# Would some economist please explain: What's wrong with outsourcing? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 13, 2016, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-some-economist-please-explain-whats-wrong-with-outsourcing/762720 "2016-08-13T21:43:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**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:** [August 17, 2016, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-some-economist-please-explain-whats-wrong-with-outsourcing/762720/101 "2016-08-17T15:05:04Z")
> [@hermitcrab](#): > > just wanted to add a few observations. i am not an economist, but i do live in a pretty economically depressed part of the US (maybe more economists should live out here, too!) > > That’s a good point. A rising tide floats all boats in a global economy, but how does that help as the ocean gets bigger and bigger? Western countries used to enjoy a high tide and others a very low tide in their respective little stagnant pools, what happens as channels are dug and the pool becomes wider? I think that leaves, in order of benefit 1.) countries that got outsourced to early, such as Korea, Japan, etc. They have had a great influx of jobs and money 2.) countries that have globalized later, who are getting smaller and smaller rises in benefits, and 3.) countries that benefitted from outsourcing jobs to the first two in cheaper products, who now are watching their own tide fall to global “sea-level.” We’ve had years to prepare for globalization, but we’re only seeing it now because middle-class and now upper middle-class jobs are disappearing. I think we’re going to be high and dry. > Not only is the pool growing as other countries become globalized; population is growing too. That means more people competing for more jobs at lower wages and benefits. > It’s debatable if global jobs are become fewer, also. Mechanization and the development of AI software means all of us will have to compete with machinery that doesn’t need sleep, doesn’t get sick, doesn’t need a living wage, and can work 24/7 and 365 days a year. Some people envision a future nirvana where machines do all the work and all humans spend almost all their time in leisure. Others envision a future where all the machines are owned by a tiny sliver of machine owners who enjoy the fruits of all that production while the vast majority of humans scrape by doing work that is not cost efficient for machines. Which way do you think its heading? ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2016, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-some-economist-please-explain-whats-wrong-with-outsourcing/762720/102 "2016-08-17T15:13:25Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Of course. > > Of course not. I am not saying we should repeal competition. I am saying that we don’t HAVE to force our citizens to compete with the citizens of impoverished nations on wages. I place labor in a different category than all other inputs of production because labor (more than any other input) represents the livelihoods of consumers. Force is not involve in free trade. Force is involved in stopping free trade. You’re right though, we don’t have to allow competition across arbitrary borders. Neighborhoods should impose a prohibitory tax on incoming tomatoes so Mr. Green doesn’t have to compete with migrant pickers. ---
**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:** [August 17, 2016, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-some-economist-please-explain-whats-wrong-with-outsourcing/762720/103 "2016-08-17T15:58:49Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > Force is not involve in free trade. Force is involved in stopping free trade. > > You’re right though, we don’t have to allow competition across arbitrary borders. Neighborhoods should impose a prohibitory tax on incoming tomatoes so Mr. Green doesn’t have to compete with migrant pickers. You realize how silly it is to compare national trade policy with something as stupid as keeping tomatoes out of your neighborhood, don’t you? ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2016, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-some-economist-please-explain-whats-wrong-with-outsourcing/762720/104 "2016-08-17T16:26:23Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > You realize how silly it is to compare national trade policy with something as stupid as keeping tomatoes out of your neighborhood, don’t you? So is it the crossing of national borders that’s the kicker for you? I thought it was low wage earners competing with high wage earners. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2016, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-some-economist-please-explain-whats-wrong-with-outsourcing/762720/105 "2016-08-17T16:53:21Z")
> [@Richard\_Parker](#): > > Your key premise–that the brain drain is a consequence of not negotiating certain conditions in trade treaties–seems pretty suspect to me. NAFTA did not lead to our graduate programs being filled with Chinese students. > > Note also that many of those foreign-born students end up staying. Ironically, the thing that would contribute most to preventing the brain drain is to make is easier for them to stay in the US after their schooling is over. In your rush to rebut my “key premise” you seem to have failed reading comprehension. I did not argue that a reduction in techincal capability was a result of NAFTA or other trade agreements, and in fact, I post facto caveated the comment about NAFTA with the qualifier, “But in the larger picture, outside of regulatory issues, …” Nor did I argue that many foreign-born students do not seek to stay and contribute to the US economy by becoming workers or entrepreneurs; in fact, the influx of foreign talent which views technical skills and work as being of equivalent socioeconomic stature to other professional degrees such as law and medicine, and as or more worthwhile as