home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- Path: sparky!uunet!walter!qualcom.qualcomm.com!network.ucsd.edu!lyapunov.ucsd.edu!mbk
- From: mbk@lyapunov.ucsd.edu (Matt Kennel)
- Newsgroups: sci.econ
- Subject: Protectionism as investment
- Date: 11 Nov 1992 00:21:24 GMT
- Organization: Institute For Nonlinear Science, UCSD
- Lines: 48
- Message-ID: <1dpjm4INN7jm@network.ucsd.edu>
- NNTP-Posting-Host: lyapunov.ucsd.edu
- X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL3
-
- Re: the articles that talk about how protectionism costs us 2x for
- each job saved.
-
-
- Could not one view this cost as an "investment"---in that if you save
- this job now from foreign competition, then perhaps the industry will
- survive long enough that sometime in the future it has the capability
- to compete in some new product area not yet invented?
-
- By this measure, government protectionism and industrial policy is forced
- investment by citizens in these industries.
-
- What is more valuable? Cheap cameras, or a camera industry? Its probably
- a tossup on that level---but what if 5 years down the line, you find that
- the camera manufacturers have unique facilities and abilities to manufacture
- nonlinear optics?
-
- Notice that the Japanese trade practice appears desgined to completely
- and qualitatively *wipe out* foreign competition, often at great initial
- cost, in order to have a lock on entire segements of a future economy.
- If the competition isn't fully killed off, then it can jump back later
- on.
-
- Would we be better off now if we didn't bail out Chrysler? It's doing
- much better than GM is now.
-
- ---------------------
- The implementation of government investment might be very inefficient and
- corrupt due to political influence.
-
- Suppose we had a market in goverment investments, i.e. for every dollar
- from private investors, comes a U.S. "dollar" in some measure. There
- would also need to be something to make sure the investments go towards
- long-term, rather than short-term performance.
-
- Another idea,
- Suppose the social security administration invested in the stock market,
- with a buy-and-hold strategy?
-
- What if it invested in those companies with the maximal median wages
- paid to workers, in order to support "high-wage high-growth jobs", and
- the growth of business in those industries?
-
- --
- -Matt Kennel mbk@inls1.ucsd.edu
- -Institute for Nonlinear Science, University of California, San Diego
- -*** AD: Archive for nonlinear dynamics papers & programs: FTP to
- -*** lyapunov.ucsd.edu, username "anonymous".
-