Scot Wick Blog

  From article Industrial Policy: A Bad Idea Is Back. Manufacturing jobs cannot justify industrial policy. Scott Lincicome, Cato. August 1, 2021. Section 2. Finally, there is the small issue the most common “problems” industrial policies are supposedly needed to solve aren’t problems at all. As I explained in a recent Cato policy analysis widespread claims of American “deindustrialization” are mistaken. Both U.S. MANUFACTURING JOB LOSSES AND THE SECTOR’S SHRINKING SHARE OF GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT PRIMARILY REFLECT LONG‐TERM GLOBAL TRENDS SHARED BY MOST INDUSTRIALIZED NATIONS and disconnected from specific federal economic policies, whether free market or interventionist. … At the same time, the U.S. manufacturing sector remains among the most productive in the world and has expanded since the 1990s — continuing earlier trends in output, investment, and financial performance. Between 1997 and 2018, real value‐added for U.S. MANUFACTURING OUTPUT OVERALL AND THE DURABLE GOODS SECTOR IN...

  From Superabundance: The Story of Population Growth, Innovation, and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet. Tupy and Pooley. 2022. Kindle online sample. Section 2. (Introduction by George Gilder continued) As Tupy and Pooley show, globally between 1980 and 2018, despite all the monetary noise and the cultural headwinds, workers have been able to buy some 250 percent more goods and services with their hours and minutes. During this same period, the world’s population increased 71.2 percent, yielding a 500 percent increase in global resource abundance. DESPITE CLAIMS OF “EXTREME WEATHER,” AGRICULTURAL AND MARINE COMMODITIES—INCLUDING TEA AND COFFEE AND SHRIMP AND SALMON—HAVE BECOME RADICALLY CHEAPER IN TIME PRICES. … There’s no need to figure out the physical efficiencies and yields of every item in the basket. Just compute the hours and minutes of work and divide them into any monetary measure of the relevant part of the economy. That’s a breakthrough, but it’s still...

  Mostly summarized from Gregory Mankiw’s Principles of Economics, 5th Ed. PART 8 The Data of Macroeconomics Chapter 23 of 36 Measuring A Nation’s Income Section 10 of 17 … Table 1 here … Table 1 – Gross domestic product (GDP) and Its Components · this table shows total GDP for the U.S. economy in 2007 · the breakdown of GDP among its four components … GDP consists of four components · consumption spending (C) · investment spending (I) · government purchases (G) · net exports (NX) The equation for GDP is Y = C + I + G + NX … Government purchases (G) Includes spending by all local, state, and federal governments on · goods and services · public works · salaries of government workers When the government pays the salary of an Army general or a schoolteacher, that salary is part of government purchases and part of the GDP calculation. … When the government pays a Social Security benefit or an unemployment insurance benefit, these are not considered purchases but rather transfer paym...

  From book A Force So Swift “While Mao and Stalin courted [December 1949] and snubbed, each other in Moscow, Truman and his staff worked to complete their new containment strategy. For hawks like MacArthur, any such effort had to begin with Taiwan, from which they hoped to start rolling back Mao’s conquests. [Secretary of State] Acheson, on the other hand, believed the United States would have to accept the reality of Mao’s victory—including, eventually, on Taiwan—and go from there. “It seems to me inevitable we are going to live on this globe with a vast number of people who think as oppositely as we do as it is possible for human beings to think,” Acheson had explained to his audience in a speech at at the War College. ‘We must understand for a long, long period of time we will both inhabit this spinning ball in the great void of the universe.’”

  From article Industrial Policy: A Bad Idea Is Back. Manufacturing jobs cannot justify industrial policy. Scott Lincicome, Cato. August 1, 2021. Section 1. “Industrial policy” = targeted and directed government interventions intended to achieve specific, market‐beating industrial and commercial outcomes within national borders. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and rising U.S.-Chinese tensions, American policymakers on both sides of the aisle HAVE ONCE AGAIN EMBRACED INDUSTRIAL POLICY TO FIX PERCEIVED MARKET FAILURES AND COUNTER CHINA’S GROWING ECONOMIC CLOUT. … Perhaps the idea’s biggest fan is President Biden, who — much like his predecessor — has proposed a wide range of federal support for American manufacturers of “essential goods” and “critical technologies.” In the first half of 2021, BIDEN HAS PUSHED MASSIVE NEW SUBSIDIES such as tax credits, grants, preferential contracts for domestic producers of renewable energy technologies, electric vehicles, semiconductors, and “c...

  Mostly summarized from Gregory Mankiw’s Principles of Economics, 5th Ed. PART 8 The Data of Macroeconomics Chapter 23 of 36 Measuring A Nation’s Income Section 9 of 17 … Table 1 here … Table 1 - GDP and Its Components This table shows · gross domestic product for the U.S. economy in 2007 · breakdown of GDP among its four components … Per Table 1, GDP (Y) consists of four components · consumption spending (C) · investment spending (I) · government purchases (G) · net exports (NX) The equation for GDP becomes Y = C + I + G + NX … Consumption (C) · household (non-business) spending on new final goods and services · purchases of new housing are not included Consumption goods include household spending on · durable goods, e.g. automobiles and appliances · nondurable goods, e.g. food and clothing · services, e.g. haircuts, medical care, education … Investment (I) · is the purchase of goods and services to be used to produce more goods and services · is the sum of purchases of capit...