Sunday, February 5, 2017

Bill McBride — Goldman on the Trump Agenda


Following through on campaign promises on trade and immigration before addressing tax cuts and infrastructure could be contractive.

Calculated Risk
Goldman on the Trump Agenda
Bill McBride

6 comments:

Peter Pan said...

Bringing back manufacturing jobs is a non-starter until trade imbalances are fixed. And at that point, how many manufacturing jobs can be expected? Production technology has progressed over the years, meaning that more goods can be produced with fewer workers.

OTOH, deporting illegals might open up some jobs in the agriculture and meat-packing industries. OTOH, having to hire expensive, lazy American workers might prompt a wave of automation in those industries as well.

Saving capitalism is a bitch...

Ryan Harris said...

The point for me isn't whether trade policy succeeds or fails but rather that the voters didn't ask our leaders to make these changes. They told them to do it, elected them to do it, over and over and over again. And every time, the orthodox economists and billionaires GOP/Dems trampled on democracy.

If we have to go 3 more decades with leaders doing what economists say rather than what the people say, I think we'll have a great war that makes the civil war look peaceful.

The policy isn't economics professors to make, nor CEOs are Boeing. No one cares whether it works well for Boeing or Nike's business model and supply chain.

It doesn't have to be right. It doesn't have to be logical. That's the point of a democracy. It's the policies that people collectively want for themselves, right or wrong by anyone's favored model of the universe. If it makes their lives better because they would rather work in a factory than Home Depot, Kroger, Target, United Parcel Service, IBM, McDonald's and Pizza Hut/TacoBell,Walmart > (the largest us employers), it's really not our job to tell them no but figure out how to make it happen for them.

I don't want to work at Walmart or McDonalds, neither do you. So find solutions, not reasons to defend the indefensible existing policy. And leave the get yet another degree solution out. It failed, no reason to keep beating that dead horse.

Noah Way said...

We won't last three (more) decades. Name the last legislation that was actually beneficial to the wider populace or reflective of majority views. There aren't any. Instead we get corporate-friendly bills labeled "patient protection" and such that are the exact opposite - patient extortion is a more accurate description.

The corporate media tries to make us believe that it's left vs right when in fact both work exclusively for the .01%. People are fed up and and realize that nothing is going to change under the current system. We're getting closer to the last straw, and it's not going to be pretty when the camel's back breaks.

Six said...

We don't have a democracy; we have a representative democracy. We choose from candidates that have been supplied to us by extremely wealthy people and who answer to extremely wealthy people. They don't really care what the voters "told them" to do.

Peter Pan said...

Members of congress are upset that Trump admitted that America kills people.

Dave said...

"The corporate media tries to make us believe that it's left vs right when in fact both work exclusively for the .01%. People are fed up and and realize that nothing is going to change under the current system. We're getting closer to the last straw, and it's not going to be pretty when the camel's back breaks."

This is exactly right.