You're unnecessarily stuck on the "since October" thing, but yes, the gov't will employ all kinds of carrots and sticks to try and keep the jobs here. At least that's what we've seen so far. Trump has upped the use of both.

I'm not really stuck on the October thing. I'm stuck on government getting involved in the free market. Offering tax or other incentives to companies to stay in the country, or hire people, is done with the tax code so if he follows that fine, but I haven't seen that yet. I did see him offer some form of carrot to 1 company but I haven't seen the details, it seems to have disappeared from the news. If Trump isn't bragging about it every single day, I have a hunch it's not something that would be popular.

The involvement in businesses might be something the Democrats would support across the board but I'm not sure it is something the Republicans would.

Republicans are generally against populist adventures taken to override the free market. They are generally against abortion as well. However, if you want to win a Presidential election... you need to figure out how to make your peace with those issues the best you can.

"Took a couple at university and concluded that economics is bean counting..."

Sheesh. What SH said. If you 'took a couple at university', then go shoot your professors because you got robbed. You don't even know the difference between Economics and Accounting.

Regarding your comment about 'factors that genuinely make people happy...', how about spend about five minutes reading up on behavioral economics? Google it, since that seems to be a good substitute for actual knowledge around here.

Oh, this was a true gem from your earlier post:

"The reality is even if all new plants can be kept in the rust belt, there still will not be a return to the 1970/80's when anybody who dropped out of high school could still be guaranteed a middle class lifestyle in the manufacturing sector."

Hilarious.

Greg

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If you are a Canuck that engages in gratuitous bashing of the US, you are probably on my Iggy List. So, save your self a bunch of typing a response unless you also feel the need to gratuitously bash me. If so, have fun.
"Don't underestimate Joe's ability to f___ things up" - Barack Obama, 2020

You are so right. There's a lot of folks on this thread showing ignorance of some very basic economic concepts.

For example: it may be better to let Mexico produce auto parts for the US, even if the US is better at it. https://en.wikipedia.org/...omparative_advantage

Bottom line for all you Trumpophiles is that the jobs aren't coming back to the "base" that voted for him. The proof will be in the pudding. And that's all anybody from a practical view has to know about your position on "economics".

The problem with right wing capitalistic economics is that it doesn't ever take into account other factors such as social instability, inequalities, limited natural resources, climate change etc, etc. In the end its a destined to be a burn out. Sadly, in the long term, you're the ignorant one.

That's great, but what about the people who don't have jobs anymore? Serious question.

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"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."

You might be trading some jobs for other jobs. Giving tax breaks and subsidies to one company or industry, might burden tax payers and other industries. And overall might make the economy suffer, netting fewer jobs or making people poorer.

 
You might be trading some jobs for other jobs.

But are we? And what type of jobs? Equivalent jobs? Better jobs? Seems like to the degree we're trading these jobs, we're trading them for low paid, dead end service and retail jobs.

It's great to talk about the economy "as a whole," and increased productivity, and competitive advantage, and all that rot. Bottom line is that a LOT of people are losing ground, and while the overall economy might be fine and even better off by offshoring these jobs, the benefit is increasingly concentrated among fewer and fewer people. That misses the point.

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"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."

The hard-line capitalist answer is: they will benefit from the growing economy in the long run. And I do believe that's true. It's not a zero-sum game, and if we grow the pie we can all share of it.

But in the short run there's a lot of economic dislocation and accompanying social unrest. Conventionally, the modern western state addresses those issues by providing unemployment insurance, job training programs, and other forms of social welfare.

The trick is to balance the long-term benefits of free-trade policies against the short-term costs. Obviously that's a tough problem, and one that our governments have not always successfully addressed.

The hard-line capitalist answer is: they will benefit from the growing economy in the long run. And I do believe that's true. It's not a zero-sum game, and if we grow the pie we can all share of it.

