They made this mistake by claiming free trade had no downsides.I wouldn't say it is just free trade.
This is what happens when ideology trumps scientific rigor, and scientific credibility is used to push a political agenda.
Economists appear to fall into this trap often enough to have destroyed their public credibility. It's another form off fake news.
As Noah Smith points out, they know better, but do it anyway. Now they and we, are reaping the whirlwind of rabid populism as the working class bites back.
4 comments:
Mark Blyth says that when things get tough we are genetically hard wired to stick together with our own kind and so fascism begins to rise.
The standard text book story about free trade (comparative advantage and all that) does not deny there may be downsides does it? It simply says that OVERALL there are benefits from free trade. I.e. it says that if country A&B give up tariffs and adopt free trade, then the GDP of A+B will rise. Comparative advantage does not deny that individual industries in A or B may be badly hit.
They are never trained to value correctness by getting ZERO when they are wrong like you do in STEM disciplines or Mike got via decades of trading.... actually in trading you get negative credit (lose money)....
So when they are wrong they just shrug their shoulders and say “so what?”...
They are trained in dogma regurgitation which even if the dogma is incorrect (eg “deficit too small!”, “stability creates instability!”), they still get full credit... I’m sure many A+ are awarded for regurgitating “stability creates instability!” out there...,
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