Hillbilly Elegy, the book Vance published a few years after he graduated from Yale law school, struck me as an intelligent and perceptive account of a world very different from mine.
I’m not surprised at all that a politician, even an Ivy-educated politician, would suddenly discover the mercantilist model of international trade when election season rolls around.
Both you and Steve Levitt have pointed this out repeatedly over the years that, A. The model was proven wrong centuries (iirc) ago, and B. Politicians routinely act as if we don’t know that.
I hear Ivy-educated politicians ignoring that fact every single day. Indeed it’s one idea that seems to have broad, bipartisan support, a reason to be suspicious if ever there was one.
Not just politicians. My impression is that most public discussion of trade is in mercantilist terms, although the maximand is jobs not gold. It really is easier to understand than the correct model.
JDvance and I have had at least somewhat similar* life scripts, so I will offer at least one take on why he’s changed since 2016 because I have too. I won’t delve into every policy issue here.
There are two “cats for Kamala” signs in my town. This stems from Vance’s comments in 2021 about how childless cat ladies were basically running the country. The prompt of this comment was that the main people supporting the Covid lockdown, school closures, and mask policies that were so devastating to those of us with small children at the time (that includes Vance and I) where single professional ladies that could do their job on zoom and were unaffected by them.
This same class of people are also the ones that supported the kangaroo courts of MeToo, the BLM riots, white fragility and DEI struggle sessions, rejection of free speech and wanting to lock people up for opinions, etc etc.
Moreover, it’s pretty clear that the entire backbone of the Democratic Party is those people. Their avatar is now the candidate herself. Electorally and socially its neurotic single women carrying the left on their back.
As both direct (handouts) and indirect (through professional jobs with or mandated by the government) recipients they are the main beneficiaries of government largess.
And well on the issue of childbirth itself things have really gone downhill around the world since 2016.
Now, in 2016 maybe you could have an inkling about this. Hillary’s “basket of deplorables”. But politics just didn’t seem that important in 2016. I voted Trump but mostly just because I normally vote Republican and in some vague sense I was worried about the long term impacts of third world immigration. I didn’t think about it much, I didn’t even vote in most elections.
But it’s been a long eight years and especially since 2020 the mask is off. The left and the right have moved way apart and there really are meaningful differences between them these days. It ain’t the 1990s anymore.
I think that Vance has gone through the same transformation that Musk and many others have. Things have changed a lot since 2016, and it would be insane not to update your evaluation of things based on it. These people give plenty of interviews explaining their views and why they’ve changed.
*we are both about the same age, both got married around the same time, and both have three children. I’m not as successful as him but I do pretty well for myself and too am an educated professional whose parents worked for a living but now inhabit a professional sphere that I find mostly deplorable. He lives in DC and is involved in government. I’m close to DC and have had plenty of exposure to government. My upbringing was much more stable then his but I’m certainly aware of the kind of social behavior he talks about.
In 2022, according to exit polls, unmarried women voted for Democratic House candidates at a slightly more than two-to-one ratio (68–31 percent). Every other quadrant of voters — married men, unmarried men, and married women — gave majorities to Republican candidates.
Politics in many ways is about finding groups that can justify to themselves and those they are stealing from that such stealing is justified, or at least beyond criticism.
Women are traditionally a powerless group that elicits empathy, but this is turned on its head by the modern democratic welfare state where they can exercise mass political (and thus violent) power.
Society has not yet been able to adapt to this change in their role, they exercise power without people truly expecting them to be responsible for it.
I am much more sympathetic to the Friedman than the Vance perspective, but I cannot help but notice that when I have household projects - fencing, roof repair, a new porch, landscaping - the work is invariably done by recent immigrants. The companies they work for are owned by whites. The workers rarely speak any English. I also see them doing a lot of roadwork, digging pipelines, etc. Formerly this kind of work would have been done by Vance's people.
That depends somewhat on whether "his people" are more Appalachian or Rust Belt. For the Rust Belt, there's a real situation where the number of jobs is significantly reduced from recent memory.
Appalachia has a different problem, in that there never really were a great number of jobs and not a lot of opportunity for new jobs to be created. Outside of mining and forestry jobs, there isn't a lot of reason to move to most of Appalachia.
The Rust Belt would absolutely have been doing that kind of work. Generally hard working industrious people who did manual labor. Appalachia has a lot more cultural issues as you say.
From my understanding of his background, I think Appalachia is more accurate, but Vance has been reaching out to all working class backgrounds. I take it that Jon means "working class" instead of "Appalachian."
When we moved into our house it needed some work done. Add a deck and a patio, install a dishwasher, etc. The first company we contacted hired it out some dark skinned Hispanics with no English they obviously picked up at Home Depot. They putzed around for a week and left me with a broken deck and a bunch of nails strewn all over my lawn for my kids to step on. The company had to send out a white dude and a light skinned Hispanic with good English to tear it all down and build it back proper. The patio and the dishwasher got installed by white people that did a stellar job. Based on our proximity to WV, I suspect they were Vance's people.
The IQ of those in the skilled trades is actually pretty close to the white average. That would be high for the average Hispanic and really high for your average dark skinned illegal from Central America. Hence why you tend to see them in lower end work (landscaping, etc).
In the absence of government subsidized Hispanic labor, work would be more expensive and some of it would get done anyway and some would either be foregone or done domestically (mow your own lawn). Some would get automated (in Japan you order off a screen at a restaurant rather than have someone come to your table). The savings from not having to pay for the govenrment education and medical care of the low skill Hispanics would increase economic growth, not to mention the positive political impacts.
This is more or less true in all Western societies. There is no culture of performing and teaching physical work and no trade schools, insufficient dignity for working people. Like Vance, I grew up as the first and only member of an extended family to obtain an advanced degree. I doubt he performed as much physical labor as I did in my youth. In fact, I just came back inside after processing firewood. When I have to hire help, I feel as close to the Mexican people who come as to the guys who remind me of my uncles. I understand some of Vance's sentiments where they overlap, but he's a snake in the grass. He represents the "elite" that working people ought to fear. But that's harder to grasp than the loathing of the woke "elite", which makes it easy for the authoritarians all over the West. Their ideas make a perfectly good guy like Tim Walz look (or act) like an idiot and Vance can shoot him like fish in a barrel. Sorry to carry on.
I like Vance. Allowing for political rhetoric I don't read a great difference in his values then and now and why yes, in my opinion this time there ARE villains.
The Minneapolis insurance; One pays for such to have some protection in case of catastrophe. A $40k return with a $140k expense doesn't sound like the business owner got a fair shake. However one would need read the terms and limitations of the policy (I just checked the total limit of liability on my property insurance.) .
The question isn't whether the business owner got a fair shake — we don't know whether it did since Vance doesn't give us any details, let alone information to let us check them. But whether he got a fair shake isn't relevant. Vance's claim is that the insurance company profited by the riot, which according to him explains why insurance companies supported BLM. But on his facts, the riot cost the insurance company forty thousand dollars, which is more than the zero they would have had to pay if there had been no riot and the insured property hadn't been destroyed.
The specific example isn't good, but the incite that insurance (and other big companies) support BLM and the rest of the loony left for self interest reasons is sound. I work for BigInsurance, and my company definitely supported BLM, had our woke struggle sessions, get our DEI emails, fired anyone that wouldn't get the vaccine (we literally work from home by ourselves!), and target whatever DEI metrics CMS provides.
We do it because much of insurance (much of everything when government spending is nearly half the economy) is government money. And what insurance isn't directly government like auto or home still needs all sorts of approvals from state regulators. There simply is no way to run a business without government good graces, and BLM/Woke/etc is the state religion. So they pay their dues at a minimum to be left alone and in the maximum to get huge payouts (my industry just got a $10B bribe from the Biden admin essentially).
What struck about what Vance wrote was not that his claim about the insurance industry was false — I know nothing about that — but that the argument he gave made no sense.
We obviously see things differently. To me the question is whether the business owner got a fair shake.
On the other hand yes, in my opinion the insurance company will profit greatly by the riot, a new insurable vista opens up to them. No I don't fault the company over this, they are in business to make, not lose money.
We have no idea whether the business owner got a fair shake. Vance doesn't tell us why the owner only got $40,000. We don't even know if it happened. Vance didn't say anything that would let us check if it is real or he made it up.
The one thing we know is that he made an argument that made no sense.
Exaggeration for effect has been a political tool forever. The Left engages in it as much as Trump, but only Trump's exaggerations get excoriated by the MSM.
Anyway, an example of insurance company weirdness just recently occurred to me. I have a 700 sq ft rough cabin, converted from an earlier pole shed Up North in Michigan. It is on an 80 acre tract of mostly timber, with a couple of small clearings, a small pond, and a few deer trails. It is very isolated, and quite rough. It has a tiny kitchen area, and a tiny bathroom with a small shower. My home insurance carrier wants me to insure it for $160,000, apparently on the assumption that is it just as likely burn as in any suburb, AND that rebuilding it would take that much.
They insured it originally without anyone seeing it. This past spring a few pictures were taken by them. I finally argued them down to insuring it for $55,000 or I'd just drop the insurance. No mortgage so I don't have to insure it. They're still unhappy.
There has not been a fire in surrounding 300 sq miles of forest in living memory. Or in written history of the area.
If they're not in it to make money, they've got the wrong goal.
I've been thinking the same for a while - Vance is too smart to believe the things he's been saying.
So - do we want a smart liar, who lies for political advantage? Or an idiot who believes the foolishness they say? Or an idiot who says intelligent things that they don't believe, for political advantage?
I think almost all political candidates, of whatever ideology, genuinely want peace and prosperity, and at least a minimal amount of personal freedom. Some know how to get it, and some know how to get power. Not the same thing.
I suspect for the most part Trump believes what he says (except perhaps the immigrant stuff, which is merely exaggerated). He's not generally smart but has good instincts about many things.
Interestingly, Trump advocated legalization of marijuana in Florida because (he said) at least that way the marijuana that people get won't be adulterated (with in his example, fentanyl, which seems unlikely). Still, it shows he understands the principle that legal drugs are of known potency and content, unlike black market drugs.
Yet a few weeks later in an interview on "Gutfeld!" (Fox), he said the only way to fully stop fentanyl from being trafficked into the US would be to impose the death penalty for smuggling it. And commented that he didn't know "if America is ready for that" (I suspect not).
That statement is probably true - both parts - but he chose not to mention the alternative of legalizing fentanyl, which his earlier comments indicate he's smart enough to understand.
Bottom line - I think Trump speaks the truth as he understands it (plus or minus exaggeration), but selectively.
Vance says whatever he thinks will get him power. But he's not stupid.
I think they just have a very different notion of what "prosperity" means compared to you and me, or most historic measurements.
If they truly believe that climate change is existential, some of their policies make more sense, for instance. (I would still argue that they should be gung-ho for nuclear in that case, but that's a minor quibble once we're that far in).
Also, if they believe that racial equality is more important than competence, then a lot of the DEI stuff makes sense. I happen to think that long term this will destroy the standard of living for all races, but spoils systems are nothing new.
If they truly think climate change is existential, then not going all in on nuclear is not a quibble, minor or major. You cannot substitute wind and solar for dispatchable power sources and maintain a reliable non-third-world grid.
This is obvious to anyone with a tiny lick of knowledge. Or one could just observe the abject failure that is Germany and compare it with France.
The fact that they continue to push "solutions" (Wind/solar) that can never work and whose only effect is to throw the capital of nations down the toilet, proves that their goal is not avoiding climate change, but to destroy economies.
I agree. My point was based on a fairly uncharitable reading of the environmentalists involved. I don't think they've done the research to determine the best way to move away from fossil fuels. Instead, I believe they are demonstrating ingroup solidarity and stating the required positions for that group. Nuclear has been considered unacceptable to the environmentalist movement for many years, and is baked into position by now.