business, finance, and communications degrees, has been a boon to US employment as a decreasing number of US-born students enter into the sciences and engineering, viewing these fields as being too difficult educationally and lacking in the opportunity for extravagant fiscal renumeration. The essential point of my post was that by not maintaining leadership in fields of science and engineering (regardless of where products are manufactured) the US is setting itself up to be overshadowed by nations which will make technical innovation a key element of their future economic strategy. The training of foreign students and then exporting the skill base to support production in foreign countries with lower labor and regulatory standards–the essence of “outsourcing”–is a near term economic benefit as it results in inexpensive products, but ultimately is setting up those nations to take the lead in technical and industrial development as the US industry narrows to the areas of selling, trading, and blogging instead of producing products of intrinsic or original value. We’ve exacerbated this with an anti-science approach to many areas of research and in particular the biosciences. I think this point was very clear in my original post and would appreciate your not ascribing to me a strawman of your own creation. Stranger ---
**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:** [August 17, 2016, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-some-economist-please-explain-whats-wrong-with-outsourcing/762720/106 "2016-08-17T16:59:01Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > So is it the crossing of national borders that’s the kicker for you? I thought it was low wage earners competing with high wage earners. National borders are important. They frequently represent the borders of an economy and a consistent economic and regulatory policy. Its OUR high wage earners having to compete with THEIR low wage earners. Some say that it isn’t fair that the low wage earners should suffer the consequences of being born in a place with a less developed economy and if fixing that means that the high wage earners will suffer the gradual erosion of their standard of living or growth in wages that they would have otherwise enjoyed, well that’s the moral and right thing to do. I don’t think that the high wage earner or his representatives have to or ought to sit by and just let that happen. Its not like the China is engaging in free trade. They are engaging in what amounts to modern day mercantilism but instead of hoarding gold they are hoarding US dollars. They aren’t cooperating with the comparative advantage model. I don’t know what their exit strategy is but they are not really close to being forced to enact one yet. ETA: BTW, states do enact “trade barriers” Just ask any retired lawyer or doctor in Florida who wants to hang up a shingle. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2016, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-some-economist-please-explain-whats-wrong-with-outsourcing/762720/107 "2016-08-17T17:32:27Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > I’m not saying that the general principles of economics have collapsed but the theory of comparative advantage is not an immutable law that cannot be manipulated. If I enter into a trade agreement with you that erects trade barriers where you have comparative advantages and open up free trade where I have comparative advantages, what is the result? Well, one result is you cancel the agreement and fire your negotiators, who obviously are idiots. Do you have evidence the United States employed idiots to negotiate NAFTA? > [@](#): > > So lets say there are only two products guns and pizzas. It costs you $5 to produce a gun and $10 to produce a pizza. You have the ability to produce either 10 guns or 10 pizzas. I can produce guns for $1 and pizzas for $1. I have the ability to effectively produce an infinite amount of pizza and guns. Your comparative advantage is in guns. Why the fuck would I buy a gun from you for something over $5 if I can produce a near infinite supply of guns for $1. You don’t have an infinite ability to produce things, so you’re creating a hypothetical that makes no sense and cannot be answered. If you’d put a figure to your production capacity, I’ll provide an answer. > [@](#): > > What manufactured consumer product do we still export? You have been provided with a wide range of answers to this question in this thread. Software, entertainment products, gasoline, books… > [@](#): > > Are you under the impression that the U3 rate captures the health of our labor market right now? The change in the U3 does, yes. Please don’t bore me with “but the U6 is more important” argument. It’s low, too. If you compare apples to apples, the U.S. is not drowning in unemployment. If your argument is that the USA imports too much stuff you’re going to have to try to explain why that started before NAFTA. Or why U.S. trade deficits do not correspond to spikes in unemployment or low GDP growth. > [@](#): > > You are straining the meaning of the word sacrifice, certainly beyond anything that any reasonable person would think I intended. I’m sorry but wealth is wealth and you’re responsible for the logical implications of what you’re saying. IF raising a trade barrier that will impoverish and kill a thousand people in Indonesia is okay, it is just as okay to send in the Marines to kidnap them, murder them, and sell their organs to help the budget deficit. A human being has a moral duty to ameliorate the conditions of all other human beings, even if that duty must be reasonably mitigated by circumstance. There is no other decent position an adult can possibly take. It’s not a matter for debate. > [@](#): > > Am I sacrificing the welfare of my family when I don’t kill you and steal your stuff. Yes, you are. You could be richer if you stole things. By choosing not to steal things, you choose not to be richer. You sacrifice the welfare of your family for a moral reason. Now, as it happens, in a modern, industrialized country, even taking our the moral issue, you are probably NOT going to be better off stealing things because of the extremely high risk that you will be caught and punished, which will make you and your family much worse off. So if there were fewer cops around, would you be a thief? > [@](#): > > Free trade increases the size of the pie but the pie is not shared equally by all participants. Perhaps you should look to elements of domestic policy. If the American pie is growing but is not being shared equally, maybe there should be domestic policies that share the pie more fairly. Throwing out some of the pie, rather than sharing it, strikes me as being remarkably stupid. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2016, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-some-economist-please-explain-whats-wrong-with-outsourcing/762720/108 "2016-08-17T18:06:35Z")
> [@hermitcrab](#): > > Not only is the pool growing as other countries become globalized; population is growing too. That means more people competing for more jobs at lower wages and benefits. It also means more people buying, creating, producing, and investing wealth. The population of the United States of America 150 years ago was 31 million. Today it’s ten times that. Are Americans poorer than they were in 1866 because more people are competing for jobs? ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2016, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-some-economist-please-explain-whats-wrong-with-outsourcing/762720/109 "2016-08-17T18:14:38Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Please don’t bore me with “but the U6 is more important” argument. It’s low, too. If you compare apples to apples, the U.S. is not drowning in unemployment. The average monthly U-6 since BLS started reporting it is 10.7%. We’re at 9.6% now. ---
**Author:** ![onething](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/df788c/32.png) [@onething](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/onething)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2016, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-some-economist-please-explain-whats-wrong-with-outsourcing/762720/110 "2016-08-17T18:47:09Z")
Simple. There’s nothing wrong with it. As long as its done reasonably. I’d worry more about currency manipulation, dumping, Quantitative Easing and financial stipulation. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2016, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-some-economist-please-explain-whats-wrong-with-outsourcing/762720/111 "2016-08-17T20:47:29Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > It is interesting that this comment, out of all others, has been ignored by the majority of posters, and yet anyone involved in applied sciences and engineering will recognize both the essential truth and concern with the issues. Genius is often overlooked.😃 > [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > This is a result of companies being run by people who are totally disconnected with the actual services and products they provide and only focused on immediate financial repercussions, e.g. being run by finance and sales people focused solely on often bogus fiscal forecasting and what I term the “cult of leadership”; people focused only on impressing other people without consideration for actual production or consequences. I think this is true for most industries. Other than maybe software, I know very few people who are actually involved in anything having to do with making something. Managers don’t even have to really lead or manage people anymore. They write performance reviews for someone in their org chart halfway across the country they meet twice a year and hire external PMP certified project managers if they need someone to lead a team for a couple months. > [@puddleglum](#): > > The problem is that people look at the economy as a zero sum game and think if a foreigner is better off that means a countryman must be worse off. This is not the case, the world economy is growing all the time. There are no more natural resources available to the planet than there were 100 years ago but pretty much every nation in the world is better off. True, although outsourcing, like all forms of innovation, require change. If manufacturing towns in the US are no longer competitive, then they need to figure out some other way to add economic value or the people need to move somewhere else where there is more opportunity. If they are unwilling or unable to do that, then their situation will never improve. > [@WillFarnaby](#): > > An addendum to the middle manager bit: > > For a Reductio ad absurdum I posted earlier that got no traction. Imagine a family of doctors standing around slapping themselves in the head when the shitter breaks because none of them became a plumber. Or a middle class neighborhood upset they must put up with transportation fees for their electricity instead of having a local power plant Or for a real life example: Imagine the senior leadership of a Fortune 500 company telling them to hire an outside management consultancy to help them restructure their organization around the purchase of a software product they purchased from another firm without really knowing how to use it or what it can do. > [@Damuri Ajashi](#): > > Its OUR high wage earners having to compete with THEIR low wage earners. Some say that it isn’t fair that the low wage earners should suffer the consequences of being born in a place with a less developed economy and if fixing that means that the high wage earners will suffer the gradual erosion of their standard of living or growth in wages that they would have otherwise enjoyed, well that’s the moral and right thing to do. But as a general rule, it doesn’t erode the high wage earners standard of living. The high wage earners enjoy the benefit of cheaper goods, which improves their standard of living. Low wage earners in a high wage country enjoy this benefit more. The problem is that this is largely invisible because it benefits the entire economy. The closing of a factory is very visible. ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2016, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-some-economist-please-explain-whats-wrong-with-outsourcing/762720/112 "2016-08-17T23:03:52Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > It also means more people buying, creating, producing, and investing wealth. > > The population of the United States of America 150 years ago was 31 million. Today it’s ten times that. Are Americans poorer than they were in 1866 because more people are competing for jobs? It’s strange that people think wealth production is fixed or that a dollar has an intrinsic value. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2016, 11:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-some-economist-please-explain-whats-wrong-with-outsourcing/762720/113 "2016-08-18T11:37:39Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > In your rush to rebut my “key premise” you seem to have failed reading comprehension. I did not argue that a reduction in techincal capability was a result of NAFTA or other trade agreements, and in fact, I post facto caveated the comment about NAFTA with the qualifier, “But in the larger picture, outside of regulatory issues, …” Nor did I argue that many foreign-born students do not seek to stay and contribute to the US economy by becoming workers or entrepreneurs; in fact, the influx of foreign talent which views technical skills and work as being of equivalent socioeconomic stature to other professional degrees such as law and medicine, and as or more worthwhile as business, finance, and communications degrees, has been a boon to US employment as a decreasing number of US-born students enter into the sciences and engineering, viewing these fields as being too difficult educationally and lacking in the opportunity for extravagant fiscal renumeration. > > The essential point of my post was that by not maintaining leadership in fields of science and engineering (regardless of where products are manufactured) the US is setting itself up to be overshadowed by nations which will make technical innovation a key element of their future economic strategy. The training of foreign students and then exporting the skill base to support production in foreign countries with lower labor and regulatory standards–the essence of “outsourcing”–is a near term economic benefit as it results in inexpensive products, but ultimately is setting up those nations to take the lead in technical and industrial development as the US industry narrows to the areas of selling, trading, and blogging instead of producing products of intrinsic or original value. We’ve exacerbated this with an anti-science approach to many areas of research and in particular the biosciences. I think this point was very clear in my original post and would appreciate your not ascribing to me a strawman of your own creation. > > Stranger You are very hostile toward even the most mild challenge. It makes debating you no fun. I’m not going to argue about what your prior post meant. I’m glad you disavow the meaning I thought it had in the context of this thread. ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2016, 12:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-some-economist-please-explain-whats-wrong-with-outsourcing/762720/114 "2016-08-18T12:21:31Z")
In a bit of serendipity, 538 has an article on [China and free trade](http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-critics-of-free-trade-are-talking-china-not-nafta/)this morning. Disappointingly, to me at least, is that the electoral impact is again ignored. I maintain my thesis that ignoring the effect of free trade dislocations on voting patterns is the single biggest blind spot in economic analysis. Selected pull quotes: > [@](#): > > Most mainstream economists have long argued that rising global trade is a positive for the U.S. economy. Although some workers might lose their jobs from rising competition from imports, they argue, the economy as a whole grows bigger. Very solid, mainstream analysis. > [@](#): > > But two recent research papers by economists Autor, David Dorn and Gordon Hanson are far less sanguine about the stunning rise in Chinese imports. During the past 15 years, Chinese trade has had a concentrated and devastating effect on a certain segment of American workers, they find. Chinese trade is responsible for the loss of more than 2 million jobs between 1999 and 2011, and the affected U.S workers adapted much more poorly than expected, often unable to find work and relying instead on government assistance. To return to my thesis, those working adapting poorly are the basis of the Bernie/Trump electorate. They’re also why Hillary, who supported TPP earlier, is now against it. > [@](#): > > Some economists are even more negative about China’s impact. Robert Scott, an economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, along with co-author Will Kimball, estimated the impact of Chinese trade to be much worse: causing around 3.2 million lost jobs, most of them in manufacturing. That is the “small problem,” Scott said. The bigger one is suppressed wages, as his colleague Josh Bivens argued in a 2013 analysis that estimated growing trade with less-developed countries lowered the wages of the average worker without a college degree by $1,800 (in 2011 dollars); one-third of it is attributable to China. If true, we see that global trade does have a negative impact on a significant segment of American workers - a 2014 study shows that over 60% of working age adults [have no college degree](http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/percentage-americans-college-degrees-rises-paying-degrees-tops-financial-challenges/). If only 25%\* of those people are dislocated - or know someone who has been - in some way and express their anger politically that’s an enormous segment of the voting public that will demand some action on the issue. \*I used 25% as a jackleg figure by calculating that half of those so dislocated would be angry and half of those would bother to vote. I suspect it’s higher and that also contributes to the rise of anti-free trade rhetoric but numbers are very hard to come by. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2016, 12:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-some-economist-please-explain-whats-wrong-with-outsourcing/762720/115 "2016-08-18T12:34:52Z")
