In which tank?
It’s very interesting that so many Republicans have decided to supprt Obama. Colin Powell; a number of talking heads including Peggy Noonan; a lot of conservative newspapers. Fox News is in a constant state of worked-up fury at the putative fact that the media are all in the tank (as they like to say) for Obama. Well maybe they are, but if they are, I’m pretty sure that is not purely for party-political reasons. In fact it’s pretty obvious that it’s not just for party-political reasons. It has an enormous amount to do with plain competence, and especially with respect for competence. We know what the other thing is like, and Katrina is the one-word sign for that. It is firing all the experts and replacing them with political hacks and then being caught with your head up your ass when a major American city fills with dirty water like a blocked toilet. It is having an emergency management agency that can’t even get water to flood victims in almost a week of horror. It turns out that even some Republicans find that idea too disgusting to bear. I am glad to know this; I have been wondering for years how prosperous ambitious meritocratic Republicans could stand the cult of ignorance and Just Plain Folksism that enabled Bush II to win two elections.
If McCain does lose [mutters rapid prayer, or curse], it appears the choice of Palin will have been a big part of the reason. I thought and said at the time that it showed he had 1. appalling judgment and 2. a ruthless lack of responsibility, but I had little hope that many Republicans would (openly) agree with that view. I’m very pleased to be wrong.
;-)
Enjoy your election. I suspect its more like the liberal faction they call RINOs don’t wish to associate with the expected loss by ‘their’ candidate.
The key is, who calls them “RINOs.” The ultra-right theocratic wing of the Republican Party calls anyone a Republican-In-Name-Only if they don’t toe (and tow) the party line on every push-button religious right issue like abortion and gay marriage and stem cells (read “abortion II”) and abstinence only teen pregnancy education and whatever. Mostly, though, so-called RINOs they call themselves “conservatives” – or sometimes “thoughtful conservatives” or “intellectual conservatives” in contrast to the ugly anti-intellectual, pro-ignorance wing of the party.
I still think self-styled “conservatives” are wrong-headed about most political and social issues, but they are the loyal opposition. They still understand and appreciate and wish to advance the liberal enlightenment project, even if they are (in my opinion) too eager to limit its scope both in how many sacred cows it puts to the chopping block and in how evenly its benefits are to be fairly shared. Now that the theocratic, anti-intellectual, faith-always-trumps-reason, occasionally racist “base” that the G.O.P. political operatives were so willing to exploit for so long have actually taken over the party, the other Republicans – those who have actually read and support the Constitution – have no party to call their own.
And, interestingly, the choice of the ultra-right’s own golden girl for VP has driven them to publicly endorse Obama in ever-growing numbers. Dozens of very influential political figures from the Reagen and both Bush White Houses have publicly endorsed Obama since Palin was added to the ticket. McCain talks a lot about his skill and experience reaching across the aisle (yet he keeps mentioning Joe Lieberman by name, which doesn’t indicate a whole lot of reach), but he has utterly failed to unite even his own party for one election.
I hate to use net-speak, but I have no words for his campaign that convey its impact better than…
EPIC FAIL!
How about Daily Show-speak?
CLUSTER-FUCK!
What distresses me about all this is that it might have driven OB to prayer. Now that’s FUBAR!
If (when?) Obama wins, the Republican Party is going to have to do something it’s been putting off for 10 years, actually start thinking about America. Which can only be a good thing.
I don’t see Powell and the other “RINOs” as being pro-Obama per se. I think they’re basically the people who have been marginalized within their own party for the past 10 years and now they’re fighting back. Good for them, although I wish they’d done so earlier.
I can’t imagine voting for McCain (not that I have a vote) and the fact of a black man in the White House would in itself be tremendously exciting, so I appreciate the Obama enthusiasm, but I am surprised that there isn’t a little bit more reserve on the secular left for a man who has made so much of his religion and self-perceived divine sanction. When these statements were broadcast on the Schama programme the other day I was really shocked and amazed that they didn’t get more media coverage in the UK. When Bush made much milder (to my ear) statements of religious belief he was jumped on pretty hard by leftish commentators.
