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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (261033)	4/8/2008 7:41:52 PM
From: neolib	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I don't think economists give very balanced discussions. Just consider free trade. The standard economist's claim in support of free trade, is that foreign goods will be cheaper so the consumer gets more value for their $, hence a better standard of living. Sure, some jobs are lost, but those people then find new jobs, (say working as sales clerks selling the foreign goods) and life goes on. The foreign competition also helps reduce the price of domestic goods as well, although this impacts profits. Unfortunately, the devil is in the detail. Unless you can very carefully add up all the effects, you can't say what the net benefit is. Anyone can hand wave about consumers getting cheaper products, or lose of jobs, or lose of profits, but the total effect is not clear. So instead they fall back to looking at macro effects like GDP, employment, etc. But one can't make attribution. How do you know what the GDP would have done differently?