Whether to use nuclear or not is a position to discuss after coming to a research-based view. It's a minor quibble and there's not much point if two sides are just throwing their ingroup-acceptable shibboleths at one another.
“whose only effect is to throw the capital of nations down the toilet,”
While I surely am on your side, I feel the need to point out that is NOT the only effect.
Besides the obvious point that it enriches their cronies (who in turn return some of that money as campaign contributions), the effect is to help leftists win elections and gather and wield even more authoritarian power.
Imo the goal (for all but the actual radicals) is not to destroy economies, it is to attain political power, whatever the impact on the economy.
I guess it's good to point out that side effect. From my perspective, which is considering the health and productivity of the economy, diverting capital to politicians is the same thing as throwing it down the toilet. In the case of diverting it to these particular politicians, I guess it's a bit like using the money to purchase more toilets so the money can be flushed faster.
I'll take a bite. I think Harris is one of the dumbest, most clueless window vane politicians I can remember. I don't think she has any core beliefs other than wanting to be a figurehead. She'd be a great elected queen with no power, and that's it.
I picture her in a meeting over some national security "crisis", such as if the US decided to shoot across the bows of Chinese warships harassing the Philippine supply ships, and asking everyone else what to do, agreeing with each as they spoke, and picking one to follow for no particular reason.
In some ways, I think she might be the safest President, since the powers behind the throne obviously wouldn't get much public recognition and might actually offer honest advice and work out realistic answers.
You were doing great until the last paragraph. The powers behind Biden's and would-be Kamala's thrones hate the USA and prosperity and want to do everything possible to implement the WEF agenda which would leave us all enslaved to the rich elite.
Neo-feudalism, except, you know, without the nice part of feudalism where the lords feel some obligation to help and protect the serfs.
Been thinking about that. At first blush, I thought you were right, but the more I think about it, the more I think she simply doesn't care, not really, and the amount of pushback that requires her to actually answer questions might dissuade her from accepting the more loony advice. Look at all the word salad she spews now, or how she froze when her teleprompter was on the blink. Her handlers can deal with it now, on the campaign trail with only a month to go, but as President, she couldn't pull a Biden and disappear on a beach somewhere, and I think she really detests looking like a fool with all these tough questions.
It's just a hunch. I have no real evidence. But I think she wants to coast and be a popular well-liked and respected figure head too much to let her advisors put her in tough spots very often.
I don't think she has advisors. Those you would think of as advisors are almost certainly actually in charge of her. She's a sock puppet. As with Biden, they'll implement their hidden, secret agenda, which is to convert the USA into followers of WEF's Agenda 2030, regardless of what Harris says or does.
Yes, she's a sock puppet. Yes, she has handlers, not advisors. But even Biden put his foot down once in a while, and Harris is not senile and won't put up with as many embarrassing mistakes as Biden. I do not believe her handlers will have the extreme control over her as they do over Biden.
World Economic Forum. Shadowy UN organization that all of our US leaders seem to belong to, including many city and state leaders and funded by our taxes. Kerry is always there. Meets in Davos regularly. Run by an old Nazi who looks like he should be a Bond villain and definitely thinks like a Bond villain.
I'd caveat that with I think she's both a true misandrist and despises the poor. Those two things have been consistent in her actual acts, not speech, throughout her entire political career. She never turns down an opportunity to further harm them even when little to no cost to herself.
I remember when Trump was shot and all the Secret Service agents sprung into action and the one lady DEI hire started fumbling with her gun and asking all the men what they were supposed to do.
“ I think she might be the safest President, since the powers behind the throne obviously wouldn't get much public recognition and might actually offer honest advice and work out realistic answers.”
We’ve had this for the last 3.7 years with our current sitting president; how do you think that’s worked out for us?
It’s possible that the “advice” is honest, but if so it’s hard- leftist honest.
And if you think it’s resulted in “realistic answers”, then I’ve got this great bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you…
“I've been thinking the same for a while - Vance is too smart to believe the things he's been saying.”
The man is a politician.
Do you think Obama believed all the things he said? Do you think he believed ”If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor”?
Do you think Bill Clinton believed all the things he said?
For the sake of argument, I’ll give you that Trump is as you say (your view is quite a bit better than that of the media that takes Trump literally but not seriously).
Do you really seen nothing wrong with holding *everything* Vance says to a super high standard, but essentially holding nothing that Harris, Walz (or Trump) says to any standard at all?
I think DF’s stated position that Trump is just in it for himself, his implicit position that Harris and Walz are just morons, but that Vance is fundamentally smarter, well-meaning but badly wrong on economics is simultaneously too nice to Vance on the intentions issue and yet far too harsh on substantive issues.
OTOH, the flip side of DF’s Vance position ain’t right either: because Vance seems more capable of being a classical liberal than the other 3 doesn’t mean he is fundamentally more dishonest than the average politician.
And even if I surely agree about the relative intelligence of Harris and Walz, there are an *awful* lot of high IQ liberals - politicians and non-politicians - who believe all sorts of things we classical liberals think are idiotic. Are you claiming that every single one of them is simply a liar on all of these issues, because they are “too smart” to believe what they are saying?
I’m very used to the leftist media’s biased double standards. It’s kinda strange to hear folks hear claim that politicians we believe to be intelligent on the right must be liars when they don’t agree with us - or because they have chosen to politically align with Trump - yet we rarely make the same sweeping accusations of liberal politicians.
The reality is that:
1) most people are neither that dumb nor that smart, and
2) politicians need to win elections to accomplish things, and so some of the things they say are gonna be for the purposes of winning elections
3) #1 above is true of most politicians; #2 above is true of essentially all politicians.
My impression is rather that belief isn't usually all that relevant to most successful politicians. I.e. I'd consider them on SL4 as described in https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/simulacrum-levels, whereas us simple nerds tend to get stuck on SL1 (and get confused when we expect other people to be on the same level).
A high IQ, a disagreeable personality looking for feuds, and the complete absence of convictions that aren't for sale. Appealing now to the very trash he grew up around and learned to feel superior to and selling them the incoherent grievance politics that his boss has demonstrated they want. What could go wrong?
When I first read his book, which I did love for its insight into a different world, I thought to myself... this man has political aspirations. Notice he never confesses any major sins of his own? Just smoking pot. So I'm not sure it's accurate to say the book has his honest beliefs.
Yeah there is no way coming from that background he didn't engage in criminality of the sort that one does growing up like that. It might have just been social motivated as in "this what my friends do" as opposed to "I wanted to" but regardless I don't believe for a second marijuana is the only drug he used, he never drank underage, never assaulted anyone, never engaged in prostitution, never committed a sex crime, never committed any sort of theft, etc.
Drinking underage is sufficiently unremarkable that I wouldn't expect him to mention it. He might have done some of the other things you list, might not, but if he had I would not expect him to mention it even if he was not planning a political career.
“ I don't believe for a second [that] he […] never assaulted anyone, never engaged in prostitution, never committed a sex crime, never committed any sort of theft,”
Those are pretty strong accusations you throw out there, and for which, of course you don’t have any proof. Pretty sure those are libelous defamatory statements for which you have no proof whatsoever.
Now if your point was merely that the reader cannot know for sure that he didn’t do any of those things, that’d be fine (and apply to almost every person ever).
If you want to claim that it’s more likely than Vance given his background did one or more of those things than it would be for the average American, I could live with that too.
But saying you “don’t believe for a second” that he didn’t commit a sex crime and that he never committed theft is worse than mere speculation; you are throwing around unthinly veiled baseless accusations.
Not at all, I'm expressing my personal belief based on statistical fact. Nearly every American has committed both theft and sex offenses; finding an American who didn't is about as likely as finding a person with a driver's licenses who has never broke a traffic law; theoretically possible sure, but so is the sun exploding tomorrow or it being turtles all the way down.
The fact is according to his own narrative he grew up in America and not a bubble on a remote island cut off from all human civilization. The only question really is how often did he commit those crimes, not did he. He may not have been charged but that just means he got away with it, like most people.
Let’s say I bought into your thesis that nearly every American has committed theft. I surely won’t argue that most have broken traffic laws. But sex offenses? Criminal sex offenses?!?
If your claim was “had broken some law”, that would be one thing. But you said you believe he’d broken ALL of the ones you mention, and some quite serious.
You are indeed entitled to your own opinions. But you ain’t gonna get away with backing them based on “statistics”, since in fact statistics argue strongly against most of the claims you’ve made.
You obviously have no idea what a sex offense is on the books in your state or anywhere. For example recently studies show over 90% of teenagers have created, distributed, and viewed child pornography. Any time you have sex with someone that has had even one beer, including your spouse, it's sexual assault on the books. Expending ANY resources, including time, for the purposes of sex, even if tangential, if you have explicit consent is prostitution. You would be amazed what constitutes a sex crime if you ever are unfortunate enough to get in the crosshairs of a prosecutor and they decide to legally abuse their discretion. There is no such thing as a non-criminal sex offense, in fact most sex offenses aren't even sexual nor even related to sex, your state can make jaywalking a sex offense if they want as there is no linkage requirement the crime be sexual in nature at all hence why public urination is a sex offense in some states even if it's 3 am in the forest with nobody around. Likewise kidnapping, as in literal kidnapping to hold someone ransom for money, is a sex offense though most states exempt the parents, i.e. you can rape and kidnap your kids all you want but that won't make you a sex offender lol.
As for theft, fraud is theft by another name. To you earnestly think Vance was productively working every minute of every day when he was on the timeclock? All Americans commit timecard fraud though rarely prosecuted for it; but it happens. And I'd bet he's committed petty theft uncountable times. I've yet to meet a person in my life who hasn't stolen something at least once myself included. How many pens to you have to steal from work before it's a crime? One? Two? Every box in the supply room?
Likewise do you earnestly think the first time Vance had alcohol that wasn't provided by his parents or church, was at age twenty-one? Obviously you have never been around young men in the military living in the barracks if you do. I'd maybe buy he didn't do anything but drink in the military as they get random drug tested; not that that stops anyone given the amount of heroin and meth users I know in the military including one currently active duty two star Army general whom I'm seen in person first hand have his sixteen year old girlfriend inject meth into him before they had sex, on a regular basis too including the last time I seen them just a couple weeks ago. But hey drugs tests in the military lol.
But sure I can't prove he hasn't tried meth, mushrooms, LSD, MDMA, or pills in high school though given how prevalent they are it's fair to assume he did especially if we consider him to behave like a normal average person in a situation; likewise cocaine use is well document as rife among venture capitalists, traders, etc. as well as the Yale social and fraternity scenes (hell even GW Bush admitted to be coked up while at Yale) but hey somehow our friend Vance magically managed to be a social butterfly while engaging in antisocial behavior never having sex, doing drugs, drinking, etc .. I'm sure he was a virgin on a wedding night too lol and he made sure both him and his wife refrained from any alcohol at the reception as to avoid raping each other.
I think you are wildly exaggerating the present legal situation. The one sex crime which many Americans have committed is sex with someone below their state's age of consent. I believe the age of consent in my state is eighteen, which I think is above the median age for loss of virginity.
Perhaps the best way to discover many policy positions of the various political candidates is to take the political quiz at iSideWith.com and compare your answers to those of the candidates. I scored 160 (the highest possible score) on Bryon Caplan's Libertarian Purity Test, so my quiz answers would probably be similar to yours. The percentages of issues on which I agree with the Republican and Democratic presidential and VP candidates are Trump 65%, Harris 26%, Vance 73%, and Walz 29%.
Thanks for that link. Some funny questions, like do you trust psychologists more or less now than a year ago.