That would be because GWB is a very bad example of how religious thinking produces stupidity. Or a very good example if you prefer. Obama’s religiosity clearly has not made him stupid. Therefore it can be tolerated. And after all, what choice is there? Otherwise one would have to be so militantly secularist that Gandhi and Martin Luther King would have to be placed beyond the pale.
Dave, you say, referring to candidates expression of religious belief:
I don’t see the point. Why does religion have to come into it at all. Canada had a General Election recently, and I don’t remember one candidate making religious belief a matter of public record. Indeed, if candidates must do this in order to be elected, then the wall of separation between church and state is severely threatened. It should be built higher. This doesn’t mean that one needs to be a militant secularist (whatever that means). It just means that one respects public space as secular, as a place where religious disputes have no place, and where every claim must be supported by reasons. Gandhi and Martin Luther King would still have a place, because the causes that they supported could be supported by non-sectarian reasons. Their being religious leaders was (and would still be), therefore, of no consequence.
The vital point, in any election, I should have thought, is the ability to think clearly and to be able to give good reasons for the platform of policies and values being presented to voters. Whether they are or are not supported by religious reasons is completely irrelevant, or should be.
“That would be because GWB is a very bad example of how religious thinking produces stupidity. “
I don’t see that. Is there anything GWB did or is doing that we imagine he wouldn’t do or have done if he was an atheist? Nonethelsss, public professions of faith disturb me, whether from Bush or Obama.
Well. . . if he were an atheist W would probably not have claimed that God told him he was meant to be president. Also, hmm, that thing about not giving much of a shit about starting a war (not sure if God told him to do it or not) because, whoopee, it just brings us closer to end times. Good triumphs over Evil (even though it’s irrelevant b/c we are all dead and gone).
An atheist would have had to pull some other lame reasons out of his butt to justify what he wanted to do in the first place.
So he might have acted the same but we would not have been subjected to his idiotic Biblical excuses.
John Meredith: There are far more important reasons to hold skeptical views about Senator Change. AZs my secularism/atheism now extends to the religion of “patriotism” as well, I am bothered by Obama’s continued espousal of exceptionalist viewpoints-which involve increased military spending and further wars. I am also bothered by the torrents of cash contributed by the Masters of the Universe who run our casino economy.
Does this mean I would vote for McCain? No. The man is an uneducated chameleon who is irresponsible and full of rage and a sense of entitlement. It’s just that I expect Obama to be more of the same-and that means thousands will die (given that the Democratic Party has always been the party of self rightous war)
“the Democratic Party has always been the party of self righteous war”
WTF does that even mean? Perhaps you think that stopping the genocide in the former Yugoslavia was a bad thing? And on the other end of it, which part of Obama taking a principled stand AGAINST going into the Iraq clusterfuck did you miss? Your “a pox on both their houses” and “the other guy is just as bad” rhetoric seems remarkably untainted by evidence and reason, at least as stated above. Perhaps you have reasons, but I don’t see them.
“Now that’s FUBAR!” Oder Furchtbar?
damn awful, parlously redoubtable, yeah, whatever.
Re: Pujianto Cahyo Widianto – Indonesia.
See: B&W news – for the man’s latest marriage to an 11 year old girl
“I’m not just doing what I like, it’s
based in religion. It’s in accordance with the prophet’s teaching. You can marry a 7 year old if you like, etc…”
He is definitely doing what he likes –
and what most of the western world despises – trying to justify paedophilia within the realms of religion.
“He also intends to marry two other girls, aged 9 and 7.
And he has all the support of his fellow-men who do not see think there is anything wrong with paedophilia.
“…[S]yech Puji believes his actions have a legitimate basis in Islam, considering that the prophet Muhammad married the 7 year old Aisha”
Sorry, OB, for barging in on another topic – but I was absolutely, nauseated, and umbrageous on reading this slimy, vile, and wretched article in B&W News.
