TenuredVulture wrote:

Camp Holdout wrote:

Warszawa wrote:free trade - meh

i almost posted something to this affect after JH's post. i'd love that debate to open up a little bit about "free trade". what that actually means, why it actually seems to be hurting american business when coupled with other policies, and why it seems to have hindered innovation on an international scale.

i feel like its something that people think they should be for because it has the word "free" in it. but if they actually think about it for more than 10 seconds they might realize its a pretty iffy prospect...

Free trade also produces opportunities for American business.

While some right wing economists like to charge the New Deal with exacerbating the Great Depression rather than improving economic conditions, there's no doubt that protectionism, adopted by almost every country, made things a lot worse.

i hear ya. its a messy thing. i just think its a debate that is needed in this country. the republicans would of course win it because if you are against something with the word "free" in it, you must be against "freedom".

i think the odd thing is that when we just trust our american businesses to compete on a global "free" scale, and we start losing... badly, we should do something about it. the automobile industry is a pretty interesting case study on this point, and one that might actually be appropriate for this election cycle.

jerseyhoya wrote:Not trying to be argumentative, and also I'm not sure how much this would have changed things, but the only way this campaign was ever going to be "different" was if Obama had accepted McCain's town hall offering.

I think there's at least a bit of truth to this. Human nature alone means it's tougher to attack and distort someone you see every week or two.

At the time Obama dismissed this possibility, he was very confident of winning, and it's classic tactics (as j-hoya well knows) for the front-runner to minimize his face time with the underdog. But I wish he'd taken the chance, simply because regular debates might have served the purpose--once considered important but now, far as I can tell, almost entirely gone from our Politics of Nothing--of better informing the voting public.

The truth is that neither of these guys is going to "change the tone" in Washington. They just won't. That's beyond the capacity of any one individual, maybe even one party (which would be accused by its mobilized base of "unilateral disarmament"). This is the residue of what I consider almost the "cold civil war" of our politics.

The campaign itself digs in the candidates. Do you think it's a coincidence that both McCain and Obama are sounding a hell of a lot more partisan now than they were six or twelve months ago? Of course not: when you're attacked and mocked and demonized by "the other side" for months on end, you dig in. Add that in McCain's case, he's gotten as far as he has by consciously embracing a polarization strategy--becoming more like Bush in his campaign tactics and his (or Palin's) sneering disdain for liberal elitist babykillers--and you have trouble seeing how he walks it back.

And that's even before you consider that he'll be facing a Democratic Congress that will be pushed by its base to thwart him at every turn.

So--jeff, I'm talking to you--if you don't believe that either guy can "change the tone" or "reach across party lines" or "do things differently," you're thrown back on first principles. Which party has the worldview and policy menu that's closer to your views?

The other advantage of this perspective, I find, is that it dulls down my sometime-rage at people such as the righties in this thread, most of whom I quite like outside of their wrongheaded politics. They're just looking at it the way I am, albeit reaching different conclusions.

jerseyhoya wrote:

Camp Holdout wrote:

Warszawa wrote:free trade - meh

i almost posted something to this affect after JH's post. i'd love that debate to open up a little bit about "free trade". what that actually means, why it actually seems to be hurting american business when coupled with other policies, and why it seems to have hindered innovation on an international scale.

i feel like its something that people think they should be for because it has the word "free" in it. but if they actually think about it for more than 10 seconds they might realize its a pretty iffy prospect...

You can debate whether or not government should do more to retrain workers who have lost their jobs or whether there should be a more extensive social safety net. But denying the net economic benefits of free trade is as dumb as arguing against the theory of evolution.

Maybe so, but there was a lot more progress towards freer trade under Clinton than with Bush. Bush is simply unwilling to eliminate the farm subsidies necessary to get WTO back on track. I know Dems are complicit in this, but the reality is neither party is interested in making the politics of free trade work out, as both have interest groups working against broad, comprehensive free trade.

It's important to note that one of the first things the Bush administration did was increase tariffs on imported steal, which had the perverse effect of putting US Autoworkers out of work. The right wing nut hysteria (again with complicity from Dems) over the port thing was another example of lack of commitment to free trade. No open skies agreement--if you want to see airline service improve in the US, you might open US domestic air travel to foreign competition, but that's not gonna happen either.

im not arguing against the theory of a "free trade" market.

im not actually arguing either side. i dont think this issue should be owned by either party. perhaps the word "meh" was perfect for it.

Moreover on the free trade thing--one industry where the US clearly dominates, as in completely and totally kicks major ass and no one else is even close is routinely attack by Republicans for sorts of imagined ills. Yes, I'm talking about higher education. But the right wing wants remake higher education into our fabulous system of primary and secondary education.