Says Chase Oliver 92%, Trump 68%, Peter Sonski 50%, and Harris 20%. Somehow I think it takes Trump just a bit too seriously. And last time I checked Oliver, I was not impressed. But it was interesting.
Yeah oddly we ended up similar (well reverse the middle two)and likewise I agree with your assessment of Oliver. I was planning to vote for Sonski anyways as my state prohibits writeins and he was the least objectional of the bunch but this rather cements it lol. Don't know anything about him more than the one minute I took to Google him once I got my ballot, don't really care either. He could be Stalin Hitler Roosevelt incarnate and would still get my vote.
Is there a serious argument against the idea that, when we have labor and environmental regulations, but not tariffs, we’re directly incentivizing outsourcing?
Yes, i understand that tariffs are going to hurt both imports and exports. I get that costs are passed on. But without tariffs, isn’t the net effect of labor and environmental laws to drive businesses out of the U.S.?
I understand the position that says “we shouldn’t have any of this stuff.” I get that.
But I don’t honestly understand the position that says, “given the current labor and environmental laws, tariffs to prevent American workers from competing with slave labor and polluting factories make the situation worse”.
It seems to obvious me that you want tariffs in direct proportion to the costs imposed by your local regulations, otherwise you’re just subsidizing foreign businesses for no real net benefit. The more your regulatory framework imposes costs on local business, the higher the tariffs need to be, to prevent the net incentive structure created by legislation from being “move productive activity elsewhere”.”
The argument does not depend on why another country has comparative advantage in some goods and we in others. Bad regulations make us poorer. They might change what goods we export and what goods we import, by raising the cost of some US goods relative to others. But a tariff makes us still poorer, by preventing us from avoiding some of the cost due to the regulations by exporting goods the regulations don't affect in exchange for ones they do affect.
I think you missed a point. We all agree that tariffs raise costs and make us poorer. That isn't what is being argued against.
Even 'good' regulations have a cost. Suppose our goal is clean water. We enact strict regulations that cost a lot and eventually most of some industry moves to Outer Snodopia. Where the water is made filthy. Our goal is a cleaner Earth (perhaps), not just one cleaner river here in the US. Transferring filth from here to there isn't much of a gain if you are thinking outside your home town. Pointed, targeted tariffs against goods that violate our goals might be what is being argued for. High tariffs against goods produced using slave labor, or that result in severe air and water pollution.
Yes, the tariffs make us poorer, and also make the people of Outer Snodopia poorer financially. But the goal isn't always maximizing economic gains, so that yardstick isn't appropriate in answering this question.
Fair enough. But that argument requires tariffs that are targeted at the particular foreign goods whose production has negative effects on you, which might mean effects on them that you want not to happen. It also requires that you believe that your opinion on the importance of clean water in outer snodgrass is preferable to the opinion of the people who live there, as expressed through their legal/regulatory system.
At a tangent, when you or, more important, Vance refers to slave labor I'm not sure if that means literal slave labor, which isn't how most Chinese goods are produced though there might be exceptions, or ordinary employment at wages that you, or Vance, think are too low.
“At a tangent, when you or, more important, Vance refers to slave labor I'm not sure if that means literal slave labor, which isn't how most Chinese goods are produced though there might be exceptions, or ordinary employment at wages that you, or Vance, think are too low.”
I’m in 100% agreement with the rest of your points above, and well said.
But just because you aren’t “sure” that Vance means actual slave labor when he says “slave labor” doesn’t make it fair to assume that he does not!
Unless, of course, he makes the reference as a defense of across-the-board tariffs as appropriate economic policy. Then your “not sure” critique would be fair.
Otherwise, of course, as either targeted economic policy - exactly as you acknowledge in this response - or as human rights policy, it is perfectly defensible [whether or not you or I agree it is optimal or even “‘wise”].
I don't assume he does not, but since he never says "we should have tariffs against the 1% of Chinese goods produced by slave labor in Xinjiang" and people in rich countries often do describe wages in poor countries as slave labor, I thought it likely that either he is using the term that way or he is counting on his listeners doing so.
Fair enough. I disagree with you in part, but only in part.
To me both the fairest and most reasonable way to read it is that he thinks (wholesale) tariffs against a country that employs *actual* slave labor are fair and reasonable and can be justified.
I am closer to your position on this than my reading of his, but I think his position on the slave labor point has at least some merit.
I agree with you. I prefer my preferences over those of far-off strangers. How am I to discern what they are? I act on the information I have in a way that benefits me.
The slave labor charges against China have been fairly well substantiated.
Imposing pointed tariffs is probably mostly impossible. Politically impossible, and practically in most cases. The few I am aware of have not been too positive. The ban on elephant ivory has not worked out at all the way its proponents believed, and the ban on 'blood' diamonds has been ineffective.
Not advocating tariffs. Just hoping you would respond to the point of the original comment and not the side issue.
The preferences you are preferring to those of far-off strangers are preferences with things, in your example clean water in their country, that directly affect them, not you, and that they are likely to know more about than you do. You don't know their individual preferences but the rules in their country are at least some evidence.
Can you offer a link to the evidence on slave labor? I wouldn't be surprised if it exists but would be surprised if it represents a significant fraction of the labor force or has a significant effect on US trade relations with China.
As to whether I know their preferences. How? That authoritarian governments prefer a particular policy is a very low indicator of how the local people feel. I believe the 19th and 20th centuries have given us plenty of examples of how more-free countries trended rapidly towards lower pollution standards while the Eastern block maintained the dirty practices of the early industrial age.
Vance really reminds me of all the intelligent highly educated lawyers who ended up in senior positions in the Nazi party running concentration camps. Even for a politician he is a completely amoral opportunist l
He might be, but my guess is not. I read him as wanting to fix things for the people he grew up among and thinking that getting political power, which sometimes requires dishonesty, will let him do so. What isn't clear to me is what he believes can be done with political power that will fix things for those people, their problems as he describes them being largely cultural.
I think you are giving him to much credit for what was obviously an intentional foundation myth written nearly ten years after he started his political career as a congressional staffer at the encouragement of a bunch of other politically astute hucksters to give himself street credit.
As economists like to say, look at what a person does, not says and what he has did was nothing but get rich, join the beltway social club, marry a brown first generational immigrant and promptly convert to Hinduism, and then get elected to Federal office all the while doing absolutely nothing to help those he claims to care about. What legislation has he authored and passed? What legislation was he instrumental in? What committees has he served in where he wielded effective oversight to affect executive agency direction? How's he doing on drug legalization, criminal justice reform, mens rights, and welfare reform as they are the most pressing issues facing his "community".
I mean the man has over ten million dollars, how much you want to bet he spends more on social engagements and family vacations than helping those he "cares about". Ten million can significantly help make a couple thousand trailer trashes lives better. Hell he could have even directly lifted one out of poverty for life by marrying one but nope, he married a rich girl from Yale.
He suffers from that problem that plagues so many little Horatio Algers, they despise their upbringing in fact while capitalizing on it for street cred and empathy. He's not wrong about sub culturally problems but that's at every socioeconomic level, they all got their failings is some way shape or form. I'd wager his childhood neighbors though are more honest, helpful, and family oriented than that of his kids.
Sorry but I can't stand the guy. His selection cost Trump my vote just like Pence did.
I'd suggest both doctrinally and dogmatically you can't be a Christian and married to a Hindi, especially so with children, hence either he crypto-converted or was never a Christian in the first place beyond maybe politically or culturally. I just don't think there is a Christian doctrinal allowance for "I'm ok with my wife and kids actively worshiping false idols and keeping them in my house, later to die and go to Hell"; I'd even proffer you wouldn't want that for your loved ones anyways if you genuinely believed.
My bet is he's simply an agnostic opportunist or went full apostasy and converted but you are correct, it's simply speculation. But regardless I don't think by any reasonable stretch one could earnestly believe him to currently be a Christian.
You might like a book "The Vampire Economy", published a week after Hitler invaded Poland, written by a communist who believed in property rights, whatever that means. Full of details on how the Nazis took over businesses. Apparatchiks in every business who knew nothing. Tried to go full autarkey, and imports were paid for with "Aski" Marks which could only buy certain goods that Germans didn't want. Lots of just mind-boggling stupidity. Well worth it if you thought you knew how stupid Nazis and statists in general are.
The word should be "emigrant." The mistake was made by Word's speech to text software when I read the passage to it and then missed by me when I corrected it.
> He repeatedly links the immigration policies he opposes not only with low wages for poor Americans, a possible result, but with drugs coming into the country. Carried by illegal immigrants is one way illegal drugs could come in but there are lots of others, as illustrated by American experience with a previous experiment in prohibition.
There is plenty of data as well as logical arguments as to why it is normally US citizens who smuggle drugs and that too from port of entry. US citizens are least likely to be stopped and searched than illegal immigrants. US citizens likely know the terrain better and have reasons to not steal from cartels etc. Hence smugglers trust them with drugs and not an illegal immigrant who can not speak English and is probably looking for an CBP officer to surrender to and claim asylum.
Here is real world data for Fentanyl but there is no reason why Heroine or Coke would be any different.
I find it disturbing that Vance has praised Lina Khan. I also don't recall anything in his book about reading and appreciating Hayek, the Friedmans, or free market thinkers in general. That makes me think he truly supports tariffs and breaking up big businesses. I'm not at all clear what he thinks of regulation generally.
In one of the things I didn't quote he refers to Milton Friedman as a brilliant economist responsible for the Republican party taking what Vance regards as a wrong turn, commitment to free markets. Vance's economics are closer to LBJ than to Goldwater.
"Wrong turn" was my description, but I found two passages making the argument. I quoted from one of them. Here is the relevant part of the other.
“Almost certainly the most influential right-of-center thinker of the last fifty years was Milton Friedman, a brilliant monetary economist and quick-witted debater… His views on trade similarly encouraged policy makers to ignore the costs of opening our markets to cheap consumer goods. ‘Can you think of a better deal,’ Friedman wrote in 1970, to those then concerned about Japan, ‘than our getting fine textiles, shiny cars, and sophisticated T.V. sets for a bale of green printed paper?’ Well, a conservative in 2020 might reply to this nonsense that a better deal might include millions of men in the South and Midwest with jobs instead of pill bottles and iPhones. How about communities with more steady father figures than opioids?” (JD Vance, “End the Globalization Gravy Train,” The American Mind, 4/21/20) "
This one is indeed for my money a FAR more damning indictment - and cause for concern - of Vance than anything you did include in either of your last two pieces.
And with this piece, while I am still ok enough with his views on China, his views on the economics are just plain wrong. And based on what he wrote here, it matters very little whether he understands the economics and chooses to ignore them, or he does not understand them.
I have had many many arguments with tariff fan boys, and it seems to invariably come down to freaking out over IP theft and national security, without realizing that they are separate issues, as if the only purpose of tariffs is to bludgeon China into to stop stealing IP and stop inserting malware into cameras, TVs, and everything else. I'd have a lot more respect if they actually admit the difference, and then propose separate solutions, but it's all tariffs all day.
I suspect some of it also comes from wanting Trump to win and not wanting to admit he's not perfect. Me, I'd rather Trump win mainly because his style has broken the political elite classes and they don't know how to deal with him; Hillary still says once in a while that he stole her election. But economically, Trump is a moron, and his only saving grace on that is that Kamala is even dumber.
I am not sure you can deduce Trump's economic beliefs from what he says and does. Think of him as maximizing political benefits to himself, not economic benefits to the nation. Tariffs are politically profitable, partly because they transfer from a dispersed interest to a concentrated interest, partly because the wrong theory of the economics of trade is easier to understand than the correct theory, which is why the wrong theory, absolute advantage, came first.
