Paul Krugman, who won his Nobel Prize in trade theory, has in the past pointed out that much of the decline in manufacturing jobs has been because of advances in technology rather than jobs lost to overseas competitors.
Now, Krugman has put out this tweet that makes clear there is no direct correlation between trade surpluses and strength in manufacturing employment.
On manufacturing employment share: sharp long-term decline even in Germany, despite massive trade surpluses pic.twitter.com/Tlp5AzhPoK— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) January 4, 2017
-RW
Krugman's and Wenzel's explanations are pathetic. "that much of the decline in manufacturing jobs has been because of advances in technology rather than jobs lost to overseas competitors" HA HA HA. As an austrian, how the hell do you know what caused that? Did you ever count the cost of doing business in US and Germany where minimum wage laws, EPA etc jack up the cost of operating manufacturing businesses? Pathetic to see wenzel licking Krugman's boots when it suits his BS.
ReplyDeleteWe know that technology makes people more productive freeing time and effort for other things. Germany like the USA has laws which stifle people from going out on their own and doing these other things. That's the major problem. If one still wants to take the risk in making product the risk is lower by using a contract manufacturer in China. They have offices here in the US and some are even US owned. This avoids most of the local hassles. The product arrives to your specifications (or at least roughly close to them)in bulk or ready for sale if you so desire.
ReplyDeleteTrump doesn't have the solution, because the solution is to get rid of the prior interventions that caused the problem instead of treating the symptoms with more interventions. Krugman, being Krugman has no clue about making products and is no better than Trump.
Trump's "solution" would only make things vastly worse. It IS unfortunate that the western democracies are generally burdened by onerous labor regulations that render certain lines of production impractical. But the fact that there remain countries with less regulation to whom we're able to outsource these lines is a GOOD thing, and he wants to cut off THAT avenue too.
DeleteThere's actually plenty of meat to attack the TPP on as far as global regulatory harmonization and the effect it could have on some of these production processes, but Trump seems to prefer to attack the free trade and "loss of US sovereignty" aspects instead.
Why ever post any comment by Krugman who is completely full of crap?
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