The West Wing: Free trade and outsourcing

[@geniusfollower]

This was one of the constant themes of the West Wing, something that we've forgotten about in the present climate. This show constantly emphasized that complex problems have complex solutions, and while the President loved nuance, and wanted to express nuance, the staff was constantly struggling to get him to "dumb it down" - before eventually concluding that nuance matters to the average voter as well, not just to someone with a Ph.D.

[@darkhorseash4337]

but it also shows that there IS a line. The average voter doesn't need phd level economics information

[@tendomanzi1301]

Let Bartlet be Bartlet

[@kjhuang]

"Nuance matters to the average voter as well"
Not in our universe.

[@r.c.auclair2042]

@@kjhuang, I must agree. 54% of working age adults can't read past a sixth-grade level. The United States is a developed country, but you'd never know it from our education system. When I taught, I got asked what it would take for the United States to "lead the world in education again." My answer: first, we never did, so there is no "again." Second, leading the world in education involves study, devotion to learning, & hard work, things we could have & don't want. It isn't an accident that so many of our valedictorians are immigrants. Nor is it an accident that an eighth of all the doctors in America aren't Americans: we literally can't graduate them fast enough.
Half of our high school graduates don't go to college. A third of those who do don't graduate, and most of those wash out within a year because they aren't academically prepared for college and aren't interested in academics in college. Meanwhile, we insist that anyone who doesn't graduate from college is a failure and give them trouble when they apply for jobs, and lots of jobs that don't need degrees aren't getting filled because nobody's taking them: carpentry, electricians, welding, plumbing, masonry, & other construction jobs. Even w/lucrative salaries, nobody taking them because nobody's qualified to do them, or would know how to get qualified even if they were interested.
Of those who do attend college, the most common major is business, and the students haven't the first idea what business to work for, before or after graduation. They'll say whatever they think they're supposed to say in their interviews. Meanwhile, China's most common major is engineering, and they graduate more engineers than we graduate people, which is why their government has its people binge building while ours are binge watching.
No, the average American isn't interested in nuance. They've been told all their lives that their opinions are worthless, so they've learned not to give opinions. They've taken whatever they can get because nobody asked for, or cares, about what they want. And Americans have no respect for intelligence: name another country where being called an Einstein is an insult. We're stuck where we are because nobody's interested in moving.

[@kjhuang]

@@r.c.auclair2042 While I don't disagree with what you wrote, I want to point out that there's a distinct difference between appreciation for nuance and education level.

[@pblogger9065]

"What's the good of an economy without the people in it?" A line from this episode and one of the best in the series.

[@brandonkovnat2259]

What I love is the subtle nod to previous episodes. It was established that India wants a computer industry and Bartlett is helping them in a deal to avoid an India-Pakistan war.

[@YankeeBlues21]

What always gets me about the second half of the scene is how cynical it is.
Will and Josh debate free trade, with Will taking the role of an ideological free trader and Josh going to bat for protection of industries.
Then Will asks Josh how he became a free trader (when he’d previously worked for the more protectionist Hoynes) and Josh says it’s because he works for one (his face and the pause before answering leaving unsaid that he probably isn’t one personally). Then Will, already established as believing in free trade, drops that his own boss, the VP, is distancing himself from the deal.
Both Will & Josh are having to work against their own beliefs on the issue.

[@xChemistryFTWx]

Well put.

[@27devarshi]

Hadn't thought of the scene in this way at all. Well explained

[@dansmodacct]

Amen

[@DoggosintheHouse]

Will's point is the key to the conversation. The US can't keep people employed if they cut off their own export markets by fighting trade wars. Like it or not, America's biggest strength is the education level of its citizens. The richest nations on Earth all have a very high level of education, scientific research and technical advancement. If you're doing a job that requires less than a high school education, then you're doing a job that can be done for 1/10th the cost in a developing nation.

[@mannyverse6158]

America's biggest strength is the education level of its citizens
Hahahahaha

[@michaelneufeld4515]

Which is why making tertiary education free for everyone will boost America's economy.

