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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   32411 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 21, 2025

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Teensy-tiny would be 1% or maybe 2-3%.

I do not think that the tariffs Trump has announced are Final For All Time.

I already explained that trade deficits are imaginary problem.

I don't think this is the consensus of economists. At a minimum there appear to be differing schools of thought on it.

I don't think this is the consensus of economists. At a minimum there appear to be differing schools of thought on it.

This thing is pretty definite. During covid we had a lot of discussions about masks, if they are effective and so on. Cochrane review clearly showed we have no evidence that masks are effective which in other words means that in medicine we don't use them. We use only things that have evidence of effectiveness. You can sometimes use experimentally, but you cannot claim that they are effective. Mask mandates are out of question, just a recommendation for voluntary use.

Yet, a lot of governments and even medical professionals were adamant that masks definitely help. All these different opinions mean nothing. People just don't want to admit the best evidence that we have and follow their own beliefs.

I understand that I am not going to convince anyone. It is just that I haven't seen trustable evidence of the contrary. Economics are different from medicine therefore maybe I am wrong. I still would need to see good reason that would explain why trade deficits are the problem per se.

I still would need to see good reason that would explain why trade deficits are the problem per se.

If you think about it very in very reductive terms, I think it's pretty easy to understand where the potential problem is. Obviously if in your personal life you "import a greater value than you export" (buy things you cannot pay for) you might be In Trouble. It seems, intuitively, to be something like debt - maybe it is sometimes necessary, or sometimes even beneficial, but not something you want to make a habit of.

However Real Life Macroeconomics is not very reductive! So while I can intuitively see the problem with a trade deficit in theory I am not sure how well that actually captures the practice, particularly because "value" is a slippery thing. Maybe that's why I personally care a bit more about "limited autarky" than the trade balance, since I am not yet prepared to try to better understand macroeconomics in anything like a systematic way.

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