Well, G…I usually agree with you, but.
Is it our (Anerican) role to swoop around the world righting all wrongs (with borrowed Chinese money to boot?) Why are we not in Darfur right now? Why not in Burma? Why not Somalia (oops…our proxy allies, the Ethiopians (which we are providing weapons and air support to) are actually CAUSING much of this humanitarian disaster). Where does it stop? What do we do about the blowback, because remember that our interference in Afghanistan helped create the Taliban and, some argue, Al Qaeda? Are you ready to die to defend the brave “democratic” Georgians? Why not? War is always the answer, according to our brave Democratic Party.
Second: The Yugoslavian situation was a lot more complicated than you imply-and both sides were guilty of crimes *(even the militarily feeble Muslims). This was a Civil War which actually had American and West European meddling before the beginning of the war. Kosovo-certainly a tragedy. But, the KLA are closer to the Contras (or the Mafia) then they are the FOunding Fathers, and the relatively few Serbian villages in Kosovo have been ruthlessly cleansed as well. That’s not to speak about the wonders of the Albanian-sponsored drug running and rumored slave trade. Also not to forget that
Remember-the Iraq War was sold at various times as a humanitarian adventure to save the Iraqi people from our (long time ally and recipient of weapons) Sadaam. Reaching back a little further, the Phillipines, where we killed 200,000 people, was sold as a campaign to civillize and Christianize the wogs.
I guess I am not too presuaded by protestations of American virtue-we’ve killed as many as we save.
I want a little more humility in our foreign policy. I fear Obama-and the Democratic Wing of the ruling consensus-has not yet learned this.
“War is always the answer, according to our brave Democratic Party.”
Oh, please.
So…I exagerate a little in response to the fervent expressions of belief from Democratic Party faithful?
Looking back through history, believing that said party is a party of “peace” makes as much sense as belief in Allah. :) You would deny that we are a particularly bloody and war-prone people?
What Democratic Party faithful? Do you see any here? I don’t! What I am, and what I gather others are, is impressed by Obama, not by the Democratic Party. One reason I am so impressed is that I’m so sick of the mediocre candidates turned up by the DP, which I think must be partly because the DP is so mediocre and so beholden to the corporations who (usually) pay for its campaigns.
One thing that Obama has already done is show that – with a good enough candidate – it is possible to raise a ton of money from individuals, which could inaugurate a de-corruption process, which could make the DP more attractive to really inspiring candidates.
Who here has said that the DP is a party of peace? I haven’t said that, and I don’t think anyone else has either. And saying ‘War is always the answer, according to our brave Democratic Party’ isn’t ‘exaggerat[ing] a little,’ it’s an absurdity.
A Northern Irish barrister who studied at Harvard College in America, stated on RTE 1, this morning, that she sat beside Obama in class – and that even then during that time he made a deep impression on everyone in the class when he spoke. He had certain air about him – and was very cool and confident – just the same way he is today.
I’m not saying YOU personally have said that, OB. Just that this is the idea that’s going around. Obama is fine, I guess. Given who he has surrounded himself with, who is feeding money to him, and his record, forgive if I just don’t get very excited by him.
It sounds like Brian is acknowledging that Obama is the better choice, but needs to get in a few swipes at “that other party” just to make it a little easier to swallow.
That is a problem with our two party system. People get their identity so wrapped around the axle of their own bandwagon that it feels like disloyalty to pick the better candidate when that candidate isn’t “one of us”.
No, Grendel. I never identified with the Republican Party. A horror all the way back to maybe Eisenhower, who was honorable, at the very least.
I am suspicious of concentrated power and both parties are fully in favor of said concentrated power. I am a feeble anarchist, I guess…(Not really, but…) I don’t like having a trillion dollar military (and a seven trillion dollar national debt, most of which was charged up by the fiscally “conservative” Republicans). I wish we had listened to our founding fathers and didn’t try to rule the world for the benefit of a few at the top (as well as enabling Americans to guzzle something like 20% of the world’s resources).
