Trump is Going to Destroy Economic Growth If We Don't Find Ways to Block Him -- We Need A Real Consumer Advocacy Organization
As an example, from the WSJ today:
Auto executives typically spend the end of the year prepping for product debuts and thinking up ways to spark sales.
This time around, Detroit’s chiefs devoted considerable time to trying to figure out how to deal with the nation’s new commander in chief. Union bosses are being called in to consult on how to reshuffle factory work, board members are trying to figure out who has friends in President Donald Trump ’s new administration, and task forces have been created to monitor his Twitter account.
At a dinner party during the Detroit auto show earlier this month, Ford Motor Co. Chief Executive Mark Fields said he reread Mr. Trump’s “The Art of the Deal†over the holidays. He first read it in the 1980s, but wants to better understand the new occupant of the Oval Office.
American companies, several of which have been scolded by Mr. Trump, often via Twitter, are suddenly grappling with a new, unpredictable force in their operations. Barbs have included the price the Pentagon pays for Lockheed Martin Corp. jets and whether Carrier Corp. assembles furnaces in Indiana. AT&T Inc. Chief Executive Randall Stephenson recently met with Mr. Trump, who had expressed concerns about the telecom giant’s proposed purchase of Time Warner Inc.
In other words, rather than worrying about pleasing consumers, auto companies are spending all their time figuring out how to please the occupant of the White House. This sounds more like corporate life in Venezuela than the US. It is absurd that Trump claims to be about reducing regulation, and then personally intervenes to micro-manage corporate division-of-labor and sourcing decision.
We need new consumer activist organizations. The classic ones, like Nader's PIRG, are captured by progressives and economic illiterates. Economic nationalism and tariffs and reduced immigration and border taxes and elimination of free trade treaties are all direct assaults on the American consumer. Do all the Midwestern folks who voted for Trump ostensibly because they are struggling economically really want 20% higher prices in their Wal-Mart?
Postscript: By the way, for a moment let's accept this awful situation. Consider women's groups (as discussed here) and their response to Trump and Ford's response. Which is more likely to succeed? If abortion were my #1 issue (as it is for my wife), I would be seriously concerned that women's groups were using all the wrong tactics. Trump is petulant. He does not back down based on protests, he moves you up the target list. This is a terrible, awful character flaw, but it is reality. If women's groups had calmly sat down with Trump in a back room and worked out a deal (with a man who is a lifelong social liberal) they would probably be further ahead.
I share your concern, as indicated by my last sentence. There is a difference though between a true natural law and a strong attractor. Another strong attractor is Mancur Olson's attractor of organized special interest groups to grow and fester until they exploit and choke off all growth and change.
I suggest trying voice of the consumer groups with strong by-laws to defend against capture. It would be easier to defeat O'Sullivans' dynamic attractor than Olson's. And Olson's is guaranteed to get us if we don't do something differently.
Yeah, I spent much of my career battling Socialists dressed as consumer advocates. See my comment above.
Bob,
These are not facts at all. This is pure spin. See Slocum and Roader for a more accurate portrayal. Let me add to their rebuttals...
Median Working class incomes have not dropped, they are up about forty percent when you adjust for benefits, smaller household sizes and inflation.
Families are not the same as classes, and most families move up in quintile over time, as need families and immigrants enter the picture. The lower the starting quintile of an actual family the HIGHER their average income gain over the last forty years.
The higher income groups, in general didn't confiscate anything at least not via markets. They earned money by creating value for others, and most of the wealthier ones started at just like you and I at the lowest quintile and worked up. You are just completely flummoxed by statistics. If I showed you the average height of elementary schools kids grade one thru six hasn't changed appreciably in forty years, you would conclude children are no longer growing.
Most importantly, the benefits of globalism have indeed gone to those most in need as we have seen over a billion people arise out of extreme poverty, many up to middle class incomes. Anyone who thinks we should stop free markets is someone who does not care for humanity.