I am more interested in Vance's economics, because I think he really does want to do good, although not in the same sense as economic efficiency. It isn't clear to me whether he has a correct reason to believe that tariffs will achieve what he wants, making things better for his people even if worse for other Americans, or if that conclusion depends on not understanding the economics.
I'm not much interested in what Trump actually believes, or even what he says. His economic actions are what I care about. Calling him an economic moron is shorthand for acting like an economic moron.
Did you happen to catch the moment Kamala's teleprompter froze? I think the last line was "32 days" (the time until the election). I think she repeated it 4 or 5 times. She can't think on her feet. And I'm not even sure we need the prepositional phrase there.
Then there's Walz, who confuses socialism with neighborliness. He gets married on June 4th, the anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre so he can remember the date. Twenty-four years in the military... June 4th is the anniversary of the Battle of Midway, even I know that. But he gets married on the anniversary of a MASSACRE? Sweet Jesus, protect us from these 2.
Having just read your latest post, I see you are continuing to think about Vance.
My perspective on Vance is a bit weird, but the heuristic involved has worked quite well for me with other people and companies.
Vance is the person who made claims about Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs in Springfield. Trump repeated those claims, but Vance was the biggest, loudest source.
So he's not just a liar, but a particular type of liar. Yes, politicians lie. But this wasn't the ordinary run-of-the-mill political lie, unless your standards of political not-quite-honesty have been (re)set by Trump.
I'll read Vance's book eventually. (There's a long hold queue at the library.) And l'll look at other evidence, particularly if his team wins the upcoming election.
But if past experience is any sample, I understand his *character* from that one little anecdote, and if he remains a public figure, future developments will produce more of the same.
Meanwhile, as an immigrant to the US myself, I'll be busy cooking my neighbours' cats, if not their children. Or perhaps my own.
...
---
...
...
...
...
For the sarcasm impaired, that last paragraph was sarcasm.
> Vance is the person who made claims about Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs in Springfield. Trump repeated those claims, but Vance was the biggest, loudest source.
Well the Haitian immigrants do appear to be eating cats and dogs.
The most nearly relevant evidence I have seen is of an immigrant from Africa, not Haiti, cooking a cat. No evidence of whether it was a pet or feral. No dog.
What evidence do you have for Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs?
And a statement by someone you don't know anything about that supports your side of the election is good evidence? Lots of stories circulate that are not true.
Would you apply the same standard of proof to things you didn't want to believe? Lots of people claim (falsely) that Vance admitted to inventing the story. Someone claimed on the comment thread to one of my Vance posts that Vance had converted to Hinduism.
I don't think what Vance believed when he wrote Hillbilly Elegy matters. He is Trump's running mate now and if Trump wins his VP. Trump's father lived to 94, and the last president not to make it to 90 was Nixon. It is likely Trump is point to be around for a decade after 2028. Vance has signed on with the MAGA brand and I don't think he can run from it.
Also Vance was a financier so his professional interests, to the extent he has some is to continue to promote an economy favorable to the interests of the investor class, which fits into the long-standing Republican identity as the capitalist or business party.
From the perspective of the Republican base, the economy will immediately improve upon Trump's election meaning they will have no incentive to enact any policy other than tax cuts, which is standard with Republicans. Not sure what Vance can do with that record. Likewise, the base will see the immigrant problem solved so he cannot really run on that. OTOH maybe this doesn't matter. If they manage to put in a fix* so the Republican wins automatically, then Vance doesn't have to say or believe in anything. In any case I see no reason why he would need to have any views of his own.
*Don't know how this would be done, but some folks seem to think something like this might happen.
Vance strongly criticizes the past support for corporations by the Republican party. Judging by his rhetoric, he wants a working class base. He has discussed the problems of funding Republican campaigns without support from rich people.
I am sure Vance and Republicans want a working class base, that is where the votes are. But that does not mean they are going to shift away from their support for the capitalist and investor class. The core elements of this support are low tax rates on investment and corporate income, a low top income tax rate, and legal stock buybacks. These policies have served to double stock market capitalization relative to GDP. Resources expended on expansion of financial values are not available for productive investment. Over the last six years over 98% of the three-fifths of S&P500 corporate earnings not paid out as dividends have been used for stock buybacks instead of reinvested, as used to happen. This trend negatively impacts working people. This policy has led to the massive increase in stock market capitalization, which is very favorable to investors and business executives (whose compensation mostly comes from stock options). Recent tax cuts have only served to accelerate the growth in stock market valuation.
Republican policy has continued to be the same pro-investor, pro-corporate executive policy it has always been. Proposals for immigration restriction and tariffs, at best, amount to rearranging the deck chairs in the Titanic as the nation continues to decline.
It is on foreign trade alone that I worry about Vance’s policies based on his rhetoric.
My one criticism of the piece is that while it is consistent with DF’s values, the implicit claim that lots of cheap illegal drugs in this country are not in fact HIGHLY correlated with illegal immigration is just wrong. Whether or not the illegal immigrants carry said drugs themselves.
The cartels that bring in those illegal drugs are the same cartels doing the human trafficking and bringing in most of the illegal immigrants that have come here under the border czar Kamala Harris-Biden administration. The drug cartels have been the biggest winners with our Harris-Biden border policies.
IMO it is disingenuous to cite Vance’s views on “immigration” overall when politely dismissing the claims about illegal drugs.
I probably agree with DF’s conclusion that Vance’s policies on legal immigration are not the same as those of we classical liberals. And so non-optimal.
But even if DF might prefer open borders and is happier with mass illegal immigration given that increasing legal immigration will be very difficult in the medium term given our political polarization (and the recent realities of mass illegal immigration), criticizing Vance for tying drugs to illegal immigration is unfair, and whatever one’s principled stance on drug laws might be, criticizing him for wanting to reduce the power and wealth of Mexican drug cartels is simply wrong.
But be clear that I didn’t claim that it was illegal immigrants smuggling the Fetanyl, nor to my knowledge has Vance (though I could certainly be wrong about that).
My point was that it is the same drug cartels that are massively benefiting financially from the Harris-Biden particular form of open border policies which surely you could acknowledge is the worst of all possible worlds: people come in illegally, cannot get legal jobs very easily, owe the cartels large sums of money, rule of law made a mockery, etc.
The arguments in the Cato piece are meant to point out that people other than the illegal immigrants themselves are responsible for the drugs coming in. I agree with that. I suspect Vance - and even probably Trump - would agree as well.
But that doesn’t change the fact that the current border czar Harris-Biden border policy is a bad policy on its own “merits”, and *in addition* is enriching drug cartels which contributes to the damage done to American citizens.
And so my point remains that oblique criticism of Vance because he’s opposed to illegal immigration and illegal drugs as a means to further the policy objective of more legal immigration is imo unfair at minimum, and unwarranted/disingenuous when done as a combo criticism of his views on “immigration”.
I don't know, and you probably don't know, how much illegal immigration is smuggling organized by drug cartels — quite a lot of it, and quite a lot of what Trump complains about, is letting in people who claim refugee status and who then never show up for the relevant hearing. But if drug cartels can make money by smuggling people why would that make them more willing to smuggle drugs? I would expect both activities to be done if and only if profitable, not for one to be funded by the other. If anything, the opportunity to make money at one illegal activity should pull resources out of other ones — why make $100/day smuggling drugs if you can make $150 smuggling people?
Due respect, but most of those people who cross the Mexican border who claim refugee status who then don’t show up for their hearings ARE the people brought in by the cartels!! They are not different groups!
But even if I were somehow wrong about the word “most” in the sentence above, I surely am not if you replace it with the word “many”.
“Cartels have made a record amount of money over the last two years. In 2021 alone, the cartels made an estimated $13 billion just from human trafficking and smuggling.”
And I cannot believe that I might actually “teach” David Friedman anything about economics, but an entity that has more capital will have more money to invest in any activities that are profitable based on their cost of capital. And with the profits from their newer vastly expanded human trafficking operations, they now have a lot more capital indeed.
Surely you are not suggesting it is a good thing that vicious Mexican drug cartels are enriched by being able to very profitably smuggle illegal immigrants into our country, or that there is any meaningful likelihood in anything save perhaps a very short run that being able to profitably smuggle people will reduce cartel interest in or ability to smuggle drugs.
The point is not that smuggling drugs is worse than smuggling humans. While I likely don’t fully share your views on illegal drugs, mine are surely a whole lot closer to yours than to Vance’s. The objection here is to enriching vicious lawless thugs.
"most of those people who cross the Mexican border who claim refugee status who then don’t show up for their hearings ARE the people brought in by the cartels"
You know this how?
If drug smuggling is profitable it doesn't need to be subsidized by people smuggling. If it is unprofitable people smugglers will spend their profits on something else or take them as income.
I have seen this figure cited elsewhere. Do either of us know that this is exactly the number? Of course not. But so what?
I even acknowledged that my word “most” perhaps should be replaced with the word “many”.
I have heard Ted Cruz talk about his multiple discussions with border patrol agents covering the subject of how most illegal immigrants make it across our border. Are you trying to suggest that somehow you know that the cartels are NOT making enormous amounts of money - far higher than they had previously - from the human trafficking trade since Biden took office?
“If drug smuggling is profitable it doesn't need to be subsidized by people smuggling.”
So drug smuggling and the related illegal business by cartels is the one industry with a fixed supply and fixed demand where access to capital is unnecessary and unhelpful why, exactly?
I never suggested drug smuggling needed to be subsidized. I suggested that a policy that demonstrably enriches vicious drug gangs is not a good policy.
I’m not surprised at all that a politician, even an Ivy-educated politician, would suddenly discover the mercantilist model of international trade when election season rolls around.
Both you and Steve Levitt have pointed this out repeatedly over the years that, A. The model was proven wrong centuries (iirc) ago, and B. Politicians routinely act as if we don’t know that.
I hear Ivy-educated politicians ignoring that fact every single day. Indeed it’s one idea that seems to have broad, bipartisan support, a reason to be suspicious if ever there was one.
Not just politicians. My impression is that most public discussion of trade is in mercantilist terms, although the maximand is jobs not gold. It really is easier to understand than the correct model.
JDvance and I have had at least somewhat similar* life scripts, so I will offer at least one take on why he’s changed since 2016 because I have too. I won’t delve into every policy issue here.
There are two “cats for Kamala” signs in my town. This stems from Vance’s comments in 2021 about how childless cat ladies were basically running the country. The prompt of this comment was that the main people supporting the Covid lockdown, school closures, and mask policies that were so devastating to those of us with small children at the time (that includes Vance and I) where single professional ladies that could do their job on zoom and were unaffected by them.
This same class of people are also the ones that supported the kangaroo courts of MeToo, the BLM riots, white fragility and DEI struggle sessions, rejection of free speech and wanting to lock people up for opinions, etc etc.
Moreover, it’s pretty clear that the entire backbone of the Democratic Party is those people. Their avatar is now the candidate herself. Electorally and socially its neurotic single women carrying the left on their back.
As both direct (handouts) and indirect (through professional jobs with or mandated by the government) recipients they are the main beneficiaries of government largess.
And well on the issue of childbirth itself things have really gone downhill around the world since 2016.
Now, in 2016 maybe you could have an inkling about this. Hillary’s “basket of deplorables”. But politics just didn’t seem that important in 2016. I voted Trump but mostly just because I normally vote Republican and in some vague sense I was worried about the long term impacts of third world immigration. I didn’t think about it much, I didn’t even vote in most elections.
But it’s been a long eight years and especially since 2020 the mask is off. The left and the right have moved way apart and there really are meaningful differences between them these days. It ain’t the 1990s anymore.
