 19:05
Wow so much text to read. In no particular order:
Art Deco,
I do make a difference between you and the others I mentioned. You post a lot of detail and you’re usually deeper in your analysis. But still, your political tendencies go against the grain of everything I believe. And frankly, you often post nothing but details. Example, on Bill Bennett, I was making a point on constructive hypocrisy, you corrected some details about his Bio, totally off topic, and added no word on the substance of my point. BTW Bennett WAS a quite visible exponent of the late-Reagan “moral majority” talk, he published his “Book of virtues” that I bought, yes, I did, because I thought there was value in that. I really try to get my opinions from all directions. etc.
Patrick,
posting extra long quotes is getting you diminishing returns here. And I have read the long piece on Buzzfeed on Bannon. Here, he creeps me out in a different fashion from the Twitter post, yet is consistent with it. In the Buzzfeed piece he comes across as some kind of intellectualized neocolonialist who is obsessed with associating capitalism with religion and spreading Christian values along with capitalism. To summarize, he says “Asian capitalism is bad because it’s not based on Christianity, the West is about to go the same way and we can’t allow that”. So, the separation of church and state hasn’t sunk in.
Later in a brief interchange with a fellow discussing the “Identarian” movement, specifically in Austria, he stays on the surface as if those people were just peddling another legitimate train of thought. Unfortunately, the Austrian Identarian movement is what would happen if you had US style militias invading Berkeley and screaming at college professors. There have been several such incidents in Austria: Identarians storming sociology or history classes, screaming obscenities and spraying graffitis. That, and violent street battles, and of course the “martial arts” thing mentioned in Buzzfeed. Unfortunately in the Austrian or German context this is closer to “Wehrsport”, really paramilitary training exercises involving guns, hopping around in the woods, and for some, occasionally screaming Heil Hitler (not a slur, all of these occurred). In other words, Identarians are as close as you can get to a revival of Roehm’s SA, the uniformed Nazi hooligans that Hitler used in the early days to beat up the opposition. So, in conclusion, no, Bannon in his own words does NOT make me happy either.
Jeffrey Singer,
I am not incensed about Trump’s semantics specifically. I am incensed about just about everybody’s semantics here. When you say
Only libertarians suffering from aspergers syndrome have a problem understanding the basic point Trump was trying to make
I say, most people don’t even know why they misunderstand basic facts because the mangled semantics of “Mexico is sending…” reflects the mangled meaning in people’s heads. It’s an Us vs Them thing, i.e. a form of tribalism or clan thinking. Trump, and most people, really do turn “some people come to find work here” into “Mexico is sending” because they believe there is an “us” and a “them” and because they believe there is a sinister organized force behind everything. The left btw is just as guilty of doing the same thing, of course. For the right wing, it’s government and foreigners, for the left, it’s companies and right wing conspiracies, but they all believe there is an organized clan of “others” trying to destroy “us”. Everybody has dreadful semantic habits and it is poisoning the discussion.
And, btw, while Trump is concerned that the bottom of society comes to the US, Bannon is concerned that the top of society is coming (Asian CEOs). What happened to this:
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore”?
But I disgress. Or do I.
17. November 2016 at 19:06
mbka:
“Austrian Economics as preached today is a fossilized approach that stopped developing meaningfully since Mises.”
Yeah let’s dump geometry while we’re at it. I mean there was Euclid, and then the non-Euclid revolution during the 19th century. Not much else.
Let’s move on from formal logic as well. We had Aristotle, and then some fuzzy stuff that coat-tailed off the quantum revolution. Not much else.
Heck, let’s jettison mathematics. I mean we’re still teaching kids the same algebra that has been around for millennia.
Good call mbka.
“It is completely inflexible and dogmatic.”
Truth is by nature inflexible. How in the world is inflexibility a bad thing? You need and depend on inflexible truths to even coherently think and communicate that.
“It is a nice example of a “pure” philosophy since it has more regard for formal beauty than for the messy realities that so often don’t want to fit out pretty models.”
Actually Austrian economics studies and can make sense of any and all of the “messy” thoughts that frustrate you. Auatrian economics studies individual human action. It includes the messiness. You seem to be conflating the principles of Auatrian economics with the very crude hypotheses that you yourself utilize when trying to understand the world.
“But by refusing to evolve in the light of new evidence, it also refuses to be relevant.”
Define “relevant.” Do you mean popular with the state or economists who preach to the state?
And of course it does not evolve in the “light” of new evidence. For it is a science a priori to historical observations. It studies what action is and how it is structured. It does not study what choices you will make tomorrow. It studies the logical categories of choice making as such.
