>he's a mercantilist just because unregulated free trade destroyed the global economy for a decade

The tariff didn't exacerbate unemployment, FDR's policies did

International tariffs did though.
As they lost foreign markets.

Adam Smith did though

>from their freedom of choice in goods
those goods should be made by them. Not taken out on loans to foreign markets. Which is what is happening. I mean, have you seen the defecit? Do you think that nothing bad will happen if this idiocy continues where all we do is flip burgers and use degrees?

We’ll never face the repercussions for our deficit, so long as we’re the military for a large portion of the world

It’s more important to ensure all citizens have their needs met, than making sure we’re paying our bills

So when we default, nobody will come calling for it? People have already starved US citizens for this kind of blunderbussing with contra. So if you're trying to protect US citizens you shouldn't start renegging on debts.

Protectionism should only be used to hurt your enemies' industrial capacity.

>Like an invisible hand, employers will always bend towards supporting the people of their home country with employment, even if it costs employers more money to do so.
Ahahah, no. But it frees up workers to take up other jobs and keeps the production costs low. They may lack the resources to pursue these other job openings, which is why I stand for the state's role in access education, skills training, social safety nets to counter temporary unemployment, and macroeconomic strategies meant to promote skills-matching and increased standards of living for everyone.

You know that deficit spending only works as long as you get people to loan you money, right? Why would they loan you money if they don't expect you to pay.

I don't want budget consolidation because I think taking loans and deficit spending are bad, but because I think those can be part of good strategies - but we can't use them irresponsible, otherwise they won't be options to us anymore.

>But it frees up workers to take up other jobs
unemployment should not be an economic goal

It's not, but it promotes growth (less scarcity of goods and services) which enables raising living standards. There is untapped potential in countries with high-unemployment. Often these people lack the resources to take up skills that would not just allow them to bargain for the resources that would improve their own lives but to provide resources that would improve the lives of people around them, and this is why I believe in state intervetion in education and training.

I'm sure society could keep running with more people doing less or nothing, but it would be a far more stagnant society, that also wouldn't provide as much to the rest of humanity and the planet.

We don't care about products, we care about salaries.

You should care about both, because purchasing power is what matters. Money as no worth except as a means of exchange.

That's definitely not how it was here in the US.

Limits on crop production were meant to control the severely inflated, unprofitable grain market.

but trade patterns don't always follow comparative advantage irl. monetary price, usually a function of supply chain characteristics and labor efficiency tends to be more empirically significant. after all, prices are not indexed to their worth in terms of other goods in international trade markets

I don't believe Americans losing their jobs constitutes prosperity

Agricultural depression BEGAN in the 1920s and merged with the grest depression in the 1930s. The free market had failed to solve it for a decade at least because it was precisely the collective choices of farmers that were the crux of the problem.

Aggregate choices of individual farmers i mean*

The so called free market doesnt work. I absolutely guarantee you that anglo style capitalism will crash and burn in the coming years.

You don't see any problems in outsourcing all creation to the lowest bidder?

When you say the free market doesn't work, what do you mean?
https:/nytimes.com/2018/01/06/opinion/sunday/2017-progress-illiteracy-poverty.html
Free market has brought the most people out of poverty, reduced the global conflict rate, increased life spans, and brought all kinds of innovative products to the world, like smart phones, that allow you to instantly contact anyone in the world, access all of human knowledge in an easy to use interface, and also consume any piece of media, be it a book, movie TV show or song, all for free. A billion dollars worth of content in everyone's pocket

Socialism literally did the same. Life expectancy, literacy and general standard of living shot up in socialist countries. It still sucked though.

Problem with free market is exactly that its free. There is no invisible hand which magically solves problems such as low wages or shitty work conditions. These are things the gov has to make sure of, said gov however completely surrendered itself to big business since 40 years. The outcome is stagnating working class wages (realistically decreasing because of inflation), working poor and a never before seen disparity in wealth between the super rich and the poor. Not to mention, american infrastructure is third world tier and literally falling apart. Obviously im talking about the west here.

I think it does. 80% of the population was farmers. Now it's 2%. We are far better off because all those jobs got replaced by automation, advanced combines etc.
We are also far better off when other jobs get replaced by robots or are instead done more efficiently by other countries we can trade with.