If I absolutely had to pick a utopian ideology that I see no hope of attaining or even working if it was possible, it might be the mild mannered Mutualism of Mr. Carter a mutualism blogspot. NOT the corporatist drivel libertarianism of the standard war apologists.
Yes, Obama is better. He is not embarrasing. But he represents powers and ideas that I find appalling. His wholesale adoption of the War on Terror idea is scary and stupid. Increasing the size of the military is stupid. Staying in Iraq and increasing our role in Afghanistan will be a disaster-because it uis all on borrowed money.
Your position is not entirely unreasonable, BrianM – but it required that you stop the ridiculous hyperbole and actually state some reasons. Thank you for doing so.
I think your “suspicion” of concentrated power borders on paranoia about it: In the era of large nation states, concentrated power is a fact, no more worth whinging about than gravity. The goal is to figure out how to limit the abuses of concentrated power, and to ensure that advances the collective welfare instead of just the welfare of those who already have sociopolitical and economic dominance. Barack Obama actually seems to see this, at least sometimes, and has some good ideas about how to make things better – such as his calls for dramatically increased openness in government, where every expenditure – indeed, every proposed expenditure – is made publicly available and searchable on the internet.
from http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Opinion/Columnists/Where_McCain_scores_over_Obama/articleshow/3641429.cms, via Greg Mankiw’s website http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/
“A nasty global recession has begun. Nouriel Roubini of New York University predicts we will suffer the worst economic downswing since the Great Depression. So, pressures will mount for protectionist measures and beggar-thy-neighbour policies in the US, hurting countries like India. Apart from erecting import barriers and subsidising dumped exports, US politicians will seek to curb the outsourcing of services to India. Visa curbs will slow the movement of skilled workers and their dollar remittances back to India.
McCain is one of the few American politicians in either party with the courage and conviction to stand up to protectionist populism. By contrast, Obama embodies protectionism…Obama says the North American Free Trade agreement is a bad one, and must be renegotiated. He has opposed the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement on the bogus ground that Colombia is not protecting its trade union leaders from the drug mafia. In fact, such assassinations have fallen steadily from 205 in 2001 to just 25 last year. Obama is cynically twisting facts to woo the most protectionist US trade unions..”
And so on. The last thing the world or the US needs is a protectionist US government.
It certainly would be nice if we had a left party in the US, rather than a center-right and far-right party.
dzd, I don’t know where you’re from but the days that left parties were anything else than center-right has been a long while in Europe.
Well, if is of any consolation to you at all, you are very welcome to a traditional ‘centre-left’ party that I know very well.
Be very careful, though, of these soldiers of destiny, as they will come with a gargantuan poster warning sign, and those belonging to you may just find themselves in the pouring rain, roaring their heads off “lay off our medical cards” instead of being cosied up to a nice cup of tea in their respective day care centres.
Paul Power: Yes, I agree completely. There is no reason whatsoever to doubt that free trade solves any and all economic problems, much like the free market does…[/sarcasm]
*sigh*
Meanwhile, those of us who never lived in Alan Greenspan’s faith-based Randian fantasy world are capable of recognizing that there are miles and miles and miles of difference between free trade/free market absolutism and populist protectionism. Questioning the first does not mean advocating the second – and there were real economic problems caused by NAFTA, for the other partners in the agreement as well as the U.S. Take, for example, Mexican farmers.
No, seriously. Take them. Please. Mexican cities have no more room for them, since they lost their livelihoods to an ugly combination of NAFTA and U.S. farming subsidies. Huge numbers of Mexican citizens can’t afford corn tortillas anymore, yet Mexican farmers were driven out of business a few years ago because they couldn’t get enough money for their corn. Hallelujah, NAFTA!