Camp Holdout wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:

Camp Holdout wrote:

Warszawa wrote:free trade - meh

i almost posted something to this affect after JH's post. i'd love that debate to open up a little bit about "free trade". what that actually means, why it actually seems to be hurting american business when coupled with other policies, and why it seems to have hindered innovation on an international scale.

i feel like its something that people think they should be for because it has the word "free" in it. but if they actually think about it for more than 10 seconds they might realize its a pretty iffy prospect...

Free trade also produces opportunities for American business.

While some right wing economists like to charge the New Deal with exacerbating the Great Depression rather than improving economic conditions, there's no doubt that protectionism, adopted by almost every country, made things a lot worse.

i hear ya. its a messy thing. i just think its a debate that is needed in this country. the republicans would of course win it because if you are against something with the word "free" in it, you must be against "freedom".

i think the odd thing is that when we just trust our american businesses to compete on a global "free" scale, and we start losing... badly, we should do something about it. the automobile industry is a pretty interesting case study on this point, and one that might actually be appropriate for this election cycle.

Ultimately, the way you win in the global economy is by producing the best-educated, most highly skilled workforce. (I'm pretty sure this is true even outside my professionally self-interested take on it.) Problem is that this doesn't happen in a vacuum: you need big public investment, ideally guided by and supplanted from the business community, in schools, job training, mid-career counseling, and so on.

Neither party has come remotely close to supporting this kind of investment (though the Dems have been consistently better, or less awful, than the Republicans), and the business community, while interested in the abstract in more help from government in up-skilling their workers, continually makes it less of a priority than lower taxes, less regulation, etc. I think this is in part a result of the shorter-term thinking endemic to corporate executives... which is understandable in light of their obligations to stockholders, but really just means that we need more far-sighted, proactive government.

Camp Holdout wrote:i think the odd thing is that when we just trust our american businesses to compete on a global "free" scale, and we start losing... badly, we should do something about it.

i should clarify what i mean. im all for toying with the "natural" market forces, but in smart ways. so the automobile industry of course is a spot where our american companies seem to be WAY behind on the innovation scale and are struggling. so i'm all for getting involved and helping out. but not just to help them 'keep the money rolling in' but 'helping them actually compete and make better products.'

so when a government policy tries to interject itself in this natural competition process by handicapping the competition... it doesn't help that losing company innovate at all, it just helps them tread water with the status quo.

in case you haven't gleaned it, im thinking about helping american automobile companies catch up in the alternative fuel game. we suck at it.. a lot.

just one example though, i think, of the way the idea of "free trade" has been warped big time.

TenuredVulture wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:

Camp Holdout wrote:

Warszawa wrote:free trade - meh

i almost posted something to this affect after JH's post. i'd love that debate to open up a little bit about "free trade". what that actually means, why it actually seems to be hurting american business when coupled with other policies, and why it seems to have hindered innovation on an international scale.

i feel like its something that people think they should be for because it has the word "free" in it. but if they actually think about it for more than 10 seconds they might realize its a pretty iffy prospect...

You can debate whether or not government should do more to retrain workers who have lost their jobs or whether there should be a more extensive social safety net. But denying the net economic benefits of free trade is as dumb as arguing against the theory of evolution.

Maybe so, but there was a lot more progress towards freer trade under Clinton than with Bush. Bush is simply unwilling to eliminate the farm subsidies necessary to get WTO back on track. I know Dems are complicit in this, but the reality is neither party is interested in making the politics of free trade work out, as both have interest groups working against broad, comprehensive free trade.

It's important to note that one of the first things the Bush administration did was increase tariffs on imported steal, which had the perverse effect of putting US Autoworkers out of work. The right wing nut hysteria (again with complicity from Dems) over the port thing was another example of lack of commitment to free trade. No open skies agreement--if you want to see airline service improve in the US, you might open US domestic air travel to foreign competition, but that's not gonna happen either.

Not every Republican is 100% in support of free trade, and not every Dem is 100% in opposition. But in the grand scheme of things, the Republican Party is more consistent in its support of free trade than the Dems are. Clinton was an exception, and it doesn't look like we're getting another pro-trade Democrat with Obama.

Bush vetoed the most recent farm bill because of the bloated subsidies for agribusiness, and was overridden by a bipartisan coalition in Congress. Bush's trade rep in the most recent iteration of the Doha round of negotiations offered to cap our yearly farm subsidies at a level below where they were currently, but efforts at a compromise failed.

