Economists Only Care About Efficiency When the Policy Redistributes Income Upward

[Sam1]

Neil Irwin raises the question of whether economists have been too single-minded in pushing efficiency, while ignoring issues of distribution. This is way, way, too generous to economists. In fact, economists have been totally happy to ignore efficiency considerations when the inefficiencies redistribute income upward. This situation pops up all the time.

As I (Dean Baker) frequently point out in comments here and elsewhere, we protect doctors, dentists and other highly paid professionals from competition with their lower paid counterparts in the developing world or even other wealthy countries. We have maintained these protections even while our trade negotiators did everything they could to make steel workers and textile workers compete against their low-paid counterparts in Mexico, China, and other developing countries.

http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/neil-irwin-is-far-too-generous-to-economists-they-only-care-about-efficiency-when-the-policy-redistributes-income-upward

[SoLeftIAmRight]

1. Hillary will fix it

...

[pscot]

5. I see what you did there

[Wisc Progressive]

8. Yes and Bill Clinton did so much to promote economic equity to help get the ball rolling

*The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994

*The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996

*Signing into law more financial deregulation legislation than any other president, according to the Columbia Journalism Review.

*The North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, in 1993

*The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)

*Ran on treatment instead of prison for drug offenders during his 1992 campaign, reverted to the same drug war strategies of his Republican predecessors once in office. The U.S. prison population doubled from about 600,000 to about 1.2 million during the Clinton years, and the federal prison population swelled even more dramatically, driven almost entirely by drug war prosecutions.

*Expanded the death penalty with his 1994 crime bill (cited above)

*Intervened massively across the former Soviet satellite states of Eastern Europe, with direct interventions in the Balkans through NATO, corporate buyouts of industry from Poland to the Czech Republic, and the notorious "shock doctrine" of neoliberal economic reforms in exchange for IMF loans: cutting wages and corporate taxes, increasing working hours and slashing social programs.

More at: http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/15-ways-bill-clintons-white-house-failed-america-and-world

So I expect we will see Hillary Clinton fix an awful lot of the income inequity.

I bet she won't release her speeches to Wall Street Bankster-types because she doesn't want to publicly shame them by revealing the stunning tongue-lashing she gave them for their complicity crashing the global economy during the Bush reign of terror.

This listing of speaking fees shows that she is willing to fight for the little guy:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SeZ6CL3ffDcbJ8kj1TL8Dxg6vSqqknveu6IQvV6XowI/pubhtml/sheet?headers=false&gid=0

[orwell]

2. And so our vaunted "free market"...

...mainly works for the rich, powerful, and politically connected.

Who would have ever guessed?

[DirkGently]

3. We sure protect drug companies.

Trade agreements are negotiated by the office of the United States Trade Representative, supposedly on behalf of the American people. Historically, though, the trade representative’s office has aligned itself with corporate interests. If big pharmaceutical companies hold sway — as the leaked documents indicate they do — the T.P.P. could block cheaper generic drugs from the market. Big Pharma’s profits would rise, at the expense of the health of patients and the budgets of consumers and governments.

There are two ways the office of the trade representative can use the T.P.P. to maintain or raise drug prices and profits.

The first is to restrict competition from generics. It’s axiomatic that more competition means lower prices. When companies have to fight for customers, they end up cutting their prices. When a patent expires, any company can enter the market with a generic version of a drug. The differences in prices between brand-name and generic drugs are mind- and budget-blowing. Just the availability of generics drives prices down: In generics-friendly India, for example, Gilead Sciences, which makes an effective hepatitis-C drug, recently announced that it would sell the drug for a little more than 1 percent of the $84,000 it charges here.

(snip)

The second strategy is to undermine government regulation of drug prices. More competition is not the only way to keep down the prices of essential goods and services. Governments can also directly restrain prices through law, or effectively restrain them by denying reimbursement to patients for “overpriced” drugs — thus encouraging companies to bring down their prices to approved levels. These regulatory approaches are especially important in markets where competition is limited, as it is in the drug market. If the United States Trade Representative gets its way, the T.P.P. will limit the ability of partner countries to restrict prices. And the pharmaceutical companies surely hope the “standard” they help set in this agreement will become global — for example, by becoming the starting point for United States negotiations with the European Union over the same issues.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/31/opinion/dont-trade-away-our-health.html?_r=0

[FairWinds]

4. The academic discipline of economics is . . .

an ideology disguised as a science.

Dean Baker is one of the few honest ones, and his blog is
well worth reading.

[SoLeftIAmRight]

6. it is worse than that

do a search on jokes - economist

and have some fun

[applegrove]

7. Health care is another example. Universal health care is also more

efficient than private Healthcare. It is obviously more equitable. But more efficient too.