> [@Jonathan\_Chance](#): > > Disappointingly, to me at least, is that the electoral impact is again ignored. I maintain my thesis that ignoring the effect of free trade dislocations on voting patterns is the single biggest blind spot in economic analysis. This is logically equivalent to climate scientists saying “well, the Earth is getting warmer due to CO2 emissions and here’s a mountain of evidence of it” and someone saying “The blind spot in climate science is you don’t understand Republicans refuse to admit this is true.” Science is what it is. If politicians won’t govern accordingly, what are they supposed to do, change the science? ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2016, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-some-economist-please-explain-whats-wrong-with-outsourcing/762720/116 "2016-08-18T12:58:01Z")
No, I don’t think that’s quite right, Rick. Science - say the speed of light - is a fact. Bang. Economic theory - free trade benefits in the aggregate - is a fact. Conceded. But the speed of light doesn’t have negative impacts on a part of the electorate that can cause change. No amount of voter unhappiness can alter _c_. Significant voter unhappiness CAN alter our approach to free trade deals. Politicians WON’T ignore that - their primary reason for existing is re-election, remember - therefore economists SHOULDN’T ignore it. By ignoring such - not factoring it into the analysis - we up the risk of seeing future and existing trade deals suddenly revoked or not passed at all. Therefore, ignoring such may lead to slower long-term growth or even depression. Right now, between Bernie and Trump’s supporters I estimate between 25-35% of the American electorate is unhappy about their economic conditions and are blaming that on - among other things - free trade agreements (NAFTA, China, WTO, TPP and so forth). That’s a number big enough to make the sane candidate - Hillary - alter her position on TPP even though she’s facing down an idiot without a clear policy objective. Now imagine if one of two things happened. First, if her opponent weren’t a buffoon but a real candidate with the ability to make a case and harness that anger into votes from the middle. Second, what if that number (25 - 35%) were to grow to 35-45%? Either of those could lead to the sudden withdrawal of the United States from leading the free trade charge and that would be…disruptive. And that would have happened because we blew the math by ignoring a very important variable. I know voting behavior and electoral patterns are messy and hard to quantify. And I know that economists are, by and large, quants. Fine. But it’s irresponsible in the extreme to ignore a hard to quantify variable just because it’s hard to quantify. Hell, if you doubt me, look at the shock over the Brexit vote. People will clearly vote against economic expansion and growth simply because of their unhappiness. Now other nations in Europe are considering exiting the Euro and - while not all of the reason - factoring in ‘are my voters happy’ wasn’t sufficiently accounted for. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2016, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-some-economist-please-explain-whats-wrong-with-outsourcing/762720/117 "2016-08-18T12:58:36Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > This is logically equivalent to climate scientists saying “well, the Earth is getting warmer due to CO2 emissions and here’s a mountain of evidence of it” and someone saying “The blind spot in climate science is you don’t understand Republicans refuse to admit this is true.” > > Science is what it is. If politicians won’t govern accordingly, what are they supposed to do, change the science? In economics as in climate science, they do what the 538 article did - cherry pick a study from someone who agrees with them and ignore everything else. Politics is what it is. If supporting the TPP won’t get you elected, what are you supposed to do, change your position? Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2016, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-some-economist-please-explain-whats-wrong-with-outsourcing/762720/118 "2016-08-18T13:51:53Z")
\*\* Jonathan Chance\*\*, allow me to repeat back what I think your point is. To see if I’m getting you. Even if we all agree that removing trade barriers will help a vast majority of our own citizens, moving too quickly and not helping ease the transition of people negatively affected (either in reality or fantasy) risks energizing them to the point that we end up with policy moving in what we see as the wrong direction. ---
