OT--Serves me right: should have known better than to jump in. :)
Lawrence, I humbly and sincerely suggest that you are too quick to draw inferences from others's posts--or at least from mine and Z's.
"I can't let you get away with this typically Reich-Clinton fallacy. Economic policy should be concerned with the greatest good for the greatest number of people, and not be distracted by anecdotal storytelling that is ignorant at best and openly deceptive at worst. A laid off worker would presumably get an near equivalent job at a near equivalent wage."
Hmm. First, how is this observation either fallacious or anecdotal? I strongly agree that policy-making (or philosophizing, for that matter) by anecdote is as inadvisable as it is widely practiced. But we're talking about millions of people in thousands of industries, who have worked very hard in these fields for many years just to get by.
Second, you appear to be asserting a normative claim here (i.e. the this wisdom of utilitiarianism as a public philosophy,) not an economic one. Actually, I am in general agreement with you on this, against the view of most philosophers; my dissertation focuses in part on this very question. But I do not believe that such value-laden questions are best left to economic doctrines. Indeed, doesn't seem a bit ironic that the economists who protest most forcefully when non-economists contribute to economic debates are often the same ones who wouldn't hesitate to tell people in my field a thing or two about social ethics or philosophy as it pertains to public policies? Or does this seem unfair to you?
Third, your assertion that displaced workers will find similar work at a similar wage is not only empirically disproven, but it is undermined by your own earlier reasoning. If low-wage jobs are moving overseas, then there is more competition for those that remain, driving down wages. If textile operations at $8.50 an hour are all I have known for 25 years, I may be able to get a new job at Burger King for $5.50, but I'll be lucky if I can do better despite a good-faith effort on my part.
Finally, you ignore my acknowledgement of the valid point you do make. Here's one place where you apparently infer too much. I am not implying that because typical textile workers loose in the global economy, that we should therefore stop trading freely. I am implying that there are bona fide losers as well as winners here, and that "we" as a nation have an obligation (indeed, a self-interested, utilitarian obligation, I would argue,) to take this matter seriously in adjusting our other social and economic policies. I have some ideas about what we should do here--another matter considered in my diss that's probably not appropriate to go into here. But whether I'm right or not, I'm very sure that there are intelligent options aside from (a) trying to protect their industries by setting up a fortress America (an enterprise that I agree is doomed to failure, BTW) and (b) effectively saying, go try to find a burger-flipping or janitorial job, without health insurance or a living wage, and we wish you luck raising your family.
"The "transition problem" that you misinterpret is whether we allow uncompetitive industries to die and not suck up a generation of future workers into dead-end industries with no real hope and no real prospects. Or whether we allow the beauty of markets to operate, and let them pursue growth industries on their own accord, unhampered by the misallocation of capital and labor caused by government subsidies, tariffs, and the like."
Again, you assume I want to prop up these industries. On the contrary.
"As for your reading list, I see it is decidedly unbalanced. What about Milton Freidman's Free to Choose, Larry Kudlow's American Abundance, any work by the Austrians, and PJ O'Rourke's Eat the Rich and Parliament of Whores? The last is, of course, required reading for anyone in your field. Maybe then you can comprehend how incredibly wrong-headed gadflies like Greider and Reich really are."
Where did I claim that this was my "reading list," much less a balanced one? I mentioned two books that I thought Z would find interesting that address his concerns. Save the last two, the works you site are defenses of conservative economic theory (though I would hardly rank Larry Kudlow up their with Milton Freidman.) And IMHO, for "balance" against these fellas, one would need to far to the left of people like McKloskey and Greider anyway. (John Roemer is a good bet among contemporary thinkers. Incidently, like Amartya Sen, he is a well respected philosopher AND economist.)
If anyone wants my "reading list" on these or other matters philosophical or policy related, I'd be happy to try and oblige. But you are too quick to place me into an ideological pigeon-hole.
Your last remark here seems a little gratuitous. I would welcome your specific objections to my or their observations, though perhaps a different SI thread would be more appropriate. In particular, I would enjoy hearing your answers to the arguments contained in the McKloskey book, if you've read it. But as you suggested in an earlier post to Z, we all deserve better than borderline ad-hominum attacks.
In that spirit, I hope this hasn't seemed unfair. I would welcome your and others's remarks. (To the thread, I also promise I'll stop soon! I would like to get to talking about MXTR, since I'm long as of 14+ and thinking of getting longer.) :)
Regards,
Dave |