Speaking of fossils, devaluing the currency by way of centralized monopolies and destroying markets, has some interesting real life fossils in Italy, with Roman emperor Diocletian’s example of the myriad of State money experiments.
17. November 2016 at 20:17
Major.Freedom,
I hung out long enough at mises.org to know you would say these things, and I have behind my desk a long list of tomes starting with “Human Action” so I did not come to my conclusions overnight. In modern wordings, Austrian Economics is about self organizing dynamical systems, and yes, there are modern post-Aristotle models for such systems, their attractors, complexity etc. On the economics side these models include a lot of human qualities too, example, signaling and anticipation. Compared to these, Mises now appears sociologically quaint, if well intentioned and about the right path.
Relevance is about actually having an influence in shaping the world. If you are content to preach only to the converted, it’s ok but I prefer at least trying to make a difference.
Example of modern thought in terms of monetary policy: Once you go beyond the belittling wording of “debasing” or “devaluing” a currency, which imparts an undue normative tinge on what should be the subject of impartial inquiry, you could discover new and far more elegant models of the economics of exchange than a fixed supply of money. That fixed supply thinking now sounds as crude to me now as would suggesting a growth model of the human body while keeping the blood supply constant. So, following Scott on this site, I now find the model of keeping money as a fixed fraction of NGDP far more elegant. It allows for a better model of the (unknown) “total” truth out there. That is what I meant by being flexible, evolving, and relevant.
17. November 2016 at 20:22
?
“China’s currency is being hit by worrying asset bubbles and a continued reliance on stimulus”
http://www.wsj.com/articles/yuans-slide-may-have-more-to-do-with-economics-than-donald-trump-1479303912
17. November 2016 at 21:29
Quick! back to Trump. Janet Yellen may be picking a fight with Trump: http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/11/17/502480053/federal-reserve-chair-throws-cold-water-on-trump-economic-plan
It seems we are “close to full employment” and everything is ducky. Perhaps she can head to inner-city Detroit and explain that to people salvaging bricks and copper from abandoned houses.
Also the Trump gets to fill two vacancies in the Fed. Any speculation on names?
17. November 2016 at 21:58
“10 things we learned about Trump adviser Steve Bannon from this recently surfaced speech”
http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/17/13653822/trump-chief-strategist-steve-bannon-worldview
17. November 2016 at 23:18
mbka:
“I hung out long enough at mises.org to know you would say these things, and I have behind my desk a long list of tomes starting with “Human Action” so I did not come to my conclusions overnight. In modern wordings, Austrian Economics is about self organizing dynamical systems, and yes, there are modern post-Aristotle models for such systems, their attractors, complexity etc. On the economics side these models include a lot of human qualities too, example, signaling and anticipation. Compared to these, Mises now appears sociologically quaint, if well intentioned and about the right path.”
I think you are more interested in virtue signaling, and signaling in general, than with actual knowledge. Claiming to have a book on one’s shelf is typically a signal of understanding, but more often in reality the book is either not even there, or it is but sits fresh and unopened.
Post-Aristotle models for self-organizing systems? Post-Aristotle?
What you called “in modern wording”, the mechanistic conflation of economies with machines, of “self-organizing dynamical systems”, is not in fact what Austrian economics is about. Austrian economics studies the logical categories and deductions concerning individual action. It does not make judgments nor stands in opposition to nor is logically antagonistic towards so-called “command economies”. You keep conflating Auatrianism with Libertarianism. They are distinct. I don’t really believe you when you say you have read Austrian economics from the original sources. I think you are only saying you have so that you can mislead people into taking what you say about it as more credible and informed than it deserves. I mean in the first few chapters of Human Action, Mises explains how Praxeology is distinct from what you just wrote. Modern wording? It was an incorrect wording.
“Relevance is about actually having an influence in shaping the world. If you are content to preach only to the converted, it’s ok but I prefer at least trying to make a difference.”
This doesn’t actually stand in contrast to what I rhetorically asked. Influence in shaping the world? How exactly? Again, do you mean by appealing to the state, or to economists who preach to the state? Are you talking about influencing someone other than yourself?
“Example of modern thought in terms of monetary policy: Once you go beyond the belittling wording of “debasing” or “devaluing” a currency, which imparts an undue normative tinge on what should be the subject of impartial inquiry…”
But you’re not being impartial in the very tacit but nevertheless sanction and support of those norms which are presupposed in the very “monetary system” you claim to involve yourself impartially. One of the hallmarks of what is sometimes called “statism” is the fallacy that state control is impartial and technical while free markets are ideological and morality plays.