If the GOP still controlled congress, we would have passed the bill with Colombia by now.

dajafi wrote:The truth is that neither of these guys is going to "change the tone" in Washington. They just won't. That's beyond the capacity of any one individual, maybe even one party (which would be accused by its mobilized base of "unilateral disarmament"). This is the residue of what I consider almost the "cold civil war" of our politics.

I think Obama will at least try to change the tone. That's a start. Presumably any big change begins with trying something different.

dajafi wrote:

Camp Holdout wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:

Camp Holdout wrote:

Warszawa wrote:free trade - meh

i almost posted something to this affect after JH's post. i'd love that debate to open up a little bit about "free trade". what that actually means, why it actually seems to be hurting american business when coupled with other policies, and why it seems to have hindered innovation on an international scale.

i feel like its something that people think they should be for because it has the word "free" in it. but if they actually think about it for more than 10 seconds they might realize its a pretty iffy prospect...

Free trade also produces opportunities for American business.

While some right wing economists like to charge the New Deal with exacerbating the Great Depression rather than improving economic conditions, there's no doubt that protectionism, adopted by almost every country, made things a lot worse.

i hear ya. its a messy thing. i just think its a debate that is needed in this country. the republicans would of course win it because if you are against something with the word "free" in it, you must be against "freedom".

i think the odd thing is that when we just trust our american businesses to compete on a global "free" scale, and we start losing... badly, we should do something about it. the automobile industry is a pretty interesting case study on this point, and one that might actually be appropriate for this election cycle.

Ultimately, the way you win in the global economy is by producing the best-educated, most highly skilled workforce. (I'm pretty sure this is true even outside my professionally self-interested take on it.) Problem is that this doesn't happen in a vacuum: you need big public investment, ideally guided by and supplanted from the business community, in schools, job training, mid-career counseling, and so on.

Neither party has come remotely close to supporting this kind of investment (though the Dems have been consistently better, or less awful, than the Republicans), and the business community, while interested in the abstract in more help from government in up-skilling their workers, continually makes it less of a priority than lower taxes, less regulation, etc. I think this is in part a result of the shorter-term thinking endemic to corporate executives... which is understandable in light of their obligations to stockholders, but really just means that we need more far-sighted, proactive government.

i agree with your first paragraph. i disagree to an extent in the second graph that the biz community hasn't made this a priority. (disclosure: we are wading into what i do for living, which i bring up not to say that i know more or anything that, just in the interest assuring you i'm not off on some big BS trip). in many communities, worker talent is the number one issue and become top priority. however the barriers to solutions are many and boil down to (a) not being able to really agree and measure what upskilling means, and (b)some of the cultural problems inherent in the education system.

on (a), what i mean by that is education beaucracy is frustrating to say the least and the prevailing thinking is not bottom-line, data-oriented the way business is (or should be). you can read this as unions putting teachers over students, or lack of good data systems, or too much interference from the feds at this point. whatever the case, the system is very much broken and needs a transformation (much like health care). the downfall of NCLB for instance, which is related to worker training in the public school sense (these kids eventually need to hold a down a job) is that the assessment and tracking aspect of it is poor. the law itself has the right intentions, but it's currently quite hard to really measure what's being done. the education community is incredibly stratified - look into how many associations there are for everyone to join, for instance. it's ridiculous.

on (b), the cultural problem is the assumption that the "haves" go to a four year school and the "have nots" are relgated to community college or trade school (the NIT of higher education, so to speak). becaase job growth is coming from these types of trades (STEM - science, technology, engineering, math at the middle levels), our system is currently, to put it bluntly, culturally steering kids away from our greatest needs because these jobs are seen as being for the underclass.

all this is to say that i don't necessarily think biz leaders don't realize this is a problem, or have other priorities. it's that they see the system and don't have much hope that real change could be affected, or any idea how to navigate those waters. the education folks for the most part dont' understand why business cares what theya re teaching. i suspect this might be a generational thing and once more X & Yers come into position, some of the barriers may melt away. hopefully, anyway.

what should a president or candidate say about this? i'm not really sure. it should probably be treated with a hands-off approach to innovation more than anything else.

sorry, i went on way too long.

BuddyGroom wrote:

dajafi wrote:The truth is that neither of these guys is going to "change the tone" in Washington. They just won't. That's beyond the capacity of any one individual, maybe even one party (which would be accused by its mobilized base of "unilateral disarmament"). This is the residue of what I consider almost the "cold civil war" of our politics.