What, you say? The blame falls on U.S. agricultural policy rather than NAFTA? Sorry, bub: NAFTA is a Free Trade Agreement – which is where that “FTA” comes from. If a free trade agreement doesn’t specify what constitutes “free” with sufficient detail to limit or control or otherwise compensate for government subsidies which directly and massively effect trade, then… maybe the agreement isn’t so much “free” at all, and maybe it needs to be reexamined and renegotiated?
But that’s crazy talk! After all, it says “Free Trade” in the title, and free trade is good!
Sometimes I get the impression that laissez-faire economics is more faith-based than even the most dogmatic traditional religion… Free trade loves me, this I know/’Cuz Milton Friedman tells me so.
G:
wonderful invective, lousy argument.
Is Paul Krugman left-wing enough for you?
http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/negot.html
Your ignorance of economics is total.
I find the level of “debate” at this site on issues relating to the US elections depressing and lacking in the good qualities found in discussions on other topics.
I commend to everyone the wise words of Washington as he left office:
“One of the expedients of party to acquire influence…is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other[s]. You cannot shield yourselves too much against the jealousies and heartburnings which spring from these misrepresentations; they tend to render alien to each other those who ought to be bound together by fraternal affection.”
“They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party … to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by the common counsels and modified by mutual interests.”
Paul, God knows why G. prefers to be so long about it but his basic point was a simple one:
“there are miles and miles between free market absolutism and populist protectionism”
Regardless of what comes before in your discussion, & what links you bombard us with, you don’t answer his point & – in so doing – are the only one responsible for bringing down the level of debate.
Saying things against something that is having “free trade” in its acronym does not mean you are against free trade. To be an advocate of a free market doesn’t mean that states should trade with some others based on no regulation at all.
Take the Mexicans, indeed ;-)
And in this spirit, I offer this observation:
My point that the “last thing the world or the US needs is a protectionist US government” refers to the present. No matter what the faults of free trade are, introducing trade barriers now will make the crisis much worse. That’s a narrower point than the one G argued against.
My second point is that attitudes to free trade among economists do not fall on a simple left-right divide. The issue therefore should be discussed on its merits alone, not as part of partisan squabbling.
Paul,
OK but, if you want to discuss this on merit: depends on which trade barriers you talk of. There’s the barrier of an enormous amount of US subsidies & that of shielding some US industries from a chaotic & coincidental crash that will mostly impact the rest of the world. I take it McCain wants to increase aid to capital & decrease protection of the US workers – more protectionist than vice versa in my book.
Indeed, but then it is good to realize that many economists also agree that a McCain-Reagan style government is only in name for free trade – insofar as it patriotically serves to further the US specific interest.
I’m talking about new trade barriers of the old-fashioned kind, calls for which will increase in the next few years and which Obama will, given his rhetoric and voting record, be badly placed to resist.
Paul – I lack the crystal ball you seem to have but you said it was about merit and about the present.
Now you come with old-fashioned kinds & about rhetoric. There won’t be the free trade that is really free without there being international instituations which can regulate it (& therefore without an essential giving away of sovereignty to those instititutions) – any free market without regulation at the level of that market is merely propaganda, from those countries that stand to gain from it. I don’t think you can make the case where McCain would be more willing than Obama in granting international free trade in a serious way, in fact I believe McCain opposes regulation of fiscal paradise – probably because it would make the rich less rich, & therefore purportedly less able to show there magnanimity in doing the charitable thing letting their rich lives trickle down like honey on all of them who live in trailer parks.
Forgive me the hyperbole at the end – & try to stick to the beginning ;-)
Every one commenting on what they want the outcome of the US elections to be is gazing into their own crystal ball. I’ll rely on Obama to continue with his current approach in the future, unless someone has a good reason to question this.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot-Hawley_Tariff_Act for the sort of old-fashioned protectionism I am talking about.
Abraham Lincoln once commented on the economic policies of the two American political traditions by comparing them to two men in a fight who swap coats without noticing. This happened in the 19th century about taxes. At first the Democratic tradition opposed them and the Republican tradition supported them . Later they swapped viewpoints. (The Republicans wanted to give commercial loans to businesses while the Democrats opposed this. Later the US economy developed to the point that private capital was available enough to support business so the Republicans withdrew their support. Democrats came to find other uses for taxes). Because of this sort of phenomenon I try to take a non-theological approach to economic policy.
