Various web links, including some related to economics and economists, that I found to be of interest recently.
In summary, there was no discernible boost in investment. No sustained increase in GDP growth. No $4,000 pay raise. And the TCJA didn't pay for itself (significant increase in deficit).
So there is precedent for Trump doing exactly what I am suggesting here - a dramatic threat of tariffs right before an anticipated deal was signed. Then it looks to all the world like a Trump "win."
How does Trump know he can get a deal? Recall that the previous
negotiations foundered on US accusations that China had reneged
on previous promises. That's kind of silly, as in trade negotiations
nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed to. As the US made
more and more demands, China may have backed off on some positions
in order to get a sense of what issues were most important to American
negotiators. In any case, Trump presumably knows that China will
agree to a deal based on their best previous offer, which was reported
to be more than 90% of a completed deal. Thus Trump knows he can get
a deal anytime he wants, if he's willing to settle for a deal that
incorporates China's best offer in previous negotiations.
...
People talk a lot about the US interests regarding trade deficits,
intellectual property, national security, etc. Trump doesn't care
about any of this. Well, he cares a bit about trade deficits.
But for the most part Trump cares about Trump. He'll gladly give
in on Huawei if he can get a trade deal that helps him get re-elected.
Do you think Pennsylvania steelworkers care about Huawei? To his credit,
Trump correctly understands that the John Bolton's of the world are
foolish warmongers, and Huawei is not a threat to US national security.
By Binyamin Appelbaum in the New York Times.
Why did America listen to the people who thought we needed
"more millionaires and more bankrupts?"
In the four decades between 1969 and 2008, economists played a leading role in slashing taxation of the wealthy and in curbing public investment. They supervised the deregulation of major sectors, including transportation and communications. They lionized big business, defending the concentration of corporate power, even as they demonized trade unions and opposed worker protections like minimum wage laws. Economists even persuaded policymakers to assign a dollar value to human life - around $10 million in 2019 - to assess whether regulations were worthwhile.
The revolution, like so many revolutions, went too far. Growth slowed and inequality soared, with devastating consequences. Perhaps the starkest measure of the failure of our economic policies is that the average American's life expectancy is in decline, as inequalities of wealth have become inequalities of health. Life expectancy rose for the wealthiest 20 percent of Americans between 1980 and 2010. Over the same three decades, life expectancy declined for the poorest 20 percent of Americans. Shockingly, the difference in average life expectancy between poor and wealthy women widened from 3.9 years to 13.6 years.
For comments on this see Blame the Economists? by Peter Boettke.
Thinking along these lines is a missed opportunity for the needed intellectual reboot. It is not a matter of replacing economist A with economist B; it is a matter of rethinking what economists should do. I have argued based on my reading from Adam Smith to Vernon Smith, that we economists should be content in our role as students of society, teachers of a scientific discipline, and as social critics. In short, we must come to grips with our role as lowly philosophers, and eschew our claim to being high priests.
Kelton is the foremost evangelist of a fringe economic movement
called Modern Monetary Theory, which, in part, argues
that the government should pay for programs requiring big spending,
such as the Green New Deal, by simply printing more money.
...
But the basic principle of M.M.T. is seductively simple:
governments don't have to budget like households, worrying about debt,
because, unlike households, they can simply print their own money.
So M.M.T. proposes that the constraint on government spending shouldn't
be debt but inflation: How much new money can you pump into the economy
before prices rise?
Short 4 minute video from BBC Ideas about the limits of human memory.
Companies are constantly patenting strange things they have no intention of developing. Here’s why.
There are lots of reasons to patent something. The most obvious one is that you've come up with a brilliant invention, and you want to protect your idea so that nobody can steal it from you. But that's just the tip of the patent strategy iceberg. It turns out there is a whole host of strategies that lead to "zany" or "weird" patent filings, and understanding them offers a window not just into the labyrinthine world of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and its potential failings, but also into how companies think about the future. And while it might be fun to gawk at, say, Motorola patenting a lie-detecting throat tattoo, it's also important to see through the eye-catching headlines and to the bigger issue here: Patents can be weapons and signals. They can spur innovation, as well as crush it.
By Andrew Odlyzko
There is a rising tide of security breaches. There is an even faster rising tide of hysteria over the ostensible reason for these breaches, namely the deficient state of our information infrastructure. Yet the world is doing remarkably well overall, and has not suffered any of the oft-threatened giant digital catastrophes. This continuing general progress of society suggests that cyber security is not very important. Adaptations to cyberspace of techniques that worked to protect the traditional physical world have been the main means of mitigating the problems that occurred. This "chewing gum and baling wire" approach is likely to continue to be the basic method of handling problems that arise, and to provide adequate levels of security.