Tariffs

[human_murda]

19 hours ago, stansfield123 said:

You buying a bike made in Taiwan, Germany or the US, because the cheap copy made in China now costs 140% more, was already part of the calculations? Quite the clairvoyants these "economic experts" who predict the future for the legacy media, aren't they.

Please, point out what part of the "calculations" that is in.

Different countries use different models for economic prediction. One of the models used by Australia's reserve bank is called MARTIN, as explained in this paper. These clairvoyants use hundreds of variables and hundreds of equations to predict the performance of different sectors and aggregate that to predict economic growth. A subset of the variables they use are shown in this paper:

Tariffs are part of the "terms of trade variable". The rest of the paper shows a few among the hundreds of equations used to predict the performance of different sectors. Any changes in internal trade due to the imposition of tariffs are already part of the calculation. All second order effects of tariffs are already accounted for when economists make predictions of GDP growth.

Clairvoyants in the US reserve bank use a different model, FRB/US, which is open source. They have provided a guide. You can see their models and equations if you download their open source packages in Python or EViews. FRB/US tries to simulate the behavior of households, firms and other factors in response to changes in some variables to predict the economic growth.

The International Monetary Fund also has a course on EViews, which helps you model and simulate the growth of economies. IMF, WB, UN, etc have their own models while models used by countries like China aren't publicly available.

There's a UN article that shows the measured errors in some of these models. There are some deviations but economists are largely clairvoyant.

The US economy is predicted to slowdown because of Trump tariffs as they currently are and no, Trump supporting morons don't know more than economists and simulations and decades of research across multiple countries. At a minimum, these are more accurate than whatever Trumpists pull out of their ass.

Financial advisory firms like Rockefeller International (of which Ruchir Sharma is the chairman) also have their own predictive models. He knows infinitely more than any Trumpists and he's claiming that the US economy would slowdown by 1 percentage point at a tariff rate of 10% (down from an average of 2.4%). Of course, Trump might change the tariff rate in the future, which would change the calculations. As of a few hours ago, some news agencies are reporting that Trump's China tariffs will ‘come down substantially’.

What any of you idiots say is completely meaningless.

Edited April 23 by human_murda

[tadmjones]

So aside from missing the Great Recession of 09 , they’re practically scientific.(which is of course just what a dumbass would say)

Edited April 23 by tadmjones

[stansfield123]

5 hours ago, human_murda said:

Different countries use different models for economic prediction.

That's odd. Physicists all use the same model for making their predictions. Even at the height of the Cold War, American and Soviet physicists all agreed on the laws of Physics.

How come economists from different countries can't do that? What seems to be the hitch?

How come physicists, chemists, mathematicians, geologists, biologists and astronomers from any country on Earth all agree on the methods of their field. How come if you ask two random practitioners of any of those fields a question, they will give you the same answer without ever coming in contact with each other?

All the while economists, social scientists, political scientists, astrologists, palm readers, climate scientists, old wrinkled gypsies with crystal balls, people who talk to the dead, religious scholars or alien abductees never do? Pick two at random, and they'll give you two different stories?

Have you ever wondered about that? Isn't it strange how not all experts are created equal?

Quote

He knows infinitely more than any Trumpists

Interesting word that, "knows". Would you mind defining it?  What is knowledge, in your opinion? And please state your own opinion. It's a basic enough word. You don't need to copy/paste another wall of text into here, just to tell us what you mean by "knows".

Quote

Financial advisory firms like Rockefeller International (of which Ruchir Sharma is the chairman) also have their own predictive models.

Yep. Every one of these firms has their very own, super-duper secret and super-duper unique "predictive model". Weird how Elon Musk doesn't have a secret predictive model on when the Earth and Mars are in the right position for his manned expedition to launch. He just uses the same public, universally agreed upon predictive model everyone else does. I guess it's 'cause he's one of those moronic Trump supporters. Not smart enough to have a secret predictive model of his own.

But back to the advanced science of economics, as practiced by financial advisory firms. I don't have a predictive model about economic growth, but I do have a predictive model about predictive models. And my predictive model tells me that Mr. Sharma's predictive model is a combination of complex math, vast data inputs, and the ancient knowledge of predicting one's fortunes from the leaves left over after you enjoy a delicious green tea.

A beautiful combination of modern high tech flimflam and traditional tasseomancy. Words of the day, flimflam and tasseomancy. Just so that, finally, at the end of this tedious nonsense that shouldn't even have come up on an Objectivist forum, we all learn something worthwhile.

Edited April 23 by stansfield123

[stansfield123]

5 hours ago, tadmjones said:

So aside from missing the Great Recession of 09 , they’re practically scientific.(which is of course just what a dumbass would say)

They're spot on about economic growth any time it's around 3% though. On an unrelated note, I'm predicting 75 and sunny for Southern California tomorrow.

Edited April 23 by stansfield123

[Jon C]

1 hour ago, stansfield123 said:

That's odd. Physicists all use the same model for making their predictions. Even at the height of the Cold War, American and Soviet physicists all agreed on the laws of Physics.

…

How come physicists, chemists, mathematicians, geologists, biologists and astronomers from any country on Earth all agree on the methods of their field. How come if you ask two random practitioners of any of those fields a question, they will give you the same answer without ever coming in contact with each other?

 

Tell me you know nothing about science, its history or its practitioners without telling me you know nothing.

Among other issues you’re conflating methods and models. For example the model I use to study a physical object will depend on how close to the speed of light it’s going and how close in size to an atom it is. But I would probably use spectroscopy (one of the methods of physics) either way. 

The broad methods of economics are pretty well-established just like they are in other sciences, the particular models used to study a given situation are more, well, situational, also just like in other sciences. 

As far as “they will give you the same answer” do you think physicists will only give me one answer if I ask