What you call “stable NGP growth” is a phrase that “imparts an undue normative tinge” on the sanctioning of socialist money inflation as valuable. The reason why you perceive a “normative tinge” in the phrase “devalue” is because your own normative tinge regarding inflation as value generating. It is silly to expect that you can recommend or advocate for any monetary rule without telling the world your “norms”, or at least the norms you signal and want people to believe even if it isn’t really the case.
“you could discover new and far more elegant models of the economics of exchange than a fixed supply of money.”
See? You just imbibed inflation with a normative tinge. Yay for inflation! It is so pretty. Boo for hard money! It is so ugly.
What pray tell are models that become “more elegant” when it includes a factor of 1.045 as opposed to 1.001?
By the way, a free market money supply is not necessarily “fixed”. Even Bitcoins, while finite, are unbounded above. The supply can theoretically keep increasing forever, at lower and lower rates of course. But even here, there is nothing in the free market process of interaction that compels people to not change what they use as money when a given money is obsolete or impractical.
You are just presenting inflationism as righteous. To say inflationism models are “more elegant” is nothing more than presenting a normative judgment about what money we out to use.
“That fixed supply thinking now sounds as crude to me now as would suggesting a growth model of the human body while keeping the blood supply constant.”
This flawed analogy only shows your own misunderstanding of money and economies. As Mises tirelessly pointed out, in Human Action and elsewhere, the analogy of money and the economy with blood and the human body is an analogy based on a fundamental misconception of economic thinking. The economy is not an organism, metaphorical or not. To say that we need a state monopoly inflation for a growing economy “similar to” or “much like” or “just as” increases in blood are needed for a growing human body, is off the economics trail and into propaganda.
Growing economies actually do not need a continually growing money supply that states bring about (to facilitate separated bank issuers of credit expansion and their own financing). Economies can grow for long periods of time on a fixed money supply, by way of money becoming more and more valuable over time relative to goods and services. Prices can continue to fall as productivity increases. Then, when the units become Impractically small, a new money can be introduced, either along side the old, or as a replacement. Just because you won’t be able to get hired by anyone to come up with a be all and end all “model” for money, that doesn’t mean the problem is the money. The problem would be your career choice.
“So, following Scott on this site, I now find the model of keeping money as a fixed fraction of NGDP far more elegant. It allows for a better model of the (unknown) “total” truth out there. That is what I meant by being flexible, evolving, and relevant.”
You are just giving your personal preference. This is not economics.
17. November 2016 at 23:57
Major, you make me chuckle. I lecture for a living, and so do you apparently, in a far more professorial way than I could ever conceive. We disagree, I appreciate your polite response though.
18. November 2016 at 03:32
Well written mbka, a lot os self styled “austrians” don’t get that fixed supply is not a response to discretionary central banks, it is just another form of discretionary monetary policy.
A true free economy would have free currencies, and in that kind of environment when demand for money goes up, a totally free system would naturally increase the supply of money.
Prof. Sumner’s NGDP futures idea actually works that way. It is a market based, rules based monetary policy framework, much better than any discretionary process, be it an all powerful bureau like the fed, or a pre-ordained always tight money through gold standard.
18. November 2016 at 04:11
@Jacob,
Excellent comment. Thanks.
18. November 2016 at 04:45
Republicans are Austrians when they are in opposition and Keynesian when they are in power. They are never monetarists.
He forgot something:
American monetarists are always monetarists – but they are never in power because they lost the ability to get in touch with the people in power.
18. November 2016 at 05:40
Thanks for giving us the link to the Voxian take on Bannon, Travis. I always enjoy watching leftist intellectuals betray their intellectual limitations. Their last paragraph illustrates this nicely;
‘Putin had a central role in the American election — he was an open supporter of Trump and long blamed by Clinton’s campaign for attempting to meddle in the democratic process. Bannon’s understanding of him fits in line with both these realities: that he has leadership qualities Trump seems to admire, and that he is a self-serving dictatorial leader.’
Which came just after Vox quoted Bannon telling his audience; ‘so I think it’s something that we have to be very much on guard of.’
Right over the heads of Vox. Hilarious, their bigotry. As was this earlier;
‘Judeo-Christian ideals have a long history in conservative movements, from Barry Goldwater to Ronald Reagan, emphasizing the importance of traditional American religious values in all aspects of life. The notion feeds the image of a simpler and more homogeneous nation, which Trump’s campaign largely signaled throughout the race.’
Then how does the author explain the role those same Judeo-Christian values played in the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and 60s? You know, the one led by The REVEREND Martin Luther King, Jr.