[@JnEricsonx]

@@michaelneufeld4515 Good luck with that shit these days. :(

[@RobynHarris]

Akitas in the House But we should be playing to our own strengths.
We should have used our preeminent position for the past half century,
as the wünderkind everyone wanted to trade with, to force other countries
to lift themselves up. Rather than allowing them to make us tear ourselves down.
We could have forced China, India, Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore to lift up their
environmental, employee collective bargaining, workplace protections to make
them compete with us on both quality of product and quality of producer.
Instead, we lowered our standards to compete on price alone.
That’s why American companies are saying they can’t compete
unless we regress to 19th Century sweatshop working conditions.
We did it to ourselves.

[@fucktardickis]

@Snickering Ginger A valley of speculative value in technology that predominantly created manufacturing jobs in China in mega factories, that created the dot com bubble, that created the wifi juicer, that upsold ipods as a luxury item. Meanwhile American universities are stinking piles of exploitative tuition and money pinching off of foreign students. Both are tremendous examples of the great American pass time of fucking over the whole for the profit of the few.

[@Kaizou626]

When Josh mentions jsut how cheap the manufacturing cost in Malaysia against the US - basically what has been done since.

[@teytreet7358]

From experience, outsourcing tech jobs to India ended up costing the company more from lack of quality, protocol, face to face communications and delays.

[@otrjustin]

It very well might cost move over time, but companies don’t thinking about money over years, just next quarter.
If they save 5 cents now even if I costs them a dollar tomorrow, they will jump at the chance

[@PeterTeehan]

President loving the nuance is like "im only wrong because you havent come to the conclusion that im right yet" haha

[@Strategic_Reformer]

The risk of losing jobs domestically is the price you pay for being rich, free and alive at the same time

[@MarcusLeepapi]

I miss this show so much....

[@robertcowan7610]

Ditto

[@catherinewilliams9680]

This is why corporations should never be involved in trade treaties between countries.

[@vakeone]

There is near universal consensus amongst economists (both left and right) that free trade is good.

[@VeniVidiVid]

True. "Self sufficiency is the road to poverty"
And sadly, there will be losers during transitions. Far fewer buggy whip makers today, and fewer family farms. But in time, workers adjust to the changes. People today choose careers for today and tomorrow, not yesterday.

[@cosmodin1882]

The thing is that reality doesn't support entirely this claim. Europe is one of the most open areas in the world: very low tariff barriers, very few restrictions to imports, no manipulation of the exchange rate. Yet Europe has a sluggish economic growth and a quite high unemployment rate. Meanwhile, other countries like the U.S, Japan, South Korea, China are countries open to global trade, but they have kept protectionist policies at least on some sectors, and look at their economic growth and their low unemployment rate.

[@davidtaylor2098]

Good for who?

[@presidiun]

Yeah, No! Free trade works for the better only when you talk about goods stemming from places with absolute competitive advantage!

[@ek9772]

Free trade is good with the added condition that the trade balance (surplus or deficit) between countries shall not be more than 5% in favor of any one country.

[@aalikane]

...if he has Ph.D shouldn't they be calling him Dr. President?

[@damonaverette]

President supersedes all other titles and George Washington insisted on it being Mr. President when addressing the president so as to avoid monarchic titles.

[@op3129]

@@damonaverette jefferson's epitaph doesn't include that he was president at all, fwiw.

[@op3129]

some honorifics _are_ permanent. when there's more than one, people usually go w/ the highest.
that said, protocol is to go with what the person prefers. i.e., they're are individual. Mattis demanded "Secretary" (of DoD) while Kelly demanded "General" when he was in DHS (and as CoS ... which was unusual). also why Bolton is still referred to as "Ambassador" even tho it was 15 YEARS AGO before heading the NSC (which is more powerful).
your guess why he prefers "Ambassador" is same value as mine.

[@sjmclean0]

That's Dr Mr President to you

[@Lmpeak]

@@sjmclean0 that's Dr Mr Professor Jed Bartlett to you

[@krissp8712]

0:52 funnily enough, a lot of CPU chips are packaged into final assemblies within Malaysia now!

[@jackblack9605]

Josh was talking more about the Research and Development side of it. Malaysia still just doing the cheap assembly stuff. Countries like Taiwan, Israel and India on the otherhand are starting to lead in developing new ideas and R&D in electronics.

[@blueberrypanquakes]

One of the aspects of the show that hasn't aged well. WW was always pro globalization, pro free trade, and overly optimistic about how little fallout there would be for the average American. Now here we are, twenty years later, and actual on the ground economists have roundly disproven the tenets of neoliberal economics.

[@marcelosilva8021]

He did not envision the wealth accumulation at the top. No one did, not even the champion of supply side economics, Milton Friedman, envision this much. He thought, that rich people would always want to keep on getting richer, thus making their money work, thus moving the economy and society forward. He and this show, just never envisioned how much cash would be hoarded for the sake of hoarding it.

[@waterbloom1213]

This is incredibly wrong.
For starters, because you unironically employ the political term "neoliberalism" to describe economics as if it was an actual school of economic thought instead of a vague umbrella notion that stems from the already vague Washington Consensus back in the 90s.
Second, the biggest problem America faces today in regards to its economy stems from a lack of trade liberalization and the progressive oligopolization of its economy via protectionism and rent-seeking behavior by corporations aided by lobbyists in Congress and the Senate.
In other words, it's not liberalism that is the problem in the labor market; it's protectionism due to artificial barrier setting in markets. You can look at the HHI indexes for most industries over the last 20 years, the amount of regulation and lobbying passed, the refusal to engage in actual free trade policies like the TTP, the fact that the FED keeps printing money or how government keeps passing new Acts which subsidize non-competitive industries.
America is not a free-market economy; it has been quite some time since it has been. Your blame is misplaced.
By way, I don't know which actual "on the ground" economists have disproven free trade. Last I checked, the most comprehensive survey of top U.S economists stated that most economists do not believe protectionist measures work.
Only IPE "economists" tend to defend these sorts of barrier policies; rather oddly, they also happen to be the only ones that employ the term "neoliberalism" half-seriously and the ones that prefer normative essays over actual empirical data. I know because I have studied under them and had to learn they were wrong the hard way.

[@RobynHarris]

HAL
IBM
JCN
Gee, I wonder where they got the name JCN from?

[@Fr33zy159]

And now here we are, with a frozen supply chain because we shipped all our manufacturing overseas. We are paying vastly more for goods because the previous 4 administrations printed trillions of dollars that we didn't have (and the current one has generated 25% of all US dollars ever printed). And millions of Americans in tech and business have trained their H-1B Visa replacements who have taken their jobs for pennies on the dollar while the government gives employers tax credits for doing so. Suffice to say none of the current leadership have a PhD in economics. If they did they would have been operating with malice for the American people.

[@RBAWintrow]

And it could be even worse. In Germany we're at the mercy of Russian gas. moving away from that will be painful and expensive. And I hope future governments will remember that and never make us reliant on Russia again.

[@michaelscott6022]

"It creates better, higher paying jobs."
It also gatekeeps your own population, requiring them to receive an education and fight each other for those increasingly higher and rarer jobs; it _removes_ industrial jobs and skills which could have been given to 'less than fortunate' demographics and areas in your own country, keeping them ignorant and destitute; it removes your capacity for self-sufficiency and putting your supply lines in likely unstable and near hostile or potentially hostile countries.
By giving your vital infrastructure to corporations and foreign governments, you might open new markets and lower the cost of consumer goods, but you also increase wages only for those who are already fairly if not grotesquely wealthy and remove and economic development and national pride from your own lower classes altogether, forcing you to use increased taxes on your supposedly richer citizenry to provide social services to support and eventually sustain the people who would not have been in this situation to begin with. You strengthen only your leadership by weakening your nation as a whole.

[@derrickstorm6976]

How does getting more tech jobs decrease the amount of industrial jobs? US average unemployment is 5% and a lot of those are young people who are much more suited and inclined to get tech education, plus most of the employed ones work some minimum wage garbage job so theres even more capita for job market movement. But on one point you're on the money; if you're a dumb uneducated person you won't get the new job but you can still keep at the old. "Gatekeeping the uneducated" I've got a guy for you who loves the poorly educated...

[@abugina]

Well, that was a big ass we got that so wrong moment. Free trade creates free societies, nope.

[@prometheus23c]

There is a scene later in this episode where a computer programmer who has lost his job asks Josh Lyman if he's going to end up working the counter of a video rental store. Barely six years after this episode first aired, Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy.

[@PaperbackWizard]

In the Hartsfield's Landing episode, Josh kept Donna on the phone with voters who were mad about free trade killing industry in their area. Josh kinda ran through it with her, telling her to tell them that Democrats are not for protectionism and, frankly, neither are Republicans. He said the solution was for the people in their area to diversify with the help of small business loans and such. Two years later, he's having trouble selling the same argument to others (and to himself) when he realizes the cycle just keeps spinning and new-new jobs keep moving out, too, with the workers at those jobs needing even *more* assistance. It's a great bit of character development for him.

[@jameshanscombe2530]

That's when someone looks at Josh and says "Welcome to the NFL".

[@javimiami92]

That’s Mr. Vice President to you sir.

[@PaperbackWizard]

Ya know, an article just came out recently arguing that CEOs could easily be replaced by A.I. programs. I'm not sure if it was satirical or not, but it made me think of the scene in this episode where the guy is justifying sending jobs to India because of how much money it'll save the company and Josh responds by asking how much the company would save if it would send the CEO's job to India. The CEO is always the last job to go, and that's the problem.

[@seanwebb605]

The West I.E. Merica, Canada, Britain etc. got the first part right and failed at the second part. Yeah, free trade is great. It opens markets for your products, goods, raw materials. If you have an abundance of grain, corn etc. you want to trade the surplus to nations that have difficulty producing these things and have some of the things that you want. Trade is also about ideas, science, education and such crossing borders freely. Trade deals come with dispute mechanisms to help resolve disputes peacefully. But you have to do the second part too. You have to educate, train and prepare people for the new jobs, new industries and the change of culture that comes with these benefits. Real wages haven't kept up even though GDP of many of the nations involved in these free trade deals has gone up by many multitudes. Wealth and wage inequality are horrible. Can you cancel the trade deals, become self reliant and reverse free trade and globalization? Not really. The cost of many consumer goods would go up drastically and faster than you can rebuilt the factories and build new supply chains. Pharmaceuticals would go up because many of the cultures, organic materials and such required don't exist everywhere. Nobody is talking about automation. Yeah, you can put a greater focus to skilled trades. That will give short term higher wages to some segments of the labour market. But automation and prefabrication have already eliminated what were previously low skill and skilled trades jobs. The easy to teach manual labour jobs that previously paid well are gone. Pretty much forever. If you want to return to mining, steel, manufacturing that you have to realize that it would be for domestic consumption. Everyone else has built their industrial sectors and won't be importing your products. And of the products that they allow to be imported there will be tariffs to bring it up to about the same cost as they can produce it domestically.

[@mikesmith-pj7xz]

What would Bartlet think of Thomas Piketty 😎

[@derrickstorm6976]

Piketty basically has no new ideas?

[@Zoomer30]

I hear the two guys who no one named right are married now living in Fresno.

[@kjhuang]

I see a lot of people saying "free trade is good; we just have to make sure the losers are taken care of." That's like saying "stabbing people is good; we just have to make sure those who are stabbed don't bleed to death."

[@adamdymke8004]

I know people are nostalgic for this vision of politics today, but some of it really didn't age well.

[@nikunjdixit1175]

I think a lot of the foreign policy and world socio economic issues on the show have aged quite a bit since the show was on the air. TWW was at its strongest when it was focused on domestic politics and policy, which is what the main characters were experts in anyways.

[@moegreene7940]

@@nikunjdixit1175 yeah totally agree. The josh comment about “free trade creating jobs” write in is essentially a conservative or Clinton position. We all know 20 years later how that turned out.

[@bopete3204]

@@moegreene7940 In the context of the scene, it is an oversimplification. It's notable that nobody has countered Bartlett's point that we aren't stopping ATM machines to save bank tellers.
A country that isn't open to trade and competition in the global market will inevitably be left behind. That is why free trade is good on net while creating losers in the short term. Those losers need to be better cushioned, but protectionism will only leave an economy worse off.

[@kjhuang]

​@@bopete3204 In the US the losers aren't cushioned; that's the biggest problem with "advancement".
"Moving into the future" expecting the losers to be cushioned is like jumping out of a plane with no parachute thinking you'll magically find one on the way down.

[@johnstebbins24]

The fundamental flaw that was revealed in time was that we thought we were the only country smart enough and capable of doing these higher-paying jobs.
In 1950, we were pretty much the only fully functioning developed industrial power, so we made the world's cars and refrigerators. But when it came time to move to the next level, other countries were capable of it, too.
Eventually, we will have to figure out that hiring 7 Billion people will be harder to hire than 6 Billion in the world. It IS a global economy. Global views should be taken seriously. Not saying followed to the letter, but running away from these global perspectives and pretending the economy isn't more global is cowardly and irresponsible.

[@nudist0885]

Part of the situation can also be attributed to "long term" thinking (10 - 30 YEARS down the road).
Long distance passenger railroad is just ONE example. Japan and some of the European countries spent billions upon billions developing "super sonic" trains while the United States still dealt with "putt putt" cars. If we had "Mag Lev" technology in certain corridors of the United States we'd have much better passenger transport that doesn't require gasoline as much as we currently do. Also certain corridors wouldn't be ANYWHERE NEAR as crowded since passenger trains and freight trains share the same roads.
If we could also figure out a way to increase the number of destinations that smaller REGIONAL airports can fly to so that the BIG international airports can fly less flights per day, we'd have much less traffic tie ups on runways in certain sectors of the country.
Newark Airport in NJ gets 45 minutes behind schedule every day of the year before 8:30 am (even though Teterboro Airport is only 15 miles away).

[@blastermasterguy]

Outsourcing isn't about jobs, it's about excessive profit for an entitled few. Why pay 17,000 American workers a livable to make a quality product when you can pay 17,000 Indians or Chinese a dollar a day (or less).

[@bopete3204]

@@blastermasterguy Why should Indians and Chinese people not get jobs when Americans are making many times more than what they ever will?
Protectionism is about protecting the wages of the few over the welfare of the global poor.

[@fishbone3333]

@@blastermasterguy If someone in India (for example) can produce the same code for a fraction of the wage of someone in the USA. then a company would be foolish not to use Indian labor and, in fact, would be failing in their fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders.

[@kjhuang]

​@@bopete3204 The Indians and the Chinese aren't being paid fairly either. While we bicker over which country's workers deserve jobs more, multinational corporations with no allegiance to any country except The Republic of Their Own Profits are screwing over every country's workers and laughing all the way to the bank.

[@ReaverLordTonus]

What's messed up about this is that it wasn't the trade deal that killed the jobs. The company decided to outsource because they looked at their bottom line and said "Hey, how can we make this bigger?" Laws don't compel corporations to fire people or hire cheap labor to replace them, the guys at the top of those corporations who are afraid of being slightly less rich this year compared to last year do.

[@davestevens6283]

Only partially true. Management makes the decision, but assuming it's a publicly traded company, managers are obligated to do what's best for the company and its shareholders (Whether the profits actually end up getting to the shareholders, rather than pillaged through bonuses and benefits for higher management is another matter).

[@fernandoaraiza2138]

It isn't just about profits. It also makes the price of the products cheaper.

[@lenno15697]

This but it is unironically a good thing.

[@bovnycccoperalover3579]

NAFTA was a disaster. Notice that they only start to worry when white collar jobs are lost! I lost my best job through a merger and outsourcing to India.
They can use whatever intellectual jujitsu they want on any subject but this happened because the big corporations want cheap labor. That is the bottom line!

[@bovnycccoperalover3579]

I meant cheap labor.

[@bovnycccoperalover3579]

@@MuhammadAhmed-qh7ut , thank you for pointing that out. Fixed!

[@icu8128]

That's the law of "unintended consequences" or as Thomas Sowell said ok what's next einstein.

[@joshmccollen700]

Josh brings up the "human face" of trade. Put another way, there's value to a job that's not quantifiable in financial terms. There's value in work that's moral and ethical. And if trade is fair instead of free, and you end up paying a bit for consumer goods, then it's unfortunate, but at least you have a job and you're working. Free trade is great among nations sharing parity in standards of living and other indicators. But what does the US gain from free trade with Malaysia? With the benefit of hindsight, are there any potential gains from free trade that can't also be gotten from robust bilateral "fair" trade deals? And do those gains make up for potential losses the country would certainly incur? It's entirely possible that free trade with the wrong nation will lead to a long term decline of consumer demand and productivity that kills off whole communities. Perot's "sucking sound" is very real.

[@sly8926]

The US gains cheaper goods from free trade with Malaysia.

[@joshmccollen700]

@@sly8926 Too bad no one can afford those cheaper goods from Malaysia since the Malaysians are now doing the Americans' jobs.

[@sly8926]

Josh McCollen no they aren’t. Unemployment before the pandemic was lower than its ever been

[@joshmccollen700]

@@sly8926 Granted. But what we've seen since the 90's has been the slow replacement of manufacturing jobs which could support a family by relatively low wage service jobs that can't.

[@sly8926]

Josh McCollen that’s somewhat true, but we’ve also had a lot of higher paying jobs and people going to college. It’s all relative of course, and I understand the fear of globalism, but since no system is perfect, I prefer the free trade theory. It just seems to benefit the most people

[@jamessimmons3645]

Free trade is usually a Republican thing

[@khriss867]

The president's job isn't to sound smart while giving speeches. The job is about being smart while creating policy, and then being smart enough to explain those polices to people with the IQ of 100. By definition, 100 IQ will always be average. It shouldn't be unreasonable to expect the people that are elected to represent the average person to be able to give comprehensible explanations.
TLDR: Bartlet was a snob in this scene. He can be smart without be condescending to people that do not have PHDs in economics.

[@thatjpwing]

I never liked the thinly veiled "JCN" in this episode. They could have been more creative than that.

[@Craig-ib7gk]

No doubt. Wonder how many people picked up on the one-off from IBM. Ironic, considering IBM now (late 2021) has over 130000 employees in India, more than 1/3rd of the entire worldwide IBM employee base, and more there than any other single nation, including at home in the US.

[@davidcarter2720]

God I hate Will's smugness. I think he alone caused Trump.

[@charlisantini3403]

Free trade creates better high paying jobs.
Wow, that did not age well (as anyone with a brain knew already)

[@luissalcedo6493]

This didn't age too well lol

[@xeltanni8999]

How so?

[@volumeturneddown6875]

This is so 1995. By the time Trump ran for president, that little outsourcing of 17,000 programming jobs had occurred, what, 1000x over?

[@jerodast]

Oh yeah, nobody at all talked about the president-elect "saving" a number of jobs as small as 1000 in 2016. Free trade panic is SO 1995 :P

[@TheAudioman15]

+jerodast Oh shit. LOL

[@nudist0885]

This show didn't even start until 1999..................(8^P

[@icu8128]

Econ 101 ; means of production move to their lowest cost. Tax exemptions for exports plus targeted tariffs against predatory nations (PRC/CCP) with lax/nonexistent environmental regulations, slave labor, authoritarian/militaristic, hegemonic economy (PRC/CCP) can provide for more FAIR trade vs. Free trade. So am I China basher for speaking the obvious?
Whose to blame? Democrats & Republicans, Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43, Obama 44 and every politician who turned a blind eye in the Congress and every sleazy lobbyist who spread the cash as fertilizer.

[@christopherpardell4418]

There is no such thing as free trade. It is ALWAYS regulated and always manipulated because the very first thing that gets bought in any truly free market is the power and influence to rig that market. It is why the Constitution gives government not the power, but the OBLIGATION to regulate interstate and international commerce. Keep in mind that an “invisible hand of the market” is the perfect tool for picking your pocket. All trade must be a negotiation between benefit and bereft.

[@NestorCaster]

F******ck, good comment sir! ❤

[@vincenthitchin8740]

Bartlet sounds so out of touch on this issue in my opinion. It's clear that Bartlet's free-trade utopianism doesn't line up with reality. When his staff talk critically about his abstract rhetoric, they're made to look like ignorant plebs but they have a point. He talks about "creative destruction" and "global economic forces are unstoppable", spoken like a true hack. He says this even as 17,000 people are about to lose their jobs, I wonder what source of income they'll be using to pay for those "cheaper drill-bits" that Will Bailey talks about. They'll be thinking "Right! All I need now is a job to pay for these cheaper goods!". He should see what's happening in the world today, global economic forces are far from unstoppable.

[@ffuukkyootoobffuukkyootoob1411]

The only person out of touch is you, thinking you understand the solution when you don't even understand the problem.
Economics is one of THE MOST counter-intuitive fields there are. Things that "seem obvious" are not.
Hint: If you can't list off what is wrong with The Broken Window Fallacy -- or don't even know what it is when you hear it -- you don't know enough to have an opinion worthy of expression. The Broken Window Fallacy is Bonehead Econ 101.

[@vincenthitchin8740]

Ffuukk Yootoob Ffuukk Yootoob The problem is outsourcing and the collusion of big business and government in forming trade deals that enrich themselves at the expense of others. This is the problem. You may have noticed it was a prominent feature in this years' Presidential election.
As for the fallacy you mentioned. It's something free-market economists cite when someone makes a claim that a destructive act is paradoxically good for the economy. But the kind of destruction referred to by this 'fallacy' is not what Bartlett was talking about, which was 'creative destruction'. I'm sure you know the difference as someone that clearly prides himself on being well versed in economic theory.
You're right about economics being counter-intuitive though. I agree with that. I'd say the historical record shows us that societies do not and cannot conform to any particular, idealized model of how an economy should operate. Certainly with regards to the concept of the free-market and free-trade. I find it difficult to place any faith or trust in most economists considering the vast majority couldn't see the financial crisis of 2008 coming. I'm not saying we reject the profession of economics outright, that would be madness but I do think most economists aren't half the experts they think they are. The ones that cling to free-market and free-trade ideas in particular, who push their one-size-fits-all prescriptions on all countries regardless of their level of development or how it affects workers of particular industries, are people who place abstract theories and principles above the real, specific needs of each economy in the world. Feel free to vehemently disagree. You can argue back if you care to but there's millions of people unemployed in the rust belt who used to have steady jobs, now they don't, because they were shipped overseas, so you shouldn't be surprised why they'd be skeptical of free-trade and would vote for the seemingly protectionist Donald Trump.

[@VeniVidiVid]

Speaking as one of those free trader ideologues, I can appreciate your take, yet still find areas of agreement and disagreement.
1. "One-size-fits-all" and "free trade" are a bit antithetical. The whole point of free trade is that one size won't fit all. But it's reasonable to discuss how much governmental control some cultures tend to accept en-mass. The proof is in the pudding whether that control enhances or inhibits short and long term growth.
2. Agreed that there will be losers during transitions. Far fewer buggy whip makers today, fewer family farms, and fewer high-paying auto manufacturing jobs. But in time, workers adjust to the changes. People today choose careers for today and tomorrow, not yesterday. Those who lose to this process will definitely have their own interests and voting behavior, but the alternative to global trade can be degrees of national economic isolation. That always hurts the vast majority of consumers in the nations whose governments practice it.
3. (realizing you never mentioned this specifically)
Crony capitalism is to capitalism much like muddy water is to water. Might not hurt to drink it, but more is never better. And protectionism is just an expression of crony capitalism. The protected cronies are definitely helped (even if they never asked for it). Everyone else who consumes those outputs is hurt.

[@caycejones1258]

Vincent Hitchin There were people who warned about the dangers of the things that led to the collapse of 2008. They were marginalized, if they were even listened to at all.

[@John-Adams]

Free Trade gave us Indian "programmers" that crashed our Boeings.

[@sly8926]

Free trade gave us the strongest economic force in the history of the world

[@VikasPatel-pb3rv]

If you are blaming the "programmers" for crashed hardware and transportation means, then you are missing MANY MANY steps in the process

[@majuli8420]

Looking back, this show was such a pile of garbage. I'm sorry I ever liked it.

[@PilotGrapefruit]

How so? I absolutely love this show. In my opinion, it teaches modern politics alongside bipartisan conversation with a liberal administration.

[@majuli8420]

@@PilotGrapefruit It sells the fantasy that there is objectively good policy. That if you present enough facts and figures and cite statistics, reasonable enlightened bipartisan people will come together and make the "right" decision. Bartlett of course is the epitome of this worldview. In other words, it's about reasonableness, not power.
In reality, what we've seen is that policy is very much the expression of power. Ask Obama how his presidency went. Mitch McConnell took his supreme court seat away, just like that, and Obama was too Bartlett to even fight. The overwhelming majority of Americans want accessible healthcare, gun control, clean water etc. They get zilch. Nothing. Nada. Why? Because if you want anything, you have to take it. That means hurting business interests and those with power. And the liberal elites who watch The West Wing think that if they just cite enough statistics at Clarence Thomas, they get it. They won't. Politics is about power and class interests. That's why I despise the show.

[@DGNYY27]

Season five was dogshit

[@voltarinedecleire3634]

This show is repulsive.