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Articles of total wisdom, part II
Should we restrict trade with China?
Posted by Tyler Cowen on May 16, 2007 at 01:42 AM in Economics | Permalink
Comments
So you have decided to outsource your thinking on trade policy and other economic policy issues to Brad DeLong. Poor choice. Although his long post has many good ideas, he concludes with his standard speech in favor of an egalitarian society. In the last sentence he says " and especially, let's cut the inequalities in our structure of pay..." I hope both DeLong and you support a cut in the salaries of all tenure professors in state-owned universities by an amount equal to any earnings they have from other academic and professional sources.
Posted by: Edgardo at May 16, 2007 7:13:57 AM
"I hope both DeLong and you support a cut in the salaries of all tenure professors in state-owned universities by an amount equal to any earnings they have from other academic and professional sources."
That'd actually be interesting. You could easily get negative wages, where people pay to be professors, especially because the title of professor at Prestige U. helps their consulting career.
Posted by: Keith at May 16, 2007 8:30:44 AM
"So you have decided to outsource your thinking on trade policy and other economic policy issues to Brad DeLong. Poor choice."
Agreed. Reality based, indeed. I guess they believe if they repeat that often enough it will be true.
Posted by: Tom at May 16, 2007 10:52:07 AM
Edgardo says: "So you have decided to outsource your thinking on trade policy and other economic policy issues to Brad DeLong.Poor choice "
I reccomend reading pieces properly before making sarky comments, or at the least well enough to notice who actually wrote them - the post was written by Jamie Galbraith.
Posted by: tadhgin at May 16, 2007 11:02:02 AM
So, to make ourselves richer, we should legislate an arbitrary wage. All the "backwards" industries will die out and move to China, and our productivity will rise naturally to reflect the higher wage.
At least, that's the policy recommendation that is most obvious after reading that. I enjoyed it very much, except for the bits about the Scandinavian model.
Posted by: Robert at May 16, 2007 12:39:03 PM
I really enjoyed that article and look forward to reading more like it. I need more info on the Scandinavian model - what types of jobs thrive there, and what are considered 'backwards'. What about innovation? Does it happen there?
Posted by: Michael Gorsuch at May 16, 2007 1:33:35 PM
I don't buy the notion that unions have lowered unemployment in Scandanavia, and the author didn't really give a logical reason to have us believe the notion that demand (for labor) rises when its price rises. The rest of Europe has unions too after all.
Scandanavia has something else going for it that countries like France, Germany, Italy and Spain don't. They have lower corporate income taxes. Such a lower tax makes investments, and their concurrent hires, profitable on a risk/reward basis that otherwise wouldn't be worth making. Hence a lower unemployment rate than otherwise would have occurred with the same set of other variables.
Posted by: happyjuggler0 at May 16, 2007 1:57:32 PM
Perhaps all is not peachy in Scandanavia after all:
Who pays for Sweden's free lunch?
Posted by: happyjuggler0 at May 16, 2007 11:04:42 PM
Posted by: 鑽石 at Apr 2, 2008 8:20:44 PM