I think we have a classic example of cognitive dissonance here.
18. November 2016 at 05:53
For any kids reading here who are too young to remember;
https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/civilrights/players.htm
————-quote———–
The leadership role of black churches in the movement was a natural extension of their structure and function. They offered members an opportunity to exercise roles denied them in society. Throughout history, the black church served not only as a place of worship but also as a community “bulletin board,” a credit union, a “people’s court” to solve disputes, a support group, and a center of political activism. These and other functions enhanced the importance of the minister. The most prominent clergyman in the civil rights movement was Martin Luther King, Jr. Time magazine’s 1964 “Man of the Year” was a man of the people. He joined as well as led protest demonstrations, and as comedian Dick Gregory put it, “he gave as many fingerprints as autographs.” King’s powerful oratory and persistent call for racial justice inspired sharecroppers and intellectuals alike. His tireless personal commitment to and strong leadership role in the black freedom struggle won him worldwide acclaim and the Nobel Peace Prize.
Other notable minister-activists included Ralph Abernathy, King’s closest associate; Bernard Lee, veteran demonstrator and frequent travel companion of King; Fred Shuttlesworth, who defied Bull Connor and who created a safe path for a colleague through a white mob in Montgomery by commanding “Out of the way!”; and C.T. Vivian, who debated Sheriff Clark on his conduct and the Constitution.
————–endquote————-
Which reminds me of MLK Jr’s most famous line, that people should be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
Sorta what Steve Bannon was saying, no?
18. November 2016 at 05:54
Trump’s $140B tax credit plan to privatize US infrastructure with $1T in private investment…
Is FREAKING YELLEN OUT.
So good.
18. November 2016 at 05:57
What fun is that to cool off the Economy, GOP just has to have college loans priced by SUBJECT STUDIED (ability to pay back).
Note: unemployed college professors is pro-growth.
18. November 2016 at 06:26
Perhaps she can head to inner-city Detroit and explain that to people salvaging bricks and copper from abandoned houses.
A concatenation of interests allowed the core city of metropolitan Detroit to rot. That there is a huge mass of abandoned physical plant in Detroit has much more to do with features local to Detroit (hideous levels of street crime, municipal service deficits) than to sclerosis in labor market generally. Gunning monetary policy will do little for Detroit. Establishing an amply staffed metropolitan police force, replacing public schools with voucher-funded private schools, restructuring local property and sales taxes, restructuring public sector compensation, restoring impartial civil service examinations in local government, and adjustments to the electoral system will assist Detroit. None of them need any federal initiative at all.
18. November 2016 at 09:25
Art Deco,
My point about Detroit is that we have generationally low labor participation. Either we have had a huge structural change in the labor pool (more people prefer hanging out to working) or we have a *lot* of slack and Yellen is wrong. An optimal monetary policy lifts all boats.
The Detroit story is complicated, but 50 years ago Detroit was the most prosperous city in the world and Washington DC was a small city on the edge of a swamp. That has been reversed.
18. November 2016 at 09:41
@mbka,
“I now find the model of keeping money as a fixed fraction of NGDP far more elegant.”
The trouble with this is that it leaves the price level indeterminate. Multiply all prices by 10, you get 10 times the money supply and nothing else changes. Suppose you set the fixed fraction a bit too high. The result is spiraling inflation. Set it too low and you get a never-ending depression.
What Scott would advocate is adjusting the money supply continuously to make market-based expectations of nominal GDP match a target path. Under such a scheme it might turn out that velocity (NominalGDP/Money) is pretty stable, but then again, it might not be. Scott’s program does not require stable velocity to work.
18. November 2016 at 10:03
The Detroit story is complicated, but 50 years ago Detroit was the most prosperous city in the world and Washington DC was a small city on the edge of a swamp. That has been reversed.
Not true, and not true.
The dense settlement around Washington in 1950 was about 1.2 million. About 800,000 were in the District, roughly 250,000 in NoVa, and about 150,000 in suburban Maryland. A metropolitan settlement of contextually similar size today would have a population north of 2.4 million, or somewhere between greater Denver and greater San Diego. As we speak, greater Washington has a population of about 4.2 million. It’s about the 9th largest such settlement in the country (after New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, the Bay Area complex, Dallas, Miami, Philadelphia, and Houston). The line up in 1950 would have been different (swap out Dallas, Houston, Miami, and perhaps the Bay Area; swap in Detroit, Boston, Cleveland (perhaps), and St. Louis (perhaps)), but Washington would still be somewhere around 10th place in the pecking order, give or take a spot or two.