So, putting the pieces together for you, automation has been the largest headwind to increasing incomes for the lower educated in developed world, the post World War Two privilege has naturally run its course, median wages have been rising and are now higher than at any time ever, and this is true in both the US and the world.
You are mixing various things. Globalism isn't all bad, but contrary to the Libertarian utopianists, it is also not all good. Also, a lot of the benefits you attribute to it are more accurately attributable to technological gains.
Some people are hurt and hurt badly by it. Some nations lose more than they gain. It makes sense for the US to adopt policies that optimize our loss/benefit ratio - but not get too into the weeds or it becomes just big government that will be controlled by crony capitalists.
I used to be a member of the Libertarian Party. I left for several reasons, but an important one was a completely utopian ideology with no tolerance at all for deviation. Another reason was that many were libertines pretending to be libertarian. A third was the almost universal belief that government had no business regulating abortion, which is requires the ideological position that a fetus has exactly zero rights and is not a human being until that magical moment of birth, after which it is a fully participating citizen of libertopia.
Yes, but that is not what Coyote is complaining about.
If you want to complain about that actual action, I have not problem with it.
History suggests both forces are very strong. I think the only way to try to defeat either is structures which cause them to disestablish themselves regularly, in a manner that makes it hart for them to reconstitute quickly.
A good start would be a requirement that any endowed organization spend down its entire endowment over a period of not too many years, or lose their non-profit status.
"Some nations lose more than they gain."
No, they don't. Nations consist of people. Individual people make trades when they think the trade is making them better off personally. Millions of people all making personally advantageous trades simply cannot average out to the whole group becoming worse off. Of course, that *doesn't* mean nations can't get poorer by doing dumb things (e.g. an ever growing government generating an ever greater pile of costly regulations), but even when a nation is doing worse because it's being stupid, it is still always better off trading than not.
Yes, some nations can indeed do lose more. When one nation subsidizes or inhibits trade, it may gain substantial advantage over another nation. In theory, over a long period of time, it loses from the behavior.
Furthermore, a nation can lose even if it gains economically. If all the gains go to a small group, and a lot of losses hit a larger group, bad things happen. People who are hurt tend to be more motivated than those who gain, and they vote. With globalist immigration policies, this happens here in the US - lower skilled people lose and high income people win. I just finished a book on that topic, and it is revealing - a lot of the "scholarship" showing otherwise has been very badly done - data mined to support the general theory that free immigration floats all boats. It does not, especially with welfare states. In the US, 62% of Hispanic immigrant households get welfare payments, for example.
I never even hinted that globalism was all good, though I was responding to Bob and you who are describing it as overwhelmingly bad. I agree many of the global and national gains we have seen are due in part to technology, but technology itself is in great part driven by extensive networks of specialization and trade which are fostered by globalism. In addition, globalism is well known to reduce rent seeking and local cartels.
Nobody is "hurt" by globalism. People are "hurt" when other people choose willingly to no longer cooperate with them ,and instead cooperate with someone else. The harm is the indirect harm caused by losing a cooperative economic transaction which they had no right to. In other words, as the network of cooperation grows, there are winners and losers as propel voluntarily trade up to better cooperative relationships. In general, although not "all good", people in general benefit even as the process entails creative destruction.
Good suggestion.
Errr... I said "isn't all bad."
But yes, lots and lots of people are hurt by globalism, *as practiced.* So, I don't know what globalism you are referring to.
Do you deny that people are hurt by unfettered immigration? That's part of globalism. Do you deny that people who lose jobs are hurt if they cannot replace the jobs, even if others in their country benefit?
Nearly all monopolies are created and maintained by government regulations.
The argument that CEOs shouldn't be spending time and effort on how to best navigate a Trump administration is a red herring. Warren could be elected president and usher in libertarian policies and the CEOs would all be reading old Coyote Blog posts and spending time on how to best navigate his administration.
define globalization
if it mean NAFTA, TPP , EU than yes it is bad.
if you think Free market and globalization are same you are wrong.
free market do not need any government bureaucracy to negotiate behind closed doors 100ts of pages deals.
in free market money will be commodity such as silver or gold.