Paul, that’s all fine & dandy & quite interesting lecturing material but is it possible to look to the future and stick to the merits of the case – and answer me who of these two is inclined to get international free trade backed up by international regulatory frames?
I don’t know, but it’s irrelevant.
We are faced with an enormous set of economic problems. Protectionism will make them far worse. Obama is very protectionist in his attitudes and voting record. We can’t ignore this and only think about any good things he’d do to ameliorate the bad effects of free trade. We have to judge his economics in toto. I do not see him doing enough good to outweigh the disasters protectionism would bring, for the US and the rest of the world.
So, your message is basically partisan & the merit/future thing does not come into it.
Glad to have that straight.
I have work to do today, and I think JoB has more than sufficiently fisked Paul Power’s ideologically-driven b.s. in any case. I could add to that, but I’ll have to let a quick “Yeah, what he said!” suffice. Thanks, JoB!
With respect, Eric, Canada does have something called the Christian Heritage Party, which certainly seeks (in my none too humble opinion) to impose theocracy on us. Fortunately (Thank God?!), they don’t win seats. Hear is how they describe themselves on their website:
‘The CHP is Canada’s only pro-Life, pro-family federal political party, and the only federal party that endorses the principles of the Preamble to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in the Canadian Constitution, which says:
“Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law…” ‘
For the record:
I am Irish, not American.
I think Nixon should have died in jail. I think Reagan should have been impeached for Iran-Contra and died in jail. I think Oliver North should die in jail. I think Ken Starr should have gone to jail for perjury to the US Supreme Court. I would have voted for Al Gore. I think the last great US president was Harry Truman.
I think economics is a sort of scientific enterprise in which ideas should be judged on their merits and not by an ideological filter (as G et al seem to think). This applies to everything in economics.
I think G has lost control of himself in a frenzy of partisan stupidity. That’s why he does not tackle my point about the perils of protectionism in the current situation or that leftist economists like Krugman support free trade.
Job wrote:
“So, your message is basically partisan ..”
Assuming for the sake of argument that this is true, why would you have a problem with it? There’s been a great deal of partisan pro-Obama anti-Republican stuff here and its being partisan does not seem to have upset you. If you were being impartial you would have objected to it.
I beg your pardon, Paul, you were the one shouting ‘partisan’, not I. If it is that you find objectionable you’re not allowed to sink into it yourself. I have no issues with partisanship, I believe the essence of this debate is to take sides based on arguments (and yes, I have no issue in admitting I’d vote Obama if I’d be eligible to vote for the reasons I set out above) – if I would have felt that the support in here for Obama would be emotional, or otherwise irrational I’d have said it but the fact is that imho it wasn’t – and you’d do well to point it out w/o merely saying you said so.
Your biographical details are besides the point, I’m not interested in Paul but in the argument you seemed to be, for a moment, pursueing. Both G and I offered something of an argument that your comic-book style accusation of a protectionism/free trade divide wasn’t accurate. Address those arguments iso restating that Obama is protectionist & McCain is not and therefore support for Obama is bad-bad so …
All yours G., hope you’re not stressed out from work ;-)
If you do not have a problem with partisanship whu mention it in the first place ?
My original point was :
a) Obama is protectionist by rhetoric and voting record; he will push new protectionist measures
b) New protectionist measures will be a disaster in the current circumstances.
I didn’t offer any “comic book” argument at all.
If you think b) wrong can you kindly tell us how the resulting trade wars will not wreck the economy of the US (which is borrowing huge amounts of money from other countries ) and the rest of the world.
So we’re not allowed to think a. wrong & not even to suggest McCain has worse ideas on the matter?
Well, if I make an argument with quite a few premises – & then argue that its conclusion must stand, if a selected 1 of them stands: that qualifies as some real-life comic book argument.