I think Obama will at least try to change the tone. That's a start. Presumably any big change begins with trying something different.

not gonna happen. washington cannot be changed by one person, no matter how charasmatic or successful. plus, he's already not changing it. look at the hysteria of his constintuancy over the Palin pick (salon called her an islamic fundamentalist, the philly daily news columnist said there will be riots if obama doesn't win). he won't change anything, nothing against him. it is flat out not within his power or any other individual's. all he can do is make life a little better for his supporters.

and, please remember, GWB came to town as an outsider ready to change the tone. he passed NCLB, which Kennedy wrote and the conservatives hated, invited kennedy and his family to the white house and spent money on fed programs like a frenchman (<---line stolen from Cato Institute). but, because of the controversy of the 2000 election, there was never a chance everyone was going to get along. this time around, it will be something else. partisanship is a way of life in thise town. always has been, always will be.

gr wrote:in many communities, worker talent is the number one issue and become top priority. however the barriers to solutions are many and boil down to (a) not being able to really agree and measure what upskilling means, and (b)some of the cultural problems inherent in the education system.

on (a), what i mean by that is education beaucracy is frustrating to say the least and the prevailing thinking is not bottom-line, data-oriented the way business is (or should be). you can read this as unions putting teachers over students, or lack of good data systems, or too much interference from the feds at this point. whatever the case, the system is very much broken and needs a transformation (much like health care). the downfall of NCLB for instance, which is related to worker training in the public school sense (these kids eventually need to hold a down a job) is that the assessment and tracking aspect of it is poor. the law itself has the right intentions, but it's currently quite hard to really measure what's being done. the education community is incredibly stratified - look into how many associations there are for everyone to join, for instance. it's ridiculous.

This gets back somewhat to the argument Vox and pacino were having the other day about accountability within the educational system. Suffice it to say that I agree in the main with you and Vox, but I think pacino has a point about the fairness concerns. I do think that where the business community, and outside reform advocates in general, have fallen short is in not offering big new solutions. Privatizing the system is neither very realistic nor particularly promising (see here, for example). The closest I've seen to a big idea is Matt Miller's proposal to "nationalize the schools (...a little),"which I actually agree with but is politically a total nonstarter.

(This could very easily lead me into another moony plea for Bloomberg, but I'll refrain.)

gr wrote:on (b), the cultural problem is the assumption that the "haves" go to a four year school and the "have nots" are relgated to community college or trade school (the NIT of higher education, so to speak). becaase job growth is coming from these types of trades (STEM - science, technology, engineering, math at the middle levels), our system is currently, to put it bluntly, culturally steering kids away from our greatest needs because these jobs are seen as being for the underclass.

Damn right. I don't often agree with Charles Murray, but both he (getting a lot of attention) and I (erm, not so much) have been making a variant of this argument: that the point isn't really college at all but vocational education, which has been devalued and mocked for so long that we've lost all sense of how enormously important it is (and that it's actually an enhancement, not a barrier, to college-going).

gr wrote:what should a president or candidate say about this? i'm not really sure. it should probably be treated with a hands-off approach to innovation more than anything else.

This I don't agree with. The president has enormous power to set an agenda and kick-start national conversations. Bush very rarely talked about this, and his occasional positive proposals (doubling investment in community colleges) were invariably funded by cutting something as or more important (annual proposals to totally de-fund the Perkins Act). Clinton was somewhat better, but whenever he got going about this the press just shrugged it off as indicative of his tendency to alternate between wonking and wanking, so to speak.

Camp Holdout wrote:

Camp Holdout wrote:i think the odd thing is that when we just trust our american businesses to compete on a global "free" scale, and we start losing... badly, we should do something about it.

i should clarify what i mean. im all for toying with the "natural" market forces, but in smart ways. so the automobile industry of course is a spot where our american companies seem to be WAY behind on the innovation scale and are struggling. so i'm all for getting involved and helping out. but not just to help them 'keep the money rolling in' but 'helping them actually compete and make better products.'

so when a government policy tries to interject itself in this natural competition process by handicapping the competition... it doesn't help that losing company innovate at all, it just helps them tread water with the status quo.

in case you haven't gleaned it, im thinking about helping american automobile companies catch up in the alternative fuel game. we suck at it.. a lot.

just one example though, i think, of the way the idea of "free trade" has been warped big time.