>Socialism literally did the same.
So then why didn't a state invent the iPhone?

Mobile technology was developed by the US military complex not by the free market.

>US military complex
war makes technology don't preach your idols here

Is the iPhone just "mobile technology"?
No it's not. It's a series of parts and technology connected, where what is left out is as important as what is in, and no government was able to come up with said product. Military technology also ends up costing 60,000$ a unit instead of 600$. Apple and the companies that Apple own did come up with proprietary technology and innovation.

>Mobile technology was developed by the US military complex
Would this technology be developed if instead of the tax-payers paying for mobile technology, it was IBM?

>It's a series of parts and technology connected
All developed by the military industrial complex
>no government was able to come up with said product
That is not the job of the goverment but of companies who took almost 80 years to use the technology to come up with a shitty phone with a touchscreen
>Military technology also ends up costing 60,000$ a unit instead of 600$.
Geez user it is not like developing bleeding edge technology is expensive to finance,while commercializing a product is much much cheaper
>Apple and the companies that Apple own did come up with proprietary technology and innovation
Peanuts.I mean technology has been stagnant for a while.Blame regulations or the lack of investments from huge corporations in technology as they control all the market and just don't bother to innovate as long as they can have a revenue of billions of dollars

No government has ever stayed out of market affairs. Pre-Columbian America north of the Rio Grande is probably the closest you can come to a free market. That ended once the Imperialist countries of Europe gained control through force, not by providing better goods and services cheaper.

>Would this technology be developed if instead of the tax-payers paying for mobile technology, it was IBM?
What has IBM and Apple developed in all this years? They have both had huge revenues and market share and they have decided to just remodel their cash cow until it runs dry and find a new one.For every dollar invested on defence there is a return of almost 6 dollars for the economy.At the end technology is mostly developed by the goverment,while companies try to find a product to exploit.The exception is software which has seen constant progress due the enormous profits with very small investments,something that doesn't happen with hardware.
Companies like Tesla or SpaceX that tried to innovate are practically broke and if it wasn't for the FED they would be death as of right now

>Geez user it is not like developing bleeding edge technology is expensive to finance,while commercializing a product is much much cheaper
That's the point
Government can't commercialize products.
Compare soviet cars made by a centrally planned government, vs US cars made by private business.
And it wasn't just peanuts, the software of what you could do on an iPhone and the interface were all proprietary. Perhaps the technology was there, but if you made a phone out of that technology it would be hot garbage. Micro processors didn't exist until the 60s. You'd have a phone with a touch screen and no memory or processing power, no applications

user when did I say that I support socialism? I understand that private companies are necessary,but claiming that they develop technology is delusion at its finest.Most research is done by the goverment who shares their discoveries to certain companies or even everyone and then companies pop up.The state created the internet and with it a market appeared.
A market economy relies on a state that guarantees peace,infrastructure,technology and public order

Okay then I will make clear my position
I think that's the role of universities.
If you look at the biotech industry you will see this relationship more clearly. Corporations and students give universities, corporations as a means of ensuring they get the best talent, and students for the education services. These research universities release the research publicly which is disseminated and developed by companies

>I think that's the role of universities.
And universities get a fuck ton of grants,subsudies and aid from the state or federal goverment in different forms.In the end research would collapse and stagnate without a goverment heavily investing in it.

Do they need that funding from the government though? Or is it government funding crowding out private spending

Okay. Here's what I will say. You're right. Some people are more motivated by flag than by money when it comes R&D. So there's some value to government research, if no other reason than its a different type of carrot, and reminds us we are humans and not just Econs.
If research is something people value I would just propose paying them directly. I remember seeing waste books every year, of dumb government spending. I think there is more accountablility if people are spending the money directly, and you don't have the "spending someone else's money" problem

>We should let China make our military technology, if they can do it cheaper.
That sounds like a really, REALLY bad idea because then they can just sabotage it all and attack us.