I think that Vance has gone through the same transformation that Musk and many others have. Things have changed a lot since 2016, and it would be insane not to update your evaluation of things based on it. These people give plenty of interviews explaining their views and why they’ve changed.
*we are both about the same age, both got married around the same time, and both have three children. I’m not as successful as him but I do pretty well for myself and too am an educated professional whose parents worked for a living but now inhabit a professional sphere that I find mostly deplorable. He lives in DC and is involved in government. I’m close to DC and have had plenty of exposure to government. My upbringing was much more stable then his but I’m certainly aware of the kind of social behavior he talks about.
“childless cat ladies were basically running the country”
It may or may not have been an unwise thing for a politician to say, but the facts are the facts.
https://www.aei.org/op-eds/all-the-single-democratic-ladies/
In 2022, according to exit polls, unmarried women voted for Democratic House candidates at a slightly more than two-to-one ratio (68–31 percent). Every other quadrant of voters — married men, unmarried men, and married women — gave majorities to Republican candidates.
Ugly truths are what really trigger people.
Politics in many ways is about finding groups that can justify to themselves and those they are stealing from that such stealing is justified, or at least beyond criticism.
Women are traditionally a powerless group that elicits empathy, but this is turned on its head by the modern democratic welfare state where they can exercise mass political (and thus violent) power.
Society has not yet been able to adapt to this change in their role, they exercise power without people truly expecting them to be responsible for it.
I am much more sympathetic to the Friedman than the Vance perspective, but I cannot help but notice that when I have household projects - fencing, roof repair, a new porch, landscaping - the work is invariably done by recent immigrants. The companies they work for are owned by whites. The workers rarely speak any English. I also see them doing a lot of roadwork, digging pipelines, etc. Formerly this kind of work would have been done by Vance's people.
I'm not sure it would have been. Reading the book, their problems seem more cultural than economic. It isn't as if there is a fixed number of jobs.
That depends somewhat on whether "his people" are more Appalachian or Rust Belt. For the Rust Belt, there's a real situation where the number of jobs is significantly reduced from recent memory.
Appalachia has a different problem, in that there never really were a great number of jobs and not a lot of opportunity for new jobs to be created. Outside of mining and forestry jobs, there isn't a lot of reason to move to most of Appalachia.
The Rust Belt would absolutely have been doing that kind of work. Generally hard working industrious people who did manual labor. Appalachia has a lot more cultural issues as you say.
From my understanding of his background, I think Appalachia is more accurate, but Vance has been reaching out to all working class backgrounds. I take it that Jon means "working class" instead of "Appalachian."
When we moved into our house it needed some work done. Add a deck and a patio, install a dishwasher, etc. The first company we contacted hired it out some dark skinned Hispanics with no English they obviously picked up at Home Depot. They putzed around for a week and left me with a broken deck and a bunch of nails strewn all over my lawn for my kids to step on. The company had to send out a white dude and a light skinned Hispanic with good English to tear it all down and build it back proper. The patio and the dishwasher got installed by white people that did a stellar job. Based on our proximity to WV, I suspect they were Vance's people.
The IQ of those in the skilled trades is actually pretty close to the white average. That would be high for the average Hispanic and really high for your average dark skinned illegal from Central America. Hence why you tend to see them in lower end work (landscaping, etc).
In the absence of government subsidized Hispanic labor, work would be more expensive and some of it would get done anyway and some would either be foregone or done domestically (mow your own lawn). Some would get automated (in Japan you order off a screen at a restaurant rather than have someone come to your table). The savings from not having to pay for the govenrment education and medical care of the low skill Hispanics would increase economic growth, not to mention the positive political impacts.
This is more or less true in all Western societies. There is no culture of performing and teaching physical work and no trade schools, insufficient dignity for working people. Like Vance, I grew up as the first and only member of an extended family to obtain an advanced degree. I doubt he performed as much physical labor as I did in my youth. In fact, I just came back inside after processing firewood. When I have to hire help, I feel as close to the Mexican people who come as to the guys who remind me of my uncles. I understand some of Vance's sentiments where they overlap, but he's a snake in the grass. He represents the "elite" that working people ought to fear. But that's harder to grasp than the loathing of the woke "elite", which makes it easy for the authoritarians all over the West. Their ideas make a perfectly good guy like Tim Walz look (or act) like an idiot and Vance can shoot him like fish in a barrel. Sorry to carry on.
All Western countries? I get the impression that Germany does this far better than the US.
I like Vance. Allowing for political rhetoric I don't read a great difference in his values then and now and why yes, in my opinion this time there ARE villains.
The Minneapolis insurance; One pays for such to have some protection in case of catastrophe. A $40k return with a $140k expense doesn't sound like the business owner got a fair shake. However one would need read the terms and limitations of the policy (I just checked the total limit of liability on my property insurance.) .
The question isn't whether the business owner got a fair shake — we don't know whether it did since Vance doesn't give us any details, let alone information to let us check them. But whether he got a fair shake isn't relevant. Vance's claim is that the insurance company profited by the riot, which according to him explains why insurance companies supported BLM. But on his facts, the riot cost the insurance company forty thousand dollars, which is more than the zero they would have had to pay if there had been no riot and the insured property hadn't been destroyed.
Isn't that obvious?
The specific example isn't good, but the incite that insurance (and other big companies) support BLM and the rest of the loony left for self interest reasons is sound. I work for BigInsurance, and my company definitely supported BLM, had our woke struggle sessions, get our DEI emails, fired anyone that wouldn't get the vaccine (we literally work from home by ourselves!), and target whatever DEI metrics CMS provides.
We do it because much of insurance (much of everything when government spending is nearly half the economy) is government money. And what insurance isn't directly government like auto or home still needs all sorts of approvals from state regulators. There simply is no way to run a business without government good graces, and BLM/Woke/etc is the state religion. So they pay their dues at a minimum to be left alone and in the maximum to get huge payouts (my industry just got a $10B bribe from the Biden admin essentially).
What struck about what Vance wrote was not that his claim about the insurance industry was false — I know nothing about that — but that the argument he gave made no sense.
We obviously see things differently. To me the question is whether the business owner got a fair shake.
On the other hand yes, in my opinion the insurance company will profit greatly by the riot, a new insurable vista opens up to them. No I don't fault the company over this, they are in business to make, not lose money.
Obviously we differ in what we see as obvious.
We have no idea whether the business owner got a fair shake. Vance doesn't tell us why the owner only got $40,000. We don't even know if it happened. Vance didn't say anything that would let us check if it is real or he made it up.
The one thing we know is that he made an argument that made no sense.
Exaggeration for effect has been a political tool forever. The Left engages in it as much as Trump, but only Trump's exaggerations get excoriated by the MSM.
Anyway, an example of insurance company weirdness just recently occurred to me. I have a 700 sq ft rough cabin, converted from an earlier pole shed Up North in Michigan. It is on an 80 acre tract of mostly timber, with a couple of small clearings, a small pond, and a few deer trails. It is very isolated, and quite rough. It has a tiny kitchen area, and a tiny bathroom with a small shower. My home insurance carrier wants me to insure it for $160,000, apparently on the assumption that is it just as likely burn as in any suburb, AND that rebuilding it would take that much.
They insured it originally without anyone seeing it. This past spring a few pictures were taken by them. I finally argued them down to insuring it for $55,000 or I'd just drop the insurance. No mortgage so I don't have to insure it. They're still unhappy.
There has not been a fire in surrounding 300 sq miles of forest in living memory. Or in written history of the area.
If they're not in it to make money, they've got the wrong goal.
I've been thinking the same for a while - Vance is too smart to believe the things he's been saying.
So - do we want a smart liar, who lies for political advantage? Or an idiot who believes the foolishness they say? Or an idiot who says intelligent things that they don't believe, for political advantage?
I think almost all political candidates, of whatever ideology, genuinely want peace and prosperity, and at least a minimal amount of personal freedom. Some know how to get it, and some know how to get power. Not the same thing.
I suspect for the most part Trump believes what he says (except perhaps the immigrant stuff, which is merely exaggerated). He's not generally smart but has good instincts about many things.
Interestingly, Trump advocated legalization of marijuana in Florida because (he said) at least that way the marijuana that people get won't be adulterated (with in his example, fentanyl, which seems unlikely). Still, it shows he understands the principle that legal drugs are of known potency and content, unlike black market drugs.
Yet a few weeks later in an interview on "Gutfeld!" (Fox), he said the only way to fully stop fentanyl from being trafficked into the US would be to impose the death penalty for smuggling it. And commented that he didn't know "if America is ready for that" (I suspect not).
That statement is probably true - both parts - but he chose not to mention the alternative of legalizing fentanyl, which his earlier comments indicate he's smart enough to understand.
Bottom line - I think Trump speaks the truth as he understands it (plus or minus exaggeration), but selectively.
Vance says whatever he thinks will get him power. But he's not stupid.
Now do Harris, who more and more seems pretty stupid, but willing to say whatever it takes to get her power. ;-)
And I'm not at all convinced that she wants prosperity for folks. Her and Biden's energy policies would pauperize the USA (or any other nation).
I think they just have a very different notion of what "prosperity" means compared to you and me, or most historic measurements.
If they truly believe that climate change is existential, some of their policies make more sense, for instance. (I would still argue that they should be gung-ho for nuclear in that case, but that's a minor quibble once we're that far in).
Also, if they believe that racial equality is more important than competence, then a lot of the DEI stuff makes sense. I happen to think that long term this will destroy the standard of living for all races, but spoils systems are nothing new.
If they truly think climate change is existential, then not going all in on nuclear is not a quibble, minor or major. You cannot substitute wind and solar for dispatchable power sources and maintain a reliable non-third-world grid.
This is obvious to anyone with a tiny lick of knowledge. Or one could just observe the abject failure that is Germany and compare it with France.
The fact that they continue to push "solutions" (Wind/solar) that can never work and whose only effect is to throw the capital of nations down the toilet, proves that their goal is not avoiding climate change, but to destroy economies.
I agree. My point was based on a fairly uncharitable reading of the environmentalists involved. I don't think they've done the research to determine the best way to move away from fossil fuels. Instead, I believe they are demonstrating ingroup solidarity and stating the required positions for that group. Nuclear has been considered unacceptable to the environmentalist movement for many years, and is baked into position by now.
Whether to use nuclear or not is a position to discuss after coming to a research-based view. It's a minor quibble and there's not much point if two sides are just throwing their ingroup-acceptable shibboleths at one another.
“whose only effect is to throw the capital of nations down the toilet,”
While I surely am on your side, I feel the need to point out that is NOT the only effect.
Besides the obvious point that it enriches their cronies (who in turn return some of that money as campaign contributions), the effect is to help leftists win elections and gather and wield even more authoritarian power.
Imo the goal (for all but the actual radicals) is not to destroy economies, it is to attain political power, whatever the impact on the economy.
I guess it's good to point out that side effect. From my perspective, which is considering the health and productivity of the economy, diverting capital to politicians is the same thing as throwing it down the toilet. In the case of diverting it to these particular politicians, I guess it's a bit like using the money to purchase more toilets so the money can be flushed faster.
I'll take a bite. I think Harris is one of the dumbest, most clueless window vane politicians I can remember. I don't think she has any core beliefs other than wanting to be a figurehead. She'd be a great elected queen with no power, and that's it.
I picture her in a meeting over some national security "crisis", such as if the US decided to shoot across the bows of Chinese warships harassing the Philippine supply ships, and asking everyone else what to do, agreeing with each as they spoke, and picking one to follow for no particular reason.
In some ways, I think she might be the safest President, since the powers behind the throne obviously wouldn't get much public recognition and might actually offer honest advice and work out realistic answers.
You were doing great until the last paragraph. The powers behind Biden's and would-be Kamala's thrones hate the USA and prosperity and want to do everything possible to implement the WEF agenda which would leave us all enslaved to the rich elite.