That's not free trade. Actually, it's the opposite. You are the one warping the idea of free trade. If our local businesses can't make cars effectively, I don't see why government needs to support them. Are you upset that US companies make few of our tshirts and other clothes? My guess is no, and that's how we should feel about the failing domestic car industry.

jerseyhoya wrote:You have some idealistic view of how you'd like to see a political campaign carried out. You will never see that fulfilled, because at the end of the day it doesn't work that way.

setting aside the matter of whether "it" "works" the way it is, you make this statement as if it's demonstrable that there can be no alternative, effective means of carrying out elections

Werthless wrote:

Camp Holdout wrote:

Camp Holdout wrote:i think the odd thing is that when we just trust our american businesses to compete on a global "free" scale, and we start losing... badly, we should do something about it.

i should clarify what i mean. im all for toying with the "natural" market forces, but in smart ways. so the automobile industry of course is a spot where our american companies seem to be WAY behind on the innovation scale and are struggling. so i'm all for getting involved and helping out. but not just to help them 'keep the money rolling in' but 'helping them actually compete and make better products.'

so when a government policy tries to interject itself in this natural competition process by handicapping the competition... it doesn't help that losing company innovate at all, it just helps them tread water with the status quo.

in case you haven't gleaned it, im thinking about helping american automobile companies catch up in the alternative fuel game. we suck at it.. a lot.

just one example though, i think, of the way the idea of "free trade" has been warped big time.

That's not free trade. Actually, it's the opposite. You are the one warping the idea of free trade. If our local businesses can't make cars effectively, I don't see why government needs to support them. Are you upset that US companies make few of our tshirts and other clothes? My guess is no, and that's how we should feel about the failing domestic car industry.

The sad part is that the US car companies didn't necessarily lack innovation, they were bad businessmen. GM's Chairman Rick Wagoner admitted two years ago that the biggest mistake he made was killing the EV-1 program at the beginning of the century. They would have been years ahead of other automakers. They were too focused on the large margins they could bring in with SUV's, and didn't think long term.

VoxOrion wrote:^ again, a red herring. Yes, the there doesn't appear to be a fiscal restraint party in the US today. That doesn't change the fact that one party is more likely to appeal to certain values while the other is certain not to.

consider that many people choose the 'less repellant' rather than 'more appealing' party.

not entirely a matter of semantics; humans are big on loss aversion.

gr wrote:what should a president or candidate say about this? i'm not really sure. it should probably be treated with a hands-off approach to innovation more than anything else.

dajafi wrote:This I don't agree with. The president has enormous power to set an agenda and kick-start national conversations. Bush very rarely talked about this, and his occasional positive proposals (doubling investment in community colleges) were invariably funded by cutting something as or more important (annual proposals to totally de-fund the Perkins Act). Clinton was somewhat better, but whenever he got going about this the press just shrugged it off as indicative of his tendency to alternate between wonking and wanking, so to speak.

i know what you're saying. i am skeptical because of two things:
(a) while i agree that the bullypulpit can be powerful, when it comes to educating our kids ("think of the children") there is enormous pride in making local decisions and response to federal mandates or even suggestions are spotty. otherwise, we'd just have federal standards. but say that at the state and local levels and you will be hung.

one bright spot is the formation of career clusters (i was going to link, but after reading your op-ed, i know i don't need to), which are supposed to organize learning and keep it similar enough that data in one state equals data from another state. but the reponse hasn't been real strong so far. as i understand it, these were rolled out during the Clinton years as the "New American Schools" initiative. when GWB came in, everything was thrown out because NAS was seen as a democratic initiative. i have one of the only posters reamining from that original initiative. maybe there was more to it than that, but it was altogether shameful and set us back a couple years.

(b) i also suggested hands off because there is some good stuff happening at the local level. in santa ana ca, for instance, the school has allowed the biz community to come up with a suitable cirriculum to augment what's already there, to better align what all the employers want. the superintendents on board and they figured it out themselves, no help from the feds. not to say there isn't a role for washington dc, but the top down approach doesn't necessarily improve anything.

not that i think privatizing school will solve everything, but i think one of the problems in philly is/was that no one was really prepared for how dysfunctional it was. do you remember the story about the women they hired to run the sytem, who quit pretty fast because no one would listen to her when she tried to change things.

yeah, Perkins time is always a tense time here. it's been disappointing to see de-fund proposals come up again and again. unfortunately everything takes more money than we have, which is why i'm in favor of trimming the fat first and formost. like what Michelle Rhee is trying to do in DC.

nice op-ed. CTE!

To what extent should what businesses want determine school curriculum? What happens when business says they need a bunch of people who can program in Cobol, but then the world moves on and you have a bunch of unemployable Cobol programmers out there? How many resources should we devote attention to education, and how much should we devote to job skills?

Now, there are some obvious things--write and speak clearly, solid quantitative skills, know not to show up 20 minutes late to a job interview with your pants around your ankles.

And I understand there's a huge need for what we used to call trades.

But what else do the kind of reforms gr wants to implement mean?

Thanks gr. Always encouraging to see another "it-getter" out there.

And yeah, Michelle Rhee is totally my hero.