>Do they need that funding from the government though?
Yes because when they don't get it, we get the absurdly high college tuitions we have now. College was $25 dollars a credit (yes, adjusted for inflation) in my father's time in texas due to all the money the state government was taking in from oil production.

youtu.be/-lt8lzLhVJo
I think the government is interfering in a lot of ways with schooling, as the government loan guarantees mean they could charge as much as they want. I will look into alternate countries who have found ways to bring down the cost of schooling while also contributing research, but I don't really know enough about that topic. What do the Brits do?

Most major countries just make tuition free as long as it's a field that's actually useful to society.

are those the ones that are begging to leave the EU or the ones conquering iraq?

No user, in fact most of the world actually has free college in some form. We're one of the few industrialized countries that don't.

you are naiive if you think it's free

viewsoftheworld.net/?p=4278
Just thought this was a neat map and relevant

It's free in that you aren't paying the college, the tuition is paid for by taxes. Obviously it's not FREE free, everyone knows that. But society sees the value in creating more mathematicians, historians, and scientists when it has the ability to do so.

>countries with a lot of money have the ability to fund research that in turn gives us more laureates
Uh, no shit?

Paying colleges all that money has caused giant waiting lines and lowered the rates of graduation considerably. Meanwhile the cost is paid in full to the economy. There are slightly more engineers sure. But the economy itself is in shambles and many are out of work to create this institution. Because of the short sighted view of mass producing degrees, especially as a replacement to earlier forms of economic stimulus.

>If we just let other countries have our jobs instead of being self sustainable at the cost of our CPI there will be a utopian peace on Earth because the guiding hand of our "invisible hand" has not moral hazards nor mistakes.
>Based on international loyalty goodwill between workers and employers, retraining the workers into specific sectors is an easy transition not to be interfered with
When will globalist shills stop defending billionaires from fucking them over?

I mean I'm not against a well learned populace but
>Scientists, mathematicians, and historians
Come on m8, let's not pretend people end up going to uni and doing nothing productive, ending up in jobs that they hate. Difference between Americans and Europeans in that regard is that one doesn't have a lot of private debt associated with it

>Come on m8, let's not pretend people end up going to uni and doing nothing productive
Yes and I think you should have to pay for those kinds of degrees. Women's studies don't do anything for society.

>If we just let other countries have our jobs instead of being self sustainable
You are implicitly saying that having a country that specializes on one thing, and then trades with other countries for other resources is bad, and instead you should have a country that is a generalist, and doesn't need to trade/is self sustaining. How much does this narrow down? Do you need to worry about free trade between states? Between cities? Between people? And if you get down to the level of people, and they are all generalized and are part time farmers to feed themselves, how many part time farmers do you need to cure cancer? How many do you need to land on mars?

>Difference between Americans and Europeans in that regard is that one doesn't have a lot of private debt associated with it
Yeah. They pay through it in taxes instead. So if you get a useful degree and Dave gets a woman's studies degree you have to pay for it.

>How much do you need to worry about free trade based on geographical parameters
Whatever sustains the well being of the political entity in question, for some people this is city level or state level localism depending on loyalty to said political entity.

Endlessly reducing the CPI while intentionally lowering the value of real wages through free trade agreements is beneficial only for corporations who stand to profit on the situation , what you're ignoring is the moral hazards of endless consumerism being placed on a society.

Ad infinitum economic growth is not sustainable or healthy or anyone, at some point in human history people are going to have to realize this

There are countries with tax-funded higher education with lower unemployment rates than the USA. Not only to they get more skilled professionals, these professionals at least won't be burdened with massive student debt even if they don't find work quickly, while professionals in the US can work for years and still not put together enough cash.

>our people can't be trusted to choose to buy
>we should raise prices on our products to pay higher salaries (stagnating purchasing power) or keep salaries low to keep prices low (stagnating purchasing power)
>instead of spending resources into putting people into better positions let's spend resources so that they can do the same menial labour they've always done
We don't need international goodwill or loyalty. The 3rd worlders will take the outsourced jobs because those offer better benefits than the jobs they would otherwise have. And you will take cheap goods and services because why would you pay more so a 1st worlder can do the same job that isn't even that good for him? If you paid that guy the difference between what would cost for stuff to be done in the 1st world and the cost for the same stuff to be done in the 3rd world, just so that guy could stay at home and do nothing, it would be better for the economy because the 3rd world would still be getting better, and the 1st world wouldn't have so much time wasted doing busy work instead of something more productive or enjoyable.

