alt Hacker NewsMr Tariff is probably slightly better to keep those around than not, but ideally I'd rather the government curate experts they employ to advise them.
I guess I kinda walked right into handing technocrats power, but I really just want the government to understand the tech they regulate. We'd rather have populist zingers on TV though.
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Mr. Tariff was trying to replace the income tax with tariffs with a bonus of having personal power over other countries economies by whatever tariff he decree'd. The "more jobs" was a smokescreen, and I'm sure you're aware of that
Trade policy should be as holistic as possible (tariffs, taxes, subsidies, etc), with the goal of aiding a robust domestic economy.
The 70's neoliberalism took Smith's comparative advantage argument and stripped it of context — optimizing for quarterly returns and capital mobility while ignoring the industrial ecosystem those returns depend on. You can't offshore your entire manufacturing base and expect to retain the innovation, workforce capacity, and supply chain resilience that made those profits possible in the first place.
Contrast this with "For years I thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors and vice versa. The difference did not exist. Our company is too big. It goes with the welfare of the country."
That era was not without its issues as well, but there was a sense that "we're all in it together" vs the "greed is good" crowd.
Technoauthoritarians writing pretentious manifestos disavowing democracy explicitly don't want the government to understand the tech they regulate though, never mind curating experts, which is why they're so keen on the likes of Mr Tariff.