"Shipping jobs overseas may cost you your job, but it lowers costs at Wal-Mart which is good,

[white_wolf]

for you, because you just lost your job. Besides, who could live without Wal-Mart?" This is the response I got from my econ professor when I questioned the wisdom of Free Trade, I was kind of surprised he used such bad logic, I mean this is a textbook example of Begging the Question, I shouldn't have to deal with this from professors. I replied that if you I hadn't lost my manufacturing job in Ohio, then I could pay higher prices which would in turn stimulate the economy. He replied that "Freed Trade makes things more efficient, and that is the what economists love, is a efficiency."

[undeterred]

1. Except that the price of gas is so high that you can't even afford Walmart any more.

[live love laugh]

33. Newsflash: Walmart is not cheap anymore. The more market share they gain the higher their prices

which is/was always predictable.

[undeterred]

37. I was referring to a story Walmart put out this week

saying that a lot of their regular customers (including employees) were running out of money by the end of the month because of the high price of fuel.

[bluestateguy]

2. I suppose we could also have cheaper meat at the store if we eliminated meat inspections

and abolished all regulations of the industry.

The meat would be cheaper, but many thousands more people would die.

[Dappleganger]

3. Jesus, how on Earth did we live before Walmart came to town?

[Incitatus]

4. It more efficiently transfers wealth to the top 1%.

[arcane1]

8. Ding ding! We have a winner!

"Efficiency" is nothing more than a buzz word, just like "competitive" or "free market" or "robust", etc.

They all mean the same thing: more wealth for the wealthy.

[Kat45]

23. Don't forget "productivity."

That's just squeezing more work out of fewer employees to produce more profits for the wealthy.

[arcane1]

30. The new slogan at my job is "operational efficiency"

and they have deliberately failed to define it.

I work for a bank :(

[xchrom]

5. The professor was being dishonest a knows they are being dishonest. Nt

[underpants]

6. When I came back to the States in 1993 from Army service Walmart was booming and their tag line was

"Made in America"

Try finding the ending image of

Walmart
flag
Made in America

anywhere on google


they have wiped it clean

[Starry Messenger]

7. But jobless people can't buy things, even at WalMart

So eventually WalMart will pick up stakes and move to places where people have jobs and can buy things, thereby putting people out of jobs, so no one can buy things, etc. Soon there will be great patches of ugly and dead lands with huge empty concrete WalMart buildings with squatters living in them all over the globe. Efficient. Yeah.

[angstlessk]

9. I was in college many many many years ago.and when I first heard

If it makes a profit business will produce it....without any modifiers...

My thought was then..so if death is profitable...business will produce death...it was a mental debate..but today it seems I was prescient

Business does produce death...it is called today...THE HEALTH 'CARE' INDUSTRY

[pacalo]

10. People who make more money, spend more money. Those who have little money spend it

only on the basics, & even the basics are too much to afford for many.

The professor must not have a family & isn't in tune with all the expenses that go along with it. He probably lives alone & doesn't require much of life's experiences that require much spending. Whatever the reason, he's out of touch with the common people.

[socialist_n_TN]

28. Or he's a free market ideologue............

That probably more likely. A fucking overeducated Freidmanista idiot.

[RoccoR5955]

11. I would have told him:

That it kills the local economy when little mom and pop stores close. If those jobs are taken out of the local economy, and the local economy suffers, and, in turn, lots of local economies suffer. As a result, the whole economy suffers.
The economy is not all about lower prices, but keeping the economy going. In order to keep it going there has to be a demand for goods/services, in order for them to be made. Without small local economies, and jobs in those small economies, paying a wage that is able to purchase the goods/services, the entire economy suffers.
Your econ professor must only be an ASSistant professor, because he does not entirely understand economics!

[white_wolf]

16. Sadly he isn't an assistant.

He's been there since the 60s. The two graduate student TAs are a lot better and more open minded.

[atreides1]

17. The 60's ?

I wonder what he was taking back then, because it sure seems to have affected him, and not in a positive way!

[Canuckistanian]

22. Was he a Friedman acolyte?

Because the Chicago school is just about totally discredited as far as results for the economy as a whole.

[jmowreader]

27. Think macro, not micro here

Walmart putting locally-owned stores out of business hurts the local economy.

Walmart's real damage occurs at the supplier level. Let us pretend you've got 10 manufacturers of plastic products, and every one of them has violated the most basic rule of business: if one customer accounts for more than a third of your business, do something about it. (Most companies that sell to Walmart count them as their largest customer, and some of them sell over two-thirds of their wares to that company.) If Walmart goes to those ten manufacturers and tells them, "guys, your prices are too high; either move your production to China or forget about doing business with us ever again." Now:

the people who made stuff at those 10 companies are out of jobs

and the people who made the raw materials that went into that stuff are out of jobs

and a certain number of retail employees, fast-food joint employees, etc., in the towns where all those people live are also going to be out of work.

I was going to say the truck drivers who hauled the raw materials around would be out of work. This isn't true, but the loss of raw-material freight will simply increase competition for loads, which drives prices down.

Walmart's killing of Main Street didn't kill the economy. Their killing of the Industrial Park is what killed the economy.

[izquierdista]

12. Econ professor?

:rofl: :rofl:
He can probably be classified as innumerate as well. One need not be able to construct a correct mathematical proof to get a Ph.D. in capitalist economics, one just has to learn the various fables and string them together in a somewhat plausible line.

Why are you taking the course? Some unavoidable requirement?

