news flash: the republicans suck too

After the election, I (and a bunch of people in the media) spent some time dissing the Democrats for their attitudes toward and misperceptions regarding international trade. It seems only fair to acknowledge that the Republicans haven't been doing much better, a point which is well articulated in this Slate article. As the article points* out, the Democrats, at least, seem to approach the trade issue as one of economic inequality and insecurity--which in many ways it certainly is--and they seem more willing to promote policies that will address those aspects of the issue (although I don't think it's fair to say that the Republicans are totally unwilling...they just seem to have stupider ideas in that department).

Which is not to say that the Democrats' ideas are great, or that there are a plethora of simple, effective ideas out there that will keep globalization and other forms of economic change from destroying the livelihoods of some people. Most of the ideas that are out there are hard to implement or don't work very well. For example, in one of his comments, N described the way in which the economy in Buffalo, NY, was decimated by deindustrialization. A not-insignificant portion of the problem there is that Buffalo's economy was dependent on a relatively small number of industries. But while it's easy to argue that economic diversification would benefit cities and regions by partially insulating them from market changes, the reality is that I can name ten reasons (well, maybe not ten, but a lot) why the market, as it tends to function in most sectors, promotes specialization of the sort that leads to, say, all the jobs in Detroit being in the auto industry. This is actually just an example of a very basic economic idea: there is very, very often an inherent trade-off between efficiency and equality, and it's usually pretty difficult to pinpoint the optimal mix of the two, let alone make decisions and promote policies that will effectively produce that mix.

Gee, I feel great about my chosen profession right now.

But Jenn, shouldn't you be working on your paper instead of bemoaning the basic nature of capitalism? Why yes, I should be.


*Style note: yes, I noticed the clunky repetition of the word "point". The paper I'm writing is one of those that lends itself to repetition of words and phrases, and I've been driving myself nuts trying to deal with it, so I'm letting it go here.