[HobbseanMess]

Excellent remark. The report card on globalization thus far is a hollowed out economy in the west with rent-seeking and the profits of globalization floating around in financial assets in a sterile fashion.

Even the new conservatives are waking up to this. It's far better that the west employ these new protectionist approaches and reindustrialize their countries. China isn't just producing cheap Hasbro toys. They are increasingly moving up the value chain while America moves down and its people are employed in increasingly low productivity jobs. Our old elite sold us out.

Thankfully some of the elite have figured this out. The rest are still reading their 2000s-era textbook telling them some abstract idea of globalization is great. No thank you. That's how you get a worse Trump.

[knowaveragejoe]

> The report card on globalization thus far is a hollowed out economy in the west with rent-seeking and the profits of globalization floating around in financial assets in a sterile fashion.

These arguments from emotion are, again, so saddening on see on HN. The "report card" of globalization is that the last few decades have been by far the best period to be alive in human history essentially anywhere on the planet.

The economy isn't "hollowed out", the US is a booming & dynamic economy. The US is the second largest manufacturer in the world by a wide margin(unless you consider the EU as a singular entity).

The idea that we've been "sold out" implies things were just fine before those pesky elites and globalists screwed it up. The perception of the US middle class in the mid-20th century is idealized to the point of mythology and has no real basis in reality. If you were suddenly teleported into the 50s you would very quickly wish to come back.

The sort of economically illiterate brand of populism is probably the single greatest threat to the prosperity of this country, not the things that it(falsely) attributes our problems to, like globalism.

[analognoise]

"The perception of the US middle class in the mid-20th century is idealized to the point of mythology and has no real basis in reality."

Right the baby boomers who could work flipping burgers and put themselves through college and buy a house at 22 really did poorly, and if we all just give a LITTLE MORE to the global economy so it can function "more smoothly" we'll all be better off.

We're producing more shit - and getting less of the pie as workers.

If we have to sacrifice the American middle class to bring up the standard of living in Wherever, I think it's a bad trade. I could not care less if it comes at a cost to us.

"The economy isn't "hollowed out", the US is a booming & dynamic economy."

"But the stock market is great!" - for the top 10% of us with stocks, awesome. We left a shitload of people in the dust. Millennials have what 1/3 of the wealth boomers did by the same age?

But if we all gave more... Trust us it's better...

[knowaveragejoe]

> Right the baby boomers who could work flipping burgers and put themselves through college and buy a house at 22 really did poorly

Yes! You, living in the modern world, would never tolerate the quality of housing, automobiles, education, and essentially everything else that was "in reach" of someone flipping burgers at 22 in this fabled period of history.

What they had was shit, and you'd quickly be backpedaling on this opinion if you ever had to live with it yourself.

You are immeasurably better off than your parents. The array of amenities, options & opportunity in front at this very moment is something people in this mythical period you're describing could not even fathom.

> "But the stock market is great!" - for the top 10% of us with stocks, awesome. We left a shitload of people in the dust. Millennials have what 1/3 of the wealth boomers did by the same age? But if we all gave more... Trust us it's better...

"Top 10% of us with stocks" - really? Anyone with any kind of retirement plan is exposed to the stock market. But the kicker is I wasn't even talking about the stock market when I say the US economy is booming & dynamic!

I'm not sure what you mean by "if we all gave more". Honestly your(and the other person's) replies reek of young, terminally online talking points, not anything based on data or empirical study.

[analognoise]

...you mean the "fabled period" where 1 income could support a family of 4 and nobody needed the stock market because they had pension plans?

Yeah some myth. It wasn't long ago Homer Simpson wasn't considered "aspirational".

You're so into your text books you've lost sight of reality.

Why do you think the suicide rates for men are so much higher - and, nightmarishly enough, are increasing for children?

Because if you enforce some kind of bullshit about the world being flat, a few people win and you get better TVs - and MOST PEOPLE LOSE.

Homer Simpson is aspirational. That's how far the truth of "globalist" policies have gone. We got... Cheaper shit? Not worth it. At all.

Also: "Because the housing market is not allowed to function as it should, through a slew of NIMBYist policies that cover virtually the entire country. In most parts of the country it is illegal to build anything but a single-family detached house."

You mean the standard house of our parents and grandparents? I thought you said we just "wouldn't accept" the quality of those dwellings? Is it housing policy, or are we being told we...wouldn't live there anyway?

Let's face it. Shit is much worse now. The current generation isn't even going to live as long! - the fastest growing category is "deaths of despair".

Why do you think the birth rate is declining? It's too expensive to even have kids! What kind of fucked up dystopia are you going for???

[knowaveragejoe]

> Let's face it. Shit is much worse now.

Respectfully, there is so much wrong with this that I don't even know where to begin. The homer simpson bit made me laugh though - in the US, Homer isn't seen as aspirational at all. Maybe you mean the Kardashians?

Still, the world is objectively better by any metric you'd care to use. You can find some exceptions as long as you don't control for historical or geopolitical context. If I had to guess, you're young and surrounded by populism and outrage porn on the internet - /r/latestagecapitalism, /r/aboringdystopia, rose twitter, so on, and so your opinion stems from being engrossed in that.

I will say that when I was younger(late teens/early 20s) I had a very similar sentiment as yours, insofar that the world's woes are easily understood and would be solved if it weren't for special interests who benefit from the way things are. The issue is you extrapolate way too far from this, and the solutions you arrive at are often regressive(and in some cases even already exist and contribute to the very problems you're trying to solve).

[analognoise]

I don't buy the lines about the elite - regular people voted in the republicans and the neocons who favored these policies.

It's hard to pin it on "the elite" when they were voted in after explicitly explaining their views. There's a large section of the populace that would rather other people do worse than have everyone do better - and they got exactly what they voted for.

We can't pawn it off on "elites". Same with "rent-seeking behavior" - if you incentivize it that way, you get exactly what you structured the policies for. It's the people's fault, not some high and mighty class that's smart enough to look at the policies and come to the same conclusion everyone else would (and did).