[pacalo]

14. Someone should check his credentials.

[white_wolf]

15. Yeah its required, trust me I tried to avoid it like the plague.

I knew what I was getting into, but at least its almost over.

[izquierdista]

18. Want to really rattle him?

Pop this question on him: "A friend told me that the Black-Scholes option pricing model is really nothing more than Laplace's heat diffusion equation."

Any answer less than "Actually, it was Fourier who solved it a couple hundred years ago (1822, to be exact). Laplace's name comes up because of the Laplacian operator in the heat equation. The Black-Scholes equation is like the heat equation and the diffusion equation in that they are separable partial differential equations, first order in time and second order in the spatial or price variable." means he has chocolate pudding in place of grey matter.

(See wiki article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_equation)

[flvegan]

13. One of my econ profs was a total fucking idiot too.

[Amonester]

19. Tell the insipid econ professor that it's a downward spiral.

And wish him good luck.

[HughBeaumont]

20. And THIS, folks, is why I'll never go back to school for either business or finance.

Too many right-wing Friedman/Reaganite asshats "educating" and "being educated" and not enough Keynesian or Dem Socialist liberals throwing monkey wrenches in their crapcakes for my tastes. I could see it now - "Oh look, the COMMIE has the floor. Enlighten us, Mr. Chomsky!"

I would never just be able to sit there and put up with the fairy tale, Faux-coated neo-lib bullshit; the classes would be just one long argument and I'd be forced to justify fairy-tale bullshit theories to get even average grades.

[white_wolf]

21. Yeah. I'm treading the section of the final on free trade.

I can't put its bullshit or I'll lose points, but if I say I agree with it, than it makes me feel like a liar.

[unkachuck]

24. I'm disparing....

....less and less....for the worlds' future Socialist economic model is emerging in China....

....I only understand what I've gleaned from the net, but China has had 10% economic growth for 30 years....they've lifted 300,000 citizens out of poverty, they have overtaken us as the worlds' largest manufacturer and they will be the worlds' largest economy within five years, as we sink lower and lower into economic decay because, "...what economists love, is a efficiency."

....and don't they have a 50/50 mix of state-run and private sector enterprises driving this economic miracle? Nothing succeeds like success....now mix that model with our freedoms, well....

"Freed Trade makes things more efficient,..."

....only for some; tell your capitalist professor to go fuck himself....

[Qutzupalotl]

25. Yeah, just think of all the money you're saving that you don't have!

[Liberal Gramma]

26. So, where's the upside for those of us who WON'T shop at WalMart?

I'd rather spend more or go without. I refuse to shop there.

[RickFromMN]

29. Ask him if it would be more efficient if economics teaching was outsourced to India.

Teaching can be done over the Internet.

Would your economics professor still think Free Trade is wonderful if/when his job goes to India?

If he gets desperate, he could move to India, take a pay cut, and teach over the Internet.

Yes, I'm cynical. People didn't care when it was manufacturing jobs being outsourced.
Now it's white collar jobs. Let's see if people start to care now.

[Brigid]

31. This econ professor really needs to get out more.

He thinks his job can't be outsourced. You have brilliantly pointed out that it could. I hope that white_wolf takes this point to class next time. :evilgrin:

[live love laugh]

32. If it's not Donald Trump, it's your Econ "professor". The pod people are everywhere.

This is like a sci-fi movie turned real life. We think one of "them" is quieted (ie. Beck) and then a Trump pops up. There's a host of them waiting in the wings to spew their lies for money.

When I was in college in the 90's I also had a right leaning Econ professor. I wasn't into politics then and had no idea what he was up to trying to influence the class with questions on things such as whether there should be a minimum wage (he was against it). The free trade lie was also one of the other big ideas pushed but it's not like textbooks weren't rife with the same lies. It might make sense to import things that are indigenous to one region or the other but labor is not idigenous.

I think that the only good thing that will come out of the onslaught of lies is that eventually people will see the liars for what they are. That old theory of telling a big lie has been overdone by the right and will backfire on them.

[Juche]

34. Didn't the documentary 'inside job' talk about economic schools being taken over by Randians?

So this isn't surprising. A poll of economists before the 2008 election found them supporting Obama over McCain either 2-1 or 3-1. I don't remember which. So I don't know. I am under teh impression, maybe wrongly, that economic schools are Randian while economists themselves may be more liberal.

Did your professor mention that one of the reasons China produces more cheaply than the US is because labor, worker safety and environmental laws are weaker? So in the US those costs would fall onto the companies, in China they are passed onto society. Those costs still exist, they are just being taken off of companies and put onto society. There is nothing efficient about that, that is like me saying that I am being more efficient because instead of spending $20/month on trash pickup I just dump it in the neighbors yard. The trast and the cost to clean it still exists, I've just distributed it to someone else.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-09-17/china-is-set-to-lose-2-of-gdp-cleaning-up-pollution.html

The costs arising from pollution in China -- including lost productivity due to health issues, crop degradation and losses from pollution-related accidents -- totaled 511.8 billion yuan, or 3.1 percent of GDP, in 2004, the latest figures available, according to the Beijing-based Chinese Academy for Environmental Planning, part of the Ministry of Environmental Protection.

[Skidmore]

35. Give him a poor eval at the end of the term and write a letter

to the department head and the president of the university telling them what you think and asking for a refund of the tuition for this class. You have been badly served.

[Vinca]

36. There's another post on this site about people who shop at Walmart

running out of money. There comes a point when it doesn't matter whether goods are expensive or cheap. If you don't have a job and money, you can't buy it.