Neo-feudalism, except, you know, without the nice part of feudalism where the lords feel some obligation to help and protect the serfs.
Been thinking about that. At first blush, I thought you were right, but the more I think about it, the more I think she simply doesn't care, not really, and the amount of pushback that requires her to actually answer questions might dissuade her from accepting the more loony advice. Look at all the word salad she spews now, or how she froze when her teleprompter was on the blink. Her handlers can deal with it now, on the campaign trail with only a month to go, but as President, she couldn't pull a Biden and disappear on a beach somewhere, and I think she really detests looking like a fool with all these tough questions.
It's just a hunch. I have no real evidence. But I think she wants to coast and be a popular well-liked and respected figure head too much to let her advisors put her in tough spots very often.
I don't think she has advisors. Those you would think of as advisors are almost certainly actually in charge of her. She's a sock puppet. As with Biden, they'll implement their hidden, secret agenda, which is to convert the USA into followers of WEF's Agenda 2030, regardless of what Harris says or does.
Yes, she's a sock puppet. Yes, she has handlers, not advisors. But even Biden put his foot down once in a while, and Harris is not senile and won't put up with as many embarrassing mistakes as Biden. I do not believe her handlers will have the extreme control over her as they do over Biden.
World Economic Forum. Shadowy UN organization that all of our US leaders seem to belong to, including many city and state leaders and funded by our taxes. Kerry is always there. Meets in Davos regularly. Run by an old Nazi who looks like he should be a Bond villain and definitely thinks like a Bond villain.
Klaus Schwab was born in 1938 and his family spent the war in Switzerland so it is unlikely that he is or was a Nazi.
I'd caveat that with I think she's both a true misandrist and despises the poor. Those two things have been consistent in her actual acts, not speech, throughout her entire political career. She never turns down an opportunity to further harm them even when little to no cost to herself.
I remember when Trump was shot and all the Secret Service agents sprung into action and the one lady DEI hire started fumbling with her gun and asking all the men what they were supposed to do.
“ I think she might be the safest President, since the powers behind the throne obviously wouldn't get much public recognition and might actually offer honest advice and work out realistic answers.”
We’ve had this for the last 3.7 years with our current sitting president; how do you think that’s worked out for us?
It’s possible that the “advice” is honest, but if so it’s hard- leftist honest.
And if you think it’s resulted in “realistic answers”, then I’ve got this great bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you…
Agree:
Trump: Not real smart. Good instincts. Mostly honest +/- exaggeration and selectivity. Well-intentioned.
Vance: Smart. Says whatever he thinks will win himself power. Probably well-intentioned.
Harris: Dumb. Says whatever she thinks will win herself power. Not sure about her intentions.
Walz: Dumb. Honest +/- stupidity and self-deception. Well-intentioned.
Note that when I say "honest" I mean says what they *believe* to be true. They are all often wrong about that.
“I've been thinking the same for a while - Vance is too smart to believe the things he's been saying.”
The man is a politician.
Do you think Obama believed all the things he said? Do you think he believed ”If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor”?
Do you think Bill Clinton believed all the things he said?
For the sake of argument, I’ll give you that Trump is as you say (your view is quite a bit better than that of the media that takes Trump literally but not seriously).
Do you really seen nothing wrong with holding *everything* Vance says to a super high standard, but essentially holding nothing that Harris, Walz (or Trump) says to any standard at all?
I think DF’s stated position that Trump is just in it for himself, his implicit position that Harris and Walz are just morons, but that Vance is fundamentally smarter, well-meaning but badly wrong on economics is simultaneously too nice to Vance on the intentions issue and yet far too harsh on substantive issues.
OTOH, the flip side of DF’s Vance position ain’t right either: because Vance seems more capable of being a classical liberal than the other 3 doesn’t mean he is fundamentally more dishonest than the average politician.
And even if I surely agree about the relative intelligence of Harris and Walz, there are an *awful* lot of high IQ liberals - politicians and non-politicians - who believe all sorts of things we classical liberals think are idiotic. Are you claiming that every single one of them is simply a liar on all of these issues, because they are “too smart” to believe what they are saying?
I’m very used to the leftist media’s biased double standards. It’s kinda strange to hear folks hear claim that politicians we believe to be intelligent on the right must be liars when they don’t agree with us - or because they have chosen to politically align with Trump - yet we rarely make the same sweeping accusations of liberal politicians.
The reality is that:
1) most people are neither that dumb nor that smart, and
2) politicians need to win elections to accomplish things, and so some of the things they say are gonna be for the purposes of winning elections
3) #1 above is true of most politicians; #2 above is true of essentially all politicians.
My impression is rather that belief isn't usually all that relevant to most successful politicians. I.e. I'd consider them on SL4 as described in https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/simulacrum-levels, whereas us simple nerds tend to get stuck on SL1 (and get confused when we expect other people to be on the same level).
A high IQ, a disagreeable personality looking for feuds, and the complete absence of convictions that aren't for sale. Appealing now to the very trash he grew up around and learned to feel superior to and selling them the incoherent grievance politics that his boss has demonstrated they want. What could go wrong?
"Appealing now to the very trash he grew up around", Hillary, is that you?
To be accurate, Hillary married trash and deplores trash, but she didn’t grow up around it…
I think Vance has convictions. Unfortunately his convictions don't include "tell the truth" or "uphold the constitution".
When I first read his book, which I did love for its insight into a different world, I thought to myself... this man has political aspirations. Notice he never confesses any major sins of his own? Just smoking pot. So I'm not sure it's accurate to say the book has his honest beliefs.
Yeah there is no way coming from that background he didn't engage in criminality of the sort that one does growing up like that. It might have just been social motivated as in "this what my friends do" as opposed to "I wanted to" but regardless I don't believe for a second marijuana is the only drug he used, he never drank underage, never assaulted anyone, never engaged in prostitution, never committed a sex crime, never committed any sort of theft, etc.
Drinking underage is sufficiently unremarkable that I wouldn't expect him to mention it. He might have done some of the other things you list, might not, but if he had I would not expect him to mention it even if he was not planning a political career.
“ I don't believe for a second [that] he […] never assaulted anyone, never engaged in prostitution, never committed a sex crime, never committed any sort of theft,”
Those are pretty strong accusations you throw out there, and for which, of course you don’t have any proof. Pretty sure those are libelous defamatory statements for which you have no proof whatsoever.
Now if your point was merely that the reader cannot know for sure that he didn’t do any of those things, that’d be fine (and apply to almost every person ever).
If you want to claim that it’s more likely than Vance given his background did one or more of those things than it would be for the average American, I could live with that too.
But saying you “don’t believe for a second” that he didn’t commit a sex crime and that he never committed theft is worse than mere speculation; you are throwing around unthinly veiled baseless accusations.
Not at all, I'm expressing my personal belief based on statistical fact. Nearly every American has committed both theft and sex offenses; finding an American who didn't is about as likely as finding a person with a driver's licenses who has never broke a traffic law; theoretically possible sure, but so is the sun exploding tomorrow or it being turtles all the way down.
The fact is according to his own narrative he grew up in America and not a bubble on a remote island cut off from all human civilization. The only question really is how often did he commit those crimes, not did he. He may not have been charged but that just means he got away with it, like most people.
Let’s say I bought into your thesis that nearly every American has committed theft. I surely won’t argue that most have broken traffic laws. But sex offenses? Criminal sex offenses?!?
If your claim was “had broken some law”, that would be one thing. But you said you believe he’d broken ALL of the ones you mention, and some quite serious.
You are indeed entitled to your own opinions. But you ain’t gonna get away with backing them based on “statistics”, since in fact statistics argue strongly against most of the claims you’ve made.
You obviously have no idea what a sex offense is on the books in your state or anywhere. For example recently studies show over 90% of teenagers have created, distributed, and viewed child pornography. Any time you have sex with someone that has had even one beer, including your spouse, it's sexual assault on the books. Expending ANY resources, including time, for the purposes of sex, even if tangential, if you have explicit consent is prostitution. You would be amazed what constitutes a sex crime if you ever are unfortunate enough to get in the crosshairs of a prosecutor and they decide to legally abuse their discretion. There is no such thing as a non-criminal sex offense, in fact most sex offenses aren't even sexual nor even related to sex, your state can make jaywalking a sex offense if they want as there is no linkage requirement the crime be sexual in nature at all hence why public urination is a sex offense in some states even if it's 3 am in the forest with nobody around. Likewise kidnapping, as in literal kidnapping to hold someone ransom for money, is a sex offense though most states exempt the parents, i.e. you can rape and kidnap your kids all you want but that won't make you a sex offender lol.
As for theft, fraud is theft by another name. To you earnestly think Vance was productively working every minute of every day when he was on the timeclock? All Americans commit timecard fraud though rarely prosecuted for it; but it happens. And I'd bet he's committed petty theft uncountable times. I've yet to meet a person in my life who hasn't stolen something at least once myself included. How many pens to you have to steal from work before it's a crime? One? Two? Every box in the supply room?
Likewise do you earnestly think the first time Vance had alcohol that wasn't provided by his parents or church, was at age twenty-one? Obviously you have never been around young men in the military living in the barracks if you do. I'd maybe buy he didn't do anything but drink in the military as they get random drug tested; not that that stops anyone given the amount of heroin and meth users I know in the military including one currently active duty two star Army general whom I'm seen in person first hand have his sixteen year old girlfriend inject meth into him before they had sex, on a regular basis too including the last time I seen them just a couple weeks ago. But hey drugs tests in the military lol.
But sure I can't prove he hasn't tried meth, mushrooms, LSD, MDMA, or pills in high school though given how prevalent they are it's fair to assume he did especially if we consider him to behave like a normal average person in a situation; likewise cocaine use is well document as rife among venture capitalists, traders, etc. as well as the Yale social and fraternity scenes (hell even GW Bush admitted to be coked up while at Yale) but hey somehow our friend Vance magically managed to be a social butterfly while engaging in antisocial behavior never having sex, doing drugs, drinking, etc .. I'm sure he was a virgin on a wedding night too lol and he made sure both him and his wife refrained from any alcohol at the reception as to avoid raping each other.
I think you are wildly exaggerating the present legal situation. The one sex crime which many Americans have committed is sex with someone below their state's age of consent. I believe the age of consent in my state is eighteen, which I think is above the median age for loss of virginity.
🙄🙄🙄
Perhaps the best way to discover many policy positions of the various political candidates is to take the political quiz at iSideWith.com and compare your answers to those of the candidates. I scored 160 (the highest possible score) on Bryon Caplan's Libertarian Purity Test, so my quiz answers would probably be similar to yours. The percentages of issues on which I agree with the Republican and Democratic presidential and VP candidates are Trump 65%, Harris 26%, Vance 73%, and Walz 29%.
Thanks for that link. Some funny questions, like do you trust psychologists more or less now than a year ago.
Says Chase Oliver 92%, Trump 68%, Peter Sonski 50%, and Harris 20%. Somehow I think it takes Trump just a bit too seriously. And last time I checked Oliver, I was not impressed. But it was interesting.
Yeah oddly we ended up similar (well reverse the middle two)and likewise I agree with your assessment of Oliver. I was planning to vote for Sonski anyways as my state prohibits writeins and he was the least objectional of the bunch but this rather cements it lol. Don't know anything about him more than the one minute I took to Google him once I got my ballot, don't really care either. He could be Stalin Hitler Roosevelt incarnate and would still get my vote.
Is there a serious argument against the idea that, when we have labor and environmental regulations, but not tariffs, we’re directly incentivizing outsourcing?