Shouting “bipartisan” is done, in most cases, to defend a partisan proposal – a bit like shouting “patriotism”, “for a better world”, “protectionism”. It’s a very wooly rhetoric that attaches an unanalyzed label to 2 premises to move a conclusion that was pre-established.
X does not want to better the world
Bettering the world is good
X is up to no good
Batman call Robin!
Sorry, Job, I was characterising what I thought the argument against me is.
It is perfectly possible to think that a) is wrong. However I think the evidence is against it. Obama even attacked Hillary Clinton on this point, causing her to come out against NAFTA for example.
You can reasonably say that Obama as president will not act in a protectionist way but that questions his integrity.
I have to point out that G’s response was to attack me on b) not a) and that I have being reacting to that ever since. It’s all very well for G to say that “there are miles and miles between free market absolutism and populist protectionism” but you have to read a lot into what I wrote to conclude that I do not know the difference. I agree with Krugman that the solutions to the problems of free trade are to deal with the fall out internally, not to put up protectionist barriers.
Meandering along – I read what G wrote & I don’t see what you see in it. It’s not true that being against NAFTA in & of itself means being against trade as upholding that would mean that for you it suffices to label anything as ‘free trade’ for it to be free trade. He got the Nobel prize for being nuanced, the idea of serious free trade is not what McCain says it is – that’s why I did a little bit of an effort to clarify the entailments of international free trade (to wit international regulation not dominated by the interest of some states, to wit the US). You are yet to react to the only substantive point in all of this.
I’m quite sure you have high standards of reasoning but in this case you have not met them, & you seem interested to push forward to the conclision Oba-bad rather than to meet the merits of free trade & what it requires.
The 80’s & 90’s version of free trade, it was a travesty: you cannot say that a country without infrastructure could achieve competitive conditions without some protection of its development and this is exactly what the Republican so called free trade is about. Trade only can be free if competitors face a same access to the market, quod non so far, otherwise the only competition is that of lowering labour conditions.
We do not want competition between the states but between the suppliers, I’ve never read Krugman but if he disagrees that’s too bad for him.
JoB:
I’ve been attacking Obama, not defending McCain.
I’ve been discussing the effects of new protectionist measures on the economies of the world. I have no interest in discussing the merits of free trade in some sort of vacuum. The topic to which these comments are all linked was about the US election and it is in that context that my comments were made.
Here’s a good Krugman article on free trade, http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/negot.html.
“If economists ruled the world, there would be no need for a World Trade Organization. The economist’s case for free trade is essentially a unilateral case – that is, it says that a country serves its own interests by pursuing free trade regardless of what other countries may do. Or as Frederic Bastiat put it, it makes no more sense to be protectionist because other countries have tariffs than it would to block up our harbors because other countries have rocky coasts. So if our theories really held sway, there would be no need for trade treaties: global free trade would emerge spontaneously from the unrestricted pursuit of national interest.”
Well, if this is not out of context, I disagree with Krugman. It would put DR Congo in a perennial state of misery – its citizens forever unable to compete fairly with citizens of states that in a coincidental way have achieved a far better infrastructure. By the way, ‘if economists ruled the world’, implies a world regulation – whether it is named WTO or UN or whatever, it isn’t the US regulation (for all I know, Krugman is here opposing the US subsidies as were traditionally defended by Republicans, whether in form of tax breaks, direct, or otherwise).
Yes, you have been attacking Obama but you have not made your case. He hasn’t come out for protectionism – he merely came out for regulation of some sort – maybe the sort economists like Krugman would come out for – i.e. avoiding the unfair competition based on the labour conditions of laissez faire.
1) I don’t think you are going to let me persuade you of the merits of free trade for very poor countries, so I am not going to bother.
2) The “economists rule the world” comment is to be taken as the usual statement of expert’s exasperation at non-experts’ inability to understand/act on their advice.