The dense settlement around Detroit has increased in population by about 20% since 1950 (though with a slight decline since 1980). It was likely the 4th ranking such settlement in 1950 and now it is somewhere around 10th. The core city now encompasses only 18% of the dense settlement, and the share it encompasses is predominantly slum. Detroit has been hollowed out, not utterly ruined.
18. November 2016 at 10:05
N.B. the homicide rate in the Detroit suburbs was 2.4 per 100,000 last I checked. The homicide rate in the core city is 48 per 100,000. There is your problem in a nutshell.
18. November 2016 at 10:10
My point about Detroit is that we have generationally low labor participation.
The employment-to-population ratio has ranged between 0.55 (recorded in 1949) to 0.65 (recorded in 2000) during the post war era. It is currently 0.597. We’ve got a problem, but not an unprecedented one. We have 139 million employed persons as we speak. Had employment growth between 2006 and the present day continued at what were normal rates ‘ere 2006, we’d have 150 million employed persons. Casey Mulligan has been writing about these issues, and the effect of Obamacare, raising the minimum wage, the incentives attending welfare policy, and sundries in reducing employment.
18. November 2016 at 13:49
Ben Shapiro worked with Bannon for years. Some of his views
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiLD_wmUrDo
18. November 2016 at 17:40
mbka:
I am more interested in ideas and testing the quality of them. To not sit on one’s laurels. What I strongly, but respectfully, demand from every person who wants to challenge or question any theory, let alone my own, is to subject one’s own ideas to the very standards those same ideas ostensibly call for. In other words, to at bare minimum engage in self-reflective analysis.
This is not easy to do if you reject rationalism and believe the various offshoots of skepticism, such as positivism, are the sole methods to study and learn not only inorganic matter, but conscious purposeful entities like we humans.
In your two posts with substantive content, I imagined myself saying and thinking what you wrote and realised pretty quickly that most of what you wrote nullifies itself.
18. November 2016 at 18:01
Major,
I emphatically contend that Austrianism as you describe it, and as others usually do, is NOT about testing ideas or goodness forbid, empirical hypothesis testing. It is about deducing from a prioris. And, and I see the ritual rejection of positivism as much of a strawman that has nothing at all to do with my posts here. And rationalism? Rationalism connects to reality. What I hear from Austrianis is empty formal reasoning, ritualised talk that doesn’t care about empirical issues since it does not claim to be able to make predictions. Hence it isn’t a science at the level that other sciences are. It’s basically navel gazing.
Jeff
I left that part out, I didn’t want to re-explain Scott’s approach in my own, worse words, just wanted to give a pointer.
18. November 2016 at 20:44
‘Ben Shapiro worked with Bannon for years.’
Now Ben Shapiro is the voice of sweet reason?
Maybe the reason Kellyanne has a different relationship with Bannon than Ben is that she isn’t an arrogant jerk?
18. November 2016 at 20:47
‘The employment-to-population ratio has ranged between 0.55 (recorded in 1949)….’
When baby boomer women were 4 years old at the most. The workforce was mostly adult men and unmarried women then.
19. November 2016 at 07:45
The workforce was mostly adult men and unmarried women then.
About a quarter of the workforce was female in 1930 and about a third was in 1957 (with the difference in metrics largely accounted for by the declining share of women running farm households). The median age at first marriage for women in 1957 was a shade lower than 21.0. A great many married women were working at that time. The big change over the succeeding generation was in the share of women in professional-managerial occupations. That’s about 13% of the workforce.
20. November 2016 at 08:24
Jeffrey, I see no evidence that Muslims are having trouble fitting in in America.
You said:
“Mexico could do a better job of policing its borders and preventing millions of illegal immigrants from getting to the U.S. in the first place — that’s obviously what Trump means.”
Very few countries other than North Korea police their borders to try to keep people from leaving. They police borders to try to keep people from entering.
Jacob, Thanks for the comments, but I still agree with Paul Ryan and Tyler Cowen.
Again, as I’ve said before, I’d never deny that identity politics leftists do the same thing in the other direction. I don’t agree with that stuff either. But I feel that a man who wants to be President of all Americans has a special responsibility not to dump on unpopular minorities like Muslims, Mexicans and Chinese.
20. November 2016 at 08:49
not to dump on unpopular minorities like Muslims, Mexicans and Chinese.
None of these populations are particularly unpopular (quite the contrary among people who are really influential). Neither has Trump dumped on any of them. He just hasn’t treated them with the deference that people employed in academic institutions, media companies, and political agitation fancy they merit.