How? Lay out a long term course in which everyone wins. Talking about short term disruption and weighing it against long term benefit is fine, but the trend really does not seem to bear that out, and it looks very much like nobody has any idea how everyone will actually be able to get a piece of the pie as it gets bigger. On the contrary, it seems like fewer and fewer people have access to the pie, and more and more people will be just left without. For all the sneering about how the manufacturing jobs aren't coming back, I have yet to hear a realistic, concrete plan for an alternative that benefits the mass of our population. Yes, the pie is getting bigger, and technology will probably continue to make it grow more and more. But the nature of the growth itself precludes widespread participation.

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"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."

isn't this the same thing cerveloguy was saying?

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https://lshtm.academia.edu/MikeCallaghan

http://howtobeswiss.blogspot.ch/

pretty much

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who's smarter than you're? i'm!

Yes, and like I said from the get go, nobody is arguing that all the manufacturing jobs will be coming back. What we're saying is that there's still a big difference between sending the entire damn plant to some other country, and keeping it here, even if keeping here means we lose 90% of the jobs. I'd rather keep 10% than 0%.

What bugs me- and I strongly suspect what bugs a LOT of Trump supporters- is that whenever someone works to keep jobs and factories here rather than just wave goodbye as they head overseas, the intelligentsia gets all snooty about it, and sneers about how manufacturing just isn't going to come back, and we live in a global economy, and the pie is getting bigger, and blah blah fucking blah.

Yeah, we all know we're not going back to the golden days of American manufacturing. Until you can offer us some kind of realistic alternative, though, quit knocking people who are trying to save as many jobs as possible. Because I don't give a damn about the global economy and competitive advantage or any other pie in the sky theory. What I care about is whether or not American families are going to be able to support themselves, and how.

I don't care if we're not making cars anymore. What are we making instead? If we're not going to make anything, what are we going to do to support ourselves? Having a few googles and Apples and Amazons driving the economy while most of us work as cashiers isn't going to cut it.

I would love to hear some kind of response that gives me reason to be optimistic. I've been asking for years, and nothing's been forthcoming.

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"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."

I just watched a documentary about a luxury cruise ship being built (in Italy) and the company that built it employed over 3,000 workers for 3 years. Most of this work was semi-skilled and skilled labor. That fucking boat had to be welded together by hand.

My thought after watching was "why don't we build boats like that here?"

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Civilize the mind, but make savage the body.

- Chinese proverb

Of course it may be.

I think there is no denying that a lot of lower wage jobs will be disappearing, and very soon. Autonomous driving itself will be the end for a lot of low skill jobs. And it is not just the truck and taxi drivers, but also a lot of the associated services...the waitress at the truck stop, the police and ambulance drivers, the hotels along the highway. There will be high tech jobs created but it will definitely not be 1:1 and it will be jobs that truck drivers and waitresses will have trouble competing for.

It's other areas too. Deep learning is going to very quickly replace a lot of high skilled jobs, the often cited example is the doctor that reads the MRI or Xray - deep learning outperforms humans now in visual recognition and pattern matching. This has applications in other areas such as locating oil deposits.

The solution is a combination of
- low skill workers need to stop blaming everyone else for their lack of a good job, times change....learn a skill that is in demand. Stop embracing the Trump rallying call of externalizing all of your problems as someone else's faults...find a way to be a winner.
- the 'winners' may have to accept that their burden of taking care of the have-nots is going to have to increase. As technology advances, the bar gets raised higher and higher on the intelligence and drive needed to participate in the high-skill labor force, and larger numbers of people will fall below that bar.

Yeah, that's why we need dictators, five year plans, and firing squads. I've got it.

who says this? i am not convinced that you actually understand what we are saying here. who says that jobs heading overseas is not a big deal and we should just accept it?

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who's smarter than you're? i'm!

An excellent question to which the answer is 10 pages long. The Right wing will have you believe that the answer is simple. It isn't.

Certainly a question far too complex for a chef or a gas station attendant-jiujitsu guy.

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Proud member of the MSF (Maple Syrup Mafia)

Don't sell yourself short. And I'm neither a gas station attendant nor a "jiu jitsu guy".

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Civilize the mind, but make savage the body.

- Chinese proverb

No shit!