3)
Obama has voted for tariffs on Chinese goods, so he has indeed come out for new protectionist measures. He did so in 2005 (see my quote from the Indnian newspaper article above)
See also http://obama.senate.gov/news/080620-us_trade_panel/ for an update.
Paul,
– I’m convinced of benefits of a free trade for developing countries, let’s see what you invent to say I don’t, I am 100% for dropping of farm subsidies in US & Europe & using the money on a global social security/infrastructure investment
– It’s a counterfactual, you know, it is not as straightforward as that, it at least implies global free trade is to be globally regulated
– only in your comic-book world is any tariff an attack on free trade, market functioning can’t be guaranteed if the access to the market is not equal, the case for tariffs can be a case of free trade with a fair & open market
In fact, if economists ruled the world (I’m sure he meant it like that) there would not be uneven access to markets, because of varying costs of social and fiscal and ecological state pressures, and aids; hence no need for bargaining institution like the WTO — quod non.
The reason that economists do not rule the world is because they seem unable to be principled about their choices; they want to have their free trade and eat it too (by disregarding what Smith already identified: no free market w/o fair access to that market for all.
You are not for free trade because you do not seem to be able to take it as a serious topic of discussion.
You are misreading Krugman’s comment about economists reading the world. In fact you misread quite often, making debating with you confusing and unpleasant.
I repeatedly referred to NEW protectionist measures. These are ipso facto attacks on free trade.
As wiki puts it “Free trade is a system in which the trade of goods and services between or within countries flows unhindered by government-imposed restrictions. Such government interventions generally increase costs of goods and services to both consumers and producers. Interventions include taxes and tariffs, non-tariff barriers, such as regulatory legislation and quotas, and even inter-government managed trade agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) (contrary to their formal titles.) Free trade opposes all such interventions. Trade liberalization entails reductions to these trade barriers in an effort for relatively unimpeded transactions.”
I am not going to debate free trade with someone who has his own private definition of it. It won’t be the only private definition he has and that renders communication impossible.
Paul, the last, indeed it gets tiring, G’s point above was that: opposing the NAFTA isn’t (in your words) ipso facto opposing free trade: now you quote the fact you contended earlier!
By the way, I just pointed out that it was a counterfactual — not even Nobel prize winners get to defeat the powers of the counterfactual!
JoB:
I claimed Obama was in favour of new protectionist measures. I quoted an article from an Indian newspaper giving a list of his actions in this regard. His voting for tariffs on China shows that his opposition to NAFTA is pro-protectionism, not pro-free trade. NAFTA is indeed not a perfect example of free trade but it is a lot freer than the situation that was in effect before. NAFTA eliminated the majority of tariffs on products traded among the United States, Canada and Mexico, and gradually phased out other tariffs over a 15-year period.
If you read the Wiki article on NAFTA, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement, you will read things like “Securing US congressional approval for NAFTA would have been impossible without addressing public concerns about NAFTA’s environmental impact”. Now read Krugman’s essay I linked to above . You will see there that such arguments are always from the anti-free trade side. The same applies for arguments from business regarding subsidies and for arguments about employment rights from unions.
I conclude that Obama is pro-protectionism.
I’m going to add commnet with an interesting quote to the post titles “Mr Greenspan finds a flaw”. It’s about regulation. I considered putting it here since G effectively responded here to what I wrote over there but for someone stumbling onto the site the quote reads better over there.
Financial & Investment Dictionary: Protectionism
“Practice of protecting domestic goods and service industries from foreign competition with tariff and non-tariff barriers. Protectionism causes higher prices for consumers because domestic producers are not exposed to foreign competition, and can therefore keep prices high. But domestic exporters also may suffer, because foreign countries tend to retaliate against protectionism with tariffs and barriers of their own. Many economists say that the Depression of the 1930s was precipitated by the protectionist trade barriers erected by the United States under the Smoot-Hawley Act, which led to retaliation by many countries throughout the world. In more recent years, many protectionist trade barriers have fallen through the passage of GATT, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which went into effect in 1995, and the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO).”