Yes, i understand that tariffs are going to hurt both imports and exports. I get that costs are passed on. But without tariffs, isn’t the net effect of labor and environmental laws to drive businesses out of the U.S.?
I understand the position that says “we shouldn’t have any of this stuff.” I get that.
But I don’t honestly understand the position that says, “given the current labor and environmental laws, tariffs to prevent American workers from competing with slave labor and polluting factories make the situation worse”.
It seems to obvious me that you want tariffs in direct proportion to the costs imposed by your local regulations, otherwise you’re just subsidizing foreign businesses for no real net benefit. The more your regulatory framework imposes costs on local business, the higher the tariffs need to be, to prevent the net incentive structure created by legislation from being “move productive activity elsewhere”.”
What about this analysis is wrong?
I went through the basic analysis in the earlier post I linked to in this one, in more detail in Chapter six of _Price Theory_. http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Price_Theory/PThy_Chapter_6/PThy_Chapter_6.html
The argument does not depend on why another country has comparative advantage in some goods and we in others. Bad regulations make us poorer. They might change what goods we export and what goods we import, by raising the cost of some US goods relative to others. But a tariff makes us still poorer, by preventing us from avoiding some of the cost due to the regulations by exporting goods the regulations don't affect in exchange for ones they do affect.
I think you missed a point. We all agree that tariffs raise costs and make us poorer. That isn't what is being argued against.
Even 'good' regulations have a cost. Suppose our goal is clean water. We enact strict regulations that cost a lot and eventually most of some industry moves to Outer Snodopia. Where the water is made filthy. Our goal is a cleaner Earth (perhaps), not just one cleaner river here in the US. Transferring filth from here to there isn't much of a gain if you are thinking outside your home town. Pointed, targeted tariffs against goods that violate our goals might be what is being argued for. High tariffs against goods produced using slave labor, or that result in severe air and water pollution.
Yes, the tariffs make us poorer, and also make the people of Outer Snodopia poorer financially. But the goal isn't always maximizing economic gains, so that yardstick isn't appropriate in answering this question.
Fair enough. But that argument requires tariffs that are targeted at the particular foreign goods whose production has negative effects on you, which might mean effects on them that you want not to happen. It also requires that you believe that your opinion on the importance of clean water in outer snodgrass is preferable to the opinion of the people who live there, as expressed through their legal/regulatory system.
At a tangent, when you or, more important, Vance refers to slave labor I'm not sure if that means literal slave labor, which isn't how most Chinese goods are produced though there might be exceptions, or ordinary employment at wages that you, or Vance, think are too low.
“At a tangent, when you or, more important, Vance refers to slave labor I'm not sure if that means literal slave labor, which isn't how most Chinese goods are produced though there might be exceptions, or ordinary employment at wages that you, or Vance, think are too low.”
I’m in 100% agreement with the rest of your points above, and well said.
But just because you aren’t “sure” that Vance means actual slave labor when he says “slave labor” doesn’t make it fair to assume that he does not!
Unless, of course, he makes the reference as a defense of across-the-board tariffs as appropriate economic policy. Then your “not sure” critique would be fair.
Otherwise, of course, as either targeted economic policy - exactly as you acknowledge in this response - or as human rights policy, it is perfectly defensible [whether or not you or I agree it is optimal or even “‘wise”].
I don't assume he does not, but since he never says "we should have tariffs against the 1% of Chinese goods produced by slave labor in Xinjiang" and people in rich countries often do describe wages in poor countries as slave labor, I thought it likely that either he is using the term that way or he is counting on his listeners doing so.
Fair enough. I disagree with you in part, but only in part.
To me both the fairest and most reasonable way to read it is that he thinks (wholesale) tariffs against a country that employs *actual* slave labor are fair and reasonable and can be justified.
I am closer to your position on this than my reading of his, but I think his position on the slave labor point has at least some merit.
I agree with you. I prefer my preferences over those of far-off strangers. How am I to discern what they are? I act on the information I have in a way that benefits me.
The slave labor charges against China have been fairly well substantiated.
Imposing pointed tariffs is probably mostly impossible. Politically impossible, and practically in most cases. The few I am aware of have not been too positive. The ban on elephant ivory has not worked out at all the way its proponents believed, and the ban on 'blood' diamonds has been ineffective.
Not advocating tariffs. Just hoping you would respond to the point of the original comment and not the side issue.
The preferences you are preferring to those of far-off strangers are preferences with things, in your example clean water in their country, that directly affect them, not you, and that they are likely to know more about than you do. You don't know their individual preferences but the rules in their country are at least some evidence.
Can you offer a link to the evidence on slave labor? I wouldn't be surprised if it exists but would be surprised if it represents a significant fraction of the labor force or has a significant effect on US trade relations with China.
https://www.npr.org/2022/05/21/1100391863/uyghurs-xinjiang-muslim-minority-forced-labor-china
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/06/24/fact-sheet-new-u-s-government-actions-on-forced-labor-in-xinjiang/
As to whether I know their preferences. How? That authoritarian governments prefer a particular policy is a very low indicator of how the local people feel. I believe the 19th and 20th centuries have given us plenty of examples of how more-free countries trended rapidly towards lower pollution standards while the Eastern block maintained the dirty practices of the early industrial age.
Regulations are just another cost. There's nothing special about them except usually being inane and unrelated to any kind of non-political reality.
Vance really reminds me of all the intelligent highly educated lawyers who ended up in senior positions in the Nazi party running concentration camps. Even for a politician he is a completely amoral opportunist l
He might be, but my guess is not. I read him as wanting to fix things for the people he grew up among and thinking that getting political power, which sometimes requires dishonesty, will let him do so. What isn't clear to me is what he believes can be done with political power that will fix things for those people, their problems as he describes them being largely cultural.
I think you are giving him to much credit for what was obviously an intentional foundation myth written nearly ten years after he started his political career as a congressional staffer at the encouragement of a bunch of other politically astute hucksters to give himself street credit.
As economists like to say, look at what a person does, not says and what he has did was nothing but get rich, join the beltway social club, marry a brown first generational immigrant and promptly convert to Hinduism, and then get elected to Federal office all the while doing absolutely nothing to help those he claims to care about. What legislation has he authored and passed? What legislation was he instrumental in? What committees has he served in where he wielded effective oversight to affect executive agency direction? How's he doing on drug legalization, criminal justice reform, mens rights, and welfare reform as they are the most pressing issues facing his "community".
I mean the man has over ten million dollars, how much you want to bet he spends more on social engagements and family vacations than helping those he "cares about". Ten million can significantly help make a couple thousand trailer trashes lives better. Hell he could have even directly lifted one out of poverty for life by marrying one but nope, he married a rich girl from Yale.
He suffers from that problem that plagues so many little Horatio Algers, they despise their upbringing in fact while capitalizing on it for street cred and empathy. He's not wrong about sub culturally problems but that's at every socioeconomic level, they all got their failings is some way shape or form. I'd wager his childhood neighbors though are more honest, helpful, and family oriented than that of his kids.
Sorry but I can't stand the guy. His selection cost Trump my vote just like Pence did.
Looking over the Wiki on Vance I can find no evidence that he converted to Hinduism. He was raised Protestant, eventually converted to Catholic.
But thanks for your comment, which offers a different interpretation of Vance.
I'd suggest both doctrinally and dogmatically you can't be a Christian and married to a Hindi, especially so with children, hence either he crypto-converted or was never a Christian in the first place beyond maybe politically or culturally. I just don't think there is a Christian doctrinal allowance for "I'm ok with my wife and kids actively worshiping false idols and keeping them in my house, later to die and go to Hell"; I'd even proffer you wouldn't want that for your loved ones anyways if you genuinely believed.
My bet is he's simply an agnostic opportunist or went full apostasy and converted but you are correct, it's simply speculation. But regardless I don't think by any reasonable stretch one could earnestly believe him to currently be a Christian.
Three points for the Nazi reference. You're moving up in the party!
You might like a book "The Vampire Economy", published a week after Hitler invaded Poland, written by a communist who believed in property rights, whatever that means. Full of details on how the Nazis took over businesses. Apparatchiks in every business who knew nothing. Tried to go full autarkey, and imports were paid for with "Aski" Marks which could only buy certain goods that Germans didn't want. Lots of just mind-boggling stupidity. Well worth it if you thought you knew how stupid Nazis and statists in general are.
Vance's typo or yours? Quoting Vance, the post says
“As a cultural emigrate from one group to the other, I am acutely aware of their differences.” Emigrant? Emigree? Yale is blushing.
The word should be "emigrant." The mistake was made by Word's speech to text software when I read the passage to it and then missed by me when I corrected it.
I noticed that, too. But I've given up on modern proofreading long ago.
> He repeatedly links the immigration policies he opposes not only with low wages for poor Americans, a possible result, but with drugs coming into the country. Carried by illegal immigrants is one way illegal drugs could come in but there are lots of others, as illustrated by American experience with a previous experiment in prohibition.
There is plenty of data as well as logical arguments as to why it is normally US citizens who smuggle drugs and that too from port of entry. US citizens are least likely to be stopped and searched than illegal immigrants. US citizens likely know the terrain better and have reasons to not steal from cartels etc. Hence smugglers trust them with drugs and not an illegal immigrant who can not speak English and is probably looking for an CBP officer to surrender to and claim asylum.
Here is real world data for Fentanyl but there is no reason why Heroine or Coke would be any different.
https://www.cato.org/blog/fentanyl-smuggled-us-citizens-us-citizens-not-asylum-seekers
Thanks. I may use that in my second Vance post.
I find it disturbing that Vance has praised Lina Khan. I also don't recall anything in his book about reading and appreciating Hayek, the Friedmans, or free market thinkers in general. That makes me think he truly supports tariffs and breaking up big businesses. I'm not at all clear what he thinks of regulation generally.
In one of the things I didn't quote he refers to Milton Friedman as a brilliant economist responsible for the Republican party taking what Vance regards as a wrong turn, commitment to free markets. Vance's economics are closer to LBJ than to Goldwater.
Could you share the link about Milton Friedman being responsible for “what Vance regards as a wrong turn, commitment to free markets”?
That would be more damning and cause my opinion of him to go down further more than anything else I have seen/read.
"Wrong turn" was my description, but I found two passages making the argument. I quoted from one of them. Here is the relevant part of the other.
“Almost certainly the most influential right-of-center thinker of the last fifty years was Milton Friedman, a brilliant monetary economist and quick-witted debater… His views on trade similarly encouraged policy makers to ignore the costs of opening our markets to cheap consumer goods. ‘Can you think of a better deal,’ Friedman wrote in 1970, to those then concerned about Japan, ‘than our getting fine textiles, shiny cars, and sophisticated T.V. sets for a bale of green printed paper?’ Well, a conservative in 2020 might reply to this nonsense that a better deal might include millions of men in the South and Midwest with jobs instead of pill bottles and iPhones. How about communities with more steady father figures than opioids?” (JD Vance, “End the Globalization Gravy Train,” The American Mind, 4/21/20) "
https://americanmind.org/memo/end-the-globalization-gravy-train/
Thank you SO much for this.
This one is indeed for my money a FAR more damning indictment - and cause for concern - of Vance than anything you did include in either of your last two pieces.
And with this piece, while I am still ok enough with his views on China, his views on the economics are just plain wrong. And based on what he wrote here, it matters very little whether he understands the economics and chooses to ignore them, or he does not understand them.
I have had many many arguments with tariff fan boys, and it seems to invariably come down to freaking out over IP theft and national security, without realizing that they are separate issues, as if the only purpose of tariffs is to bludgeon China into to stop stealing IP and stop inserting malware into cameras, TVs, and everything else. I'd have a lot more respect if they actually admit the difference, and then propose separate solutions, but it's all tariffs all day.
I suspect some of it also comes from wanting Trump to win and not wanting to admit he's not perfect. Me, I'd rather Trump win mainly because his style has broken the political elite classes and they don't know how to deal with him; Hillary still says once in a while that he stole her election. But economically, Trump is a moron, and his only saving grace on that is that Kamala is even dumber.
I am not sure you can deduce Trump's economic beliefs from what he says and does. Think of him as maximizing political benefits to himself, not economic benefits to the nation. Tariffs are politically profitable, partly because they transfer from a dispersed interest to a concentrated interest, partly because the wrong theory of the economics of trade is easier to understand than the correct theory, which is why the wrong theory, absolute advantage, came first.
I am more interested in Vance's economics, because I think he really does want to do good, although not in the same sense as economic efficiency. It isn't clear to me whether he has a correct reason to believe that tariffs will achieve what he wants, making things better for his people even if worse for other Americans, or if that conclusion depends on not understanding the economics.
I'm not much interested in what Trump actually believes, or even what he says. His economic actions are what I care about. Calling him an economic moron is shorthand for acting like an economic moron.
Voting for the lessor of two morons...
Uh, the less moronic of two idiots?
Did you happen to catch the moment Kamala's teleprompter froze? I think the last line was "32 days" (the time until the election). I think she repeated it 4 or 5 times. She can't think on her feet. And I'm not even sure we need the prepositional phrase there.
Then there's Walz, who confuses socialism with neighborliness. He gets married on June 4th, the anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre so he can remember the date. Twenty-four years in the military... June 4th is the anniversary of the Battle of Midway, even I know that. But he gets married on the anniversary of a MASSACRE? Sweet Jesus, protect us from these 2.
“Sweet Jesus, protect us from these 2.”
Look down, look down, Sweet Jesus doesn’t care.
Having just read your latest post, I see you are continuing to think about Vance.
My perspective on Vance is a bit weird, but the heuristic involved has worked quite well for me with other people and companies.
Vance is the person who made claims about Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs in Springfield. Trump repeated those claims, but Vance was the biggest, loudest source.
So he's not just a liar, but a particular type of liar. Yes, politicians lie. But this wasn't the ordinary run-of-the-mill political lie, unless your standards of political not-quite-honesty have been (re)set by Trump.
I'll read Vance's book eventually. (There's a long hold queue at the library.) And l'll look at other evidence, particularly if his team wins the upcoming election.
But if past experience is any sample, I understand his *character* from that one little anecdote, and if he remains a public figure, future developments will produce more of the same.
Meanwhile, as an immigrant to the US myself, I'll be busy cooking my neighbours' cats, if not their children. Or perhaps my own.
...
---
...
...
...
...
For the sarcasm impaired, that last paragraph was sarcasm.
> Vance is the person who made claims about Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs in Springfield. Trump repeated those claims, but Vance was the biggest, loudest source.
Well the Haitian immigrants do appear to be eating cats and dogs.
The most nearly relevant evidence I have seen is of an immigrant from Africa, not Haiti, cooking a cat. No evidence of whether it was a pet or feral. No dog.
What evidence do you have for Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs?
The people around Springfield are reporting that Haitians are eating cats and dogs.
Yes, I suppose it's possible that they're all just lying as part of a conspiracy to make the Haitians look bad.
How do you know that, have you spoken with them? All I know is that Vance says people around Springfield say that.
If your only source is Vance, it only requires one person to be lying, and he is in a profession not distinguished for truth telling.
The stories were circulating on twitter before Trump and Vance started talking about it.
And a statement by someone you don't know anything about that supports your side of the election is good evidence? Lots of stories circulate that are not true.
Would you apply the same standard of proof to things you didn't want to believe? Lots of people claim (falsely) that Vance admitted to inventing the story. Someone claimed on the comment thread to one of my Vance posts that Vance had converted to Hinduism.
I don't think what Vance believed when he wrote Hillbilly Elegy matters. He is Trump's running mate now and if Trump wins his VP. Trump's father lived to 94, and the last president not to make it to 90 was Nixon. It is likely Trump is point to be around for a decade after 2028. Vance has signed on with the MAGA brand and I don't think he can run from it.
Also Vance was a financier so his professional interests, to the extent he has some is to continue to promote an economy favorable to the interests of the investor class, which fits into the long-standing Republican identity as the capitalist or business party.
From the perspective of the Republican base, the economy will immediately improve upon Trump's election meaning they will have no incentive to enact any policy other than tax cuts, which is standard with Republicans. Not sure what Vance can do with that record. Likewise, the base will see the immigrant problem solved so he cannot really run on that. OTOH maybe this doesn't matter. If they manage to put in a fix* so the Republican wins automatically, then Vance doesn't have to say or believe in anything. In any case I see no reason why he would need to have any views of his own.
*Don't know how this would be done, but some folks seem to think something like this might happen.
Vance strongly criticizes the past support for corporations by the Republican party. Judging by his rhetoric, he wants a working class base. He has discussed the problems of funding Republican campaigns without support from rich people.
I am sure Vance and Republicans want a working class base, that is where the votes are. But that does not mean they are going to shift away from their support for the capitalist and investor class. The core elements of this support are low tax rates on investment and corporate income, a low top income tax rate, and legal stock buybacks. These policies have served to double stock market capitalization relative to GDP. Resources expended on expansion of financial values are not available for productive investment. Over the last six years over 98% of the three-fifths of S&P500 corporate earnings not paid out as dividends have been used for stock buybacks instead of reinvested, as used to happen. This trend negatively impacts working people. This policy has led to the massive increase in stock market capitalization, which is very favorable to investors and business executives (whose compensation mostly comes from stock options). Recent tax cuts have only served to accelerate the growth in stock market valuation.
Republican policy has continued to be the same pro-investor, pro-corporate executive policy it has always been. Proposals for immigration restriction and tariffs, at best, amount to rearranging the deck chairs in the Titanic as the nation continues to decline.
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/why-neoliberalism-should-be-replaced/comments
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/the-capitalist-crisis
A mostly very fair analysis, IMO.
It is on foreign trade alone that I worry about Vance’s policies based on his rhetoric.
My one criticism of the piece is that while it is consistent with DF’s values, the implicit claim that lots of cheap illegal drugs in this country are not in fact HIGHLY correlated with illegal immigration is just wrong. Whether or not the illegal immigrants carry said drugs themselves.
The cartels that bring in those illegal drugs are the same cartels doing the human trafficking and bringing in most of the illegal immigrants that have come here under the border czar Kamala Harris-Biden administration. The drug cartels have been the biggest winners with our Harris-Biden border policies.
IMO it is disingenuous to cite Vance’s views on “immigration” overall when politely dismissing the claims about illegal drugs.
I probably agree with DF’s conclusion that Vance’s policies on legal immigration are not the same as those of we classical liberals. And so non-optimal.
But even if DF might prefer open borders and is happier with mass illegal immigration given that increasing legal immigration will be very difficult in the medium term given our political polarization (and the recent realities of mass illegal immigration), criticizing Vance for tying drugs to illegal immigration is unfair, and whatever one’s principled stance on drug laws might be, criticizing him for wanting to reduce the power and wealth of Mexican drug cartels is simply wrong.
Another commenter linked to a Cato piece arguing that Fentanyl is brought in mostly by American citizens: https://www.cato.org/blog/fentanyl-smuggled-us-citizens-us-citizens-not-asylum-seekers
You might find it worth reading.
Interesting piece with interesting info, thx.
But be clear that I didn’t claim that it was illegal immigrants smuggling the Fetanyl, nor to my knowledge has Vance (though I could certainly be wrong about that).
My point was that it is the same drug cartels that are massively benefiting financially from the Harris-Biden particular form of open border policies which surely you could acknowledge is the worst of all possible worlds: people come in illegally, cannot get legal jobs very easily, owe the cartels large sums of money, rule of law made a mockery, etc.
The arguments in the Cato piece are meant to point out that people other than the illegal immigrants themselves are responsible for the drugs coming in. I agree with that. I suspect Vance - and even probably Trump - would agree as well.
But that doesn’t change the fact that the current border czar Harris-Biden border policy is a bad policy on its own “merits”, and *in addition* is enriching drug cartels which contributes to the damage done to American citizens.
And so my point remains that oblique criticism of Vance because he’s opposed to illegal immigration and illegal drugs as a means to further the policy objective of more legal immigration is imo unfair at minimum, and unwarranted/disingenuous when done as a combo criticism of his views on “immigration”.
I don't know, and you probably don't know, how much illegal immigration is smuggling organized by drug cartels — quite a lot of it, and quite a lot of what Trump complains about, is letting in people who claim refugee status and who then never show up for the relevant hearing. But if drug cartels can make money by smuggling people why would that make them more willing to smuggle drugs? I would expect both activities to be done if and only if profitable, not for one to be funded by the other. If anything, the opportunity to make money at one illegal activity should pull resources out of other ones — why make $100/day smuggling drugs if you can make $150 smuggling people?
Due respect, but most of those people who cross the Mexican border who claim refugee status who then don’t show up for their hearings ARE the people brought in by the cartels!! They are not different groups!
But even if I were somehow wrong about the word “most” in the sentence above, I surely am not if you replace it with the word “many”.
https://homeland.house.gov/2023/07/19/chairman-green-every-dollar-the-cartels-rake-in-comes-at-the-cost-of-an-american-life-or-livelihood/#:~:text=Cartels%20have%20made%20a%20record,from%20human%20trafficking%20and%20smuggling.
“Cartels have made a record amount of money over the last two years. In 2021 alone, the cartels made an estimated $13 billion just from human trafficking and smuggling.”
And I cannot believe that I might actually “teach” David Friedman anything about economics, but an entity that has more capital will have more money to invest in any activities that are profitable based on their cost of capital. And with the profits from their newer vastly expanded human trafficking operations, they now have a lot more capital indeed.
Surely you are not suggesting it is a good thing that vicious Mexican drug cartels are enriched by being able to very profitably smuggle illegal immigrants into our country, or that there is any meaningful likelihood in anything save perhaps a very short run that being able to profitably smuggle people will reduce cartel interest in or ability to smuggle drugs.
The point is not that smuggling drugs is worse than smuggling humans. While I likely don’t fully share your views on illegal drugs, mine are surely a whole lot closer to yours than to Vance’s. The objection here is to enriching vicious lawless thugs.
"most of those people who cross the Mexican border who claim refugee status who then don’t show up for their hearings ARE the people brought in by the cartels"
You know this how?
If drug smuggling is profitable it doesn't need to be subsidized by people smuggling. If it is unprofitable people smugglers will spend their profits on something else or take them as income.
“You know this how?”
I posted this link earlier
https://homeland.house.gov/2023/07/19/chairman-green-every-dollar-the-cartels-rake-in-comes-at-the-cost-of-an-american-life-or-livelihood/#:~:text=Cartels%20have%20made%20a%20record,from%20human%20trafficking%20and%20smuggling
I have seen this figure cited elsewhere. Do either of us know that this is exactly the number? Of course not. But so what?
I even acknowledged that my word “most” perhaps should be replaced with the word “many”.
I have heard Ted Cruz talk about his multiple discussions with border patrol agents covering the subject of how most illegal immigrants make it across our border. Are you trying to suggest that somehow you know that the cartels are NOT making enormous amounts of money - far higher than they had previously - from the human trafficking trade since Biden took office?
“If drug smuggling is profitable it doesn't need to be subsidized by people smuggling.”
So drug smuggling and the related illegal business by cartels is the one industry with a fixed supply and fixed demand where access to capital is unnecessary and unhelpful why, exactly?
I never suggested drug smuggling needed to be subsidized. I suggested that a policy that demonstrably enriches vicious drug gangs is not a good policy.