You know, I wish that people used the term “myth” more precisely. A myth is a story that illustrates some truth. The myth itself may be an actual event or it may be a confabulation. It doesn’t really make any difference; it’s the underlying truth that’s important.
Nowadays when most people use the word “myth” they seem to mean a false story but there’s also some confusion—they may just mean something about which they’re skeptical but which can’t be proven one way or another.
I commend to your attention two posts from Paula Dwyer at Bloomberg, “Two Democrats, Two Myths” and “Four Republicans, Four Big Myths”. The six myths she enumerates are:
- Manufacturing jobs can be returned to the U. S.
- Women are unfairly paid less than men and an act of Congress could remedy that.
- A return to the gold standard would eliminate inflation and put the economy on a sound footing.
- We need to balance the U. S. budget.
- A cut in personal income taxes would be a big help to middle income families.
- We didn’t need to bail out the banks in 2008-2009.
- Eliminating taxes on investment income will bolster middle income families.
It might be fun to match those “myths” with the candidates with whom they are most closely associated. Some of those are myths (in the sense of false stories), some are just things with which Ms. Dwyer disagrees, and some are genuine myths in the sense of stories that illustrate a greater truth.
One thing I’d add: Ms. Dwyer seems to confuse a gold standard with a ban on fractional reserve banking. They’re not the same thing. You can have a gold standard with fractional reserve banking. Or not. For about half of my life so far we had a silver standard with fractional reserve banking.
It is a myth that six myths are being discussed.
Truth be told I had difficulty counting six between the two posts. I had to strain a little to come up with that list above.
This is too meta for me, but I read the links on “Manufacturing jobs can be returned to the U. S.,” which basically explain:
Traditional manufacturing jobs cannot be returned, because manufacturing jobs have been changing over time, and this isn’t obvious because manufacturing has a disproportionate role in productivity growth, plus a lot of the jobs created by this prosperity are clerical services, sales and design and not necessarily regular work on a plant floor.
I will tackle the manufacturing nonsense.
First, anybody who is making a profit while assuring you how much they are helping you is a con man/woman. Imported goods are not simply cheaper versions of domestic goods. Imported goods are much of much less quality, and if they were produced domestically to the same standards, they would be much cheaper. On a per quality basis, the US consumer is being screwed.
Simply, Alpo could produce toxic dog food for a lot less than the Chinese, but I would like to have any free-trader explain to us why that is not the case.
Manufacturing jobs should be being lost, but they should be being lost to automation, machinery, and now, robotics. Instead, manufacturing is being lost, and that is something entirely different. Either, the free-traders can understand this, or they cannot. Liars or stupid.
The agrarian to industrial to service does not just happen in a vacuum. It requires certain preconditions. In order to move from agrarian, there needs to be improvements in the farming methods and equipment. It takes the horse collar, steel plowshare, horse drawn mechanical combine, and later tractors for the farm hands to be able to leave. This must precede or coincide with the industrial transformation.
The agrarian does not go away or go overseas. The agrarian remains, but it consolidates, updates, and innovates. Small farms become large farms, and large farms become corporate farms. Manual labor begins to be augmented or replaced by machinery.
With industry, cottage industry gave way to factories, and the manufacturers began to incorporate vertically to control all parts of the supply chain. If they relocated, it was usually closer to a source of power, a natural resource, or another manufacturing concern.
Workers doing repetitive tasks are best replaced with machinery or robotics. It makes business sense to replace humans wherever possible. They have numerous problems, and the overhead associated with employing them is significant. Furthermore, they are unreliable, and the quality of their products will not be consistent.
For the agrarian to industrial to service template to be followed, manufacturing jobs should have been lost, but they should have been replaced by machinery or robots. The manufacturing should have remained in place as had the farms had when the farmhands moved to the cities.
Instead, the decision was made to use the less reliable, less efficient, and more expensive humans rather than the more reliable, more efficient, and less expensive machinery or robots.
The loss of manufacturing circles back around to the monetary issues because there needs to be something to invest what was previously invested in manufacturing, and nothing makes money faster than a company manufacturing credit which is used to create more money.
We have an unnatural circumstance. We have both parties telling us to believe them and not our lying eyes. We have people making money telling us we are better off with substandard products. Finally, we are to conclude that the US workers cannot make the same dangerous and toxic products far cheaper than Chinese workers can.
Truth be told I had difficulty counting six between the two posts. I had to strain a little to come up with that list above.
The list above has seven points, so you strained to hard. I recommend more dietary fiber.
TOO hard, TOO hard. Dang it….