**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:** [August 18, 2016, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-some-economist-please-explain-whats-wrong-with-outsourcing/762720/119 "2016-08-18T13:57:37Z")
[quote=“RickJay, post:107, topic:762720”] Well, one result is you cancel the agreement and fire your negotiators, who obviously are idiots. Do you have evidence the United States employed idiots to negotiate NAFTA? [quote] Who said anything about NAFTA? What is the economic result of such an agreement? I think we can all agree that it would be grossly unfair to one of the trading partners. If you negotiate an agreement that exposes your citizens to labor price competition and in exchange receive the ability to buy cheaper goods from the people who took your job, its a shitty deal. > [@](#): > > You don’t have an infinite ability to produce things, so you’re creating a hypothetical that makes no sense and cannot be answered. If you’d put a figure to your production capacity, I’ll provide an answer. It doesn’t matter but lets just say you can produce 10 and I can produce 100. My demand for guns and pizza at $1 price is about 20 of each. Your demand at your current production price is 5 of each and at $1 is 35 of each. How do you satisfy that demand if I don’t buy anything from you? You have to transfer wealth, no? > [@](#): > > You have been provided with a wide range of answers to this question in this thread. Software, entertainment products, gasoline, books… And I have pointed out how we either import just as much if not more of most of those items so that we have a trade deficit in trading those items. I have pointed out how trade barriers and export subsidies are ridiculously high in some of those areas and how we employ very few people in producing much of that trade. 5 million fewer manufacturing jobs despite our increase in manufacturing and exports of manufactured goods. That is not just a result of technology making manufacturing more efficient, its a result of folks like Apple making Iphones in China rather than the US for a few dollars cheaper and then selling them in the US for a ridiculous mark up that dwarfs anything they might pay to make the phones in the US. > [@](#): > > The change in the U3 does, yes. Please don’t bore me with “but the U6 is more important” argument. It’s low, too. If you compare apples to apples, the U.S. is not drowning in unemployment. So the change in the U3 tells us the quality of the jobs that are replacing the jobs lost to outsourcing? I never said anything about unemployment, you are the one that seems to think that the U3 rate tells us everything we need to know. > [@](#): > > If your argument is that the USA imports too much stuff you’re going to have to try to explain why that started before NAFTA. Or why U.S. trade deficits do not correspond to spikes in unemployment or low GDP growth. Prior to NAFTA, oil was a pretty big part of our imports. > **[United States Balance of Trade](https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/balance-of-trade)** > > The United States recorded a trade deficit of 73.10 USD Billion in June of 2024. This page provides the latest reported value for - United States Balance of Trade - plus previous releases, historical high and low, short-term forecast and long-term... > [@](#): > > I’m sorry but wealth is wealth and you’re responsible for the logical implications of what you’re saying. IF raising a trade barrier that will impoverish and kill a thousand people in Indonesia is okay, it is just as okay to send in the Marines to kidnap them, murder them, and sell their organs to help the budget deficit. A human being has a moral duty to ameliorate the conditions of all other human beings, even if that duty must be reasonably mitigated by circumstance. There is no other decent position an adult can possibly take. It’s not a matter for debate. Not trading with someone is not the same thing as killing them and stealing their kidneys. Your position is ridiculous. > [@](#): > > Yes, you are. You could be richer if you stole things. By choosing not to steal things, you choose not to be richer. You sacrifice the welfare of your family for a moral reason. That is a retarded thing to say and you undermine whatever validity your argument may have had when you say that NOT stealing things is a reasonable reading of the word sacrifice. > [@](#): > > Now, as it happens, in a modern, industrialized country, even taking our the moral issue, you are probably NOT going to be better off stealing things because of the extremely high risk that you will be caught and punished, which will make you and your family much worse off. So if there were fewer cops around, would you be a thief? There is a moral difference between refusing to feed you with food that my family is eating and taking your kidneys. > [@](#): > > Perhaps you should look to elements of domestic policy. If the American pie is growing but is not being shared equally, maybe there should be domestic policies that share the pie more fairly. Throwing out some of the pie, rather than sharing it, strikes me as being remarkably stupid. In 200 years of modern trade economics, we have heard people say time and time again this exact same thing and we have almost never seen governments force those who benefit the most from trade share those benefits with those who suffer as a result of trade. How would you finance that amelioration of suffering anyways? Tax the trade? Tax the profits from trade? How do you do it when most of the pie ends up going to other countries, how do you tax THEM? ---
**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:** [August 18, 2016, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-some-economist-please-explain-whats-wrong-with-outsourcing/762720/120 "2016-08-18T13:59:42Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > It also means more people buying, creating, producing, and investing wealth. > > The population of the United States of America 150 years ago was 31 million. Today it’s ten times that. Are Americans poorer than they were in 1866 because more people are competing for jobs? An economy can absorb the slow growth in its labor pool that comes with organic population growth. It causes much less displacement than quadrupling the labor pool overnight. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-some-economist-please-explain-whats-wrong-with-outsourcing/762720.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-some-economist-please-explain-whats-wrong-with-outsourcing/762720.md?page=7)