>lowering the value of real wages through free trade
Ahahah, this is what protectionists believe.

The real wages in the US are weakening because they simply haven't been raised enough over the years to keep up with the rate of inflation and ballooning debt. If you didn't have have a chinks to do assembly line work for you, you would have even shittier real wages, because your electronics would be all that more expensive.

>Ad infinitum economic growth is not sustainable or healthy or anyone, at some point in human history people are going to have to realize this
Okay. We are going to have to define our terms. Because this question goes back to core principles. if you define constant GDP growth as a bad measure, I would agree. As an example, if your wife and mine raised their own children there would be 0$ of GDP growth, but if instead they swapped and raised the opposite's children, and paid each other 50,000$, net 0$ paid, this would result in 100,000$ being added to GDP. Another short example would be new immigrants add to GDP, so 5 people splitting 100$ vs 20 people splitting 200$, the latter has twice the GDP but half the productivity.
But. That being said, I think constant economic growth is the goal. This can be achieved through making new products (like the smartphone), making products for less money (like how Korea made the price of TVs drop by more than half), making more efficient products (like energy efficient fridges) or just make more of product (think Tesla battery factory, If you're making a million batteries a day you only need to net 1$ of profit off of each battery)
With that being said, I think constant economic growth is intrinsically good, if not necessary

Global GDP per capita would be 17,300$.

That is how much each person would have if wealth was to be distributed equally by everyone in 2017.

Before you say "that doesn't look so bad" think about how much your house costs and look at median wealth per adult stats. The median slovak has a little over 18519$. In a full equality world each person would have a lower standard of living than the median slovak.

Do we have it too good already (with the current production capacity, we can't all live as good as a slovak) or do we just not care about the living standards of the rest of the world?

>Global GDP per capita would be 17,300$.
>That is how much each person would have if wealth was to be distributed equally by everyone in 2017.
This is retarded. You're looking at money as a pie, instead of a salary as the value of the work that a worker is putting out, and the scarcity of his skillset. It all goes back to supply and demand.
Also if you're living off a dollar a day you're not spending much on rent so landlords aren't going to be charging much, and so on, so you're not going to have commensurate perspective with that number to the amount you spend on food, rent and other expenses

Nice, it is good that you are concerned with purchasing power parity (how much you have relative to how much the stuff you need costs). In 2016, the GDP (PPP) per capita was less than 17000$. That is the real wealth a person would have if wealth was distributed equally AND you took into account that cost of living varies across time and space.

youtu.be/VXI_ADnp22c
Go watch this video. It talks about the down falls of what you're doing.

>he keeps using the USA as reference
Normal americans aren't becoming poorer because of international trade .

CPI and PCE only work for the USA. We are talking about international trade. PPP works for everyone except the poorest of the poor that can't afford anything that can't actually buy anything but what they need to survive.

>Just because Mexico can make everything cheaper, doesn't mean manufacturing jobs will flee the US. Like an invisible hand, employers will always bend towards supporting the people of their home country with employment, even if it costs employers more money to do so.
I can't tell if this is bait or not

Sure. It's the best metric we have. Not perfect but sure.
And I'll say that's a number that is a massive success, as the number of people living in abject poverty has declined precipitously
I don't get what your point is though. How much further we have to go? How little GDP African dirt farmers or Haitian mud cookie bakers bring to the table, and how much that brings down the global GDP?

My point is we still have a lot to grow if we care to raise the living standards for all of humanity up to at least the bottom of the top quartile to which the majority of the posters here belong.

Growth must be had, even if we need to be cautious of environmental sustainability and have some checks on economic inequality to safeguard social harmony.

You're more socialist than I would like, but I understand what you're saying, and it's well thought out and logically consistent

First time anybody on Veeky Forums called me socialist.

Thanks for the compliments, tho, I'm not entirely sure which posts are yours, but if they are the ones I think they are, they are pretty good.

This thread ain't bad on the whole, either.