# Man, this brings tears to muh eyes. Anti-Austerity protests raging in Europe. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 29, 2010, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-this-brings-tears-to-muh-eyes-anti-austerity-protests-raging-in-europe/555471 "2010-09-29T14:52:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 11
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2010, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-this-brings-tears-to-muh-eyes-anti-austerity-protests-raging-in-europe/555471/201 "2010-10-08T15:18:47Z")
> [@erez](#): > > Yep, so let’s make the problem much worse. That’ll help. :rolleyes: That’s what retaliatory trade sanctions are about. You don’t do it because it will necessarily provide immediate positive effects (although it might). You do it to show the other guy your serious and that he should knock it off. > [@](#): > > So you think that the weak U.S. dollar will counteract all the probable problems I listed and that’s enough to make it a good policy? Are you serious? I don’t know why I even bother… It won’t fix everything but lets fix one broken thing at a time. > [@](#): > > Did I miss where you established that the high unemployment in the U.S. is due to trade with China and that stopping the trade will fix it? Your style of throwing stuff out there without any supporting evidence is not the way to debate and that’s why you’re not getting answers. The fact that the few people here with any idea of what’s going on are drowned out by the noise doesn’t help. Do you consdider yourself one of those people who have “any idea of what’s going on”? A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing my friend. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2010, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-this-brings-tears-to-muh-eyes-anti-austerity-protests-raging-in-europe/555471/202 "2010-10-08T15:24:34Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > Two points: I wonder how many of our much-vaunted “professional economists” could keep their jobs if they went around saying that free markets need to be heavily regulated to succeed and that trade barriers can have benefits. I would guess, many would lose professional standing, not to mention jobs in the considerably-less-tenured world of academia. > > Let’s face it, the way you succeed as an economist is supporting free trade and the unregulated free market, because that is what the folks in power like to hear. It’s not about logic, it’s about supporting the economic status quo. Only well-known economicists like Thomas Friendman can state their actual minds on topics. > > Second, economic conservatives tend to be political conservatives, too, excepting Libertarians who tend to support Republicans over Democrats anyway. But point is, all of the people who are calling for us to stay the course are people who missed the housing bubble and who urged us to vote for Bush in 2000. Just how many times can you be utterly, disastrously wrong and still maintain your credibility? My answer would be 0 times. Our conservative brethren have gone WAAAAAAY past that. As a general rule, economists have too much faith in the free markets. Economics is complicated enougha s it is without assuming a rational free market. Economics becomes littel more than tea leaf reading if you don’t assume rational free markets (and they are rational for the most part) but they don’t recognize (at least not as much as they should) that the markets can abandon rationality at the most inconvenient times and although the irrationality is temproary, it can devastate economies in a short period of time if you have your entire system set up based on the assumption that markets will always act rationally. Markets can react irrationally based on the rational but unethical greed of individuals. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-this-brings-tears-to-muh-eyes-anti-austerity-protests-raging-in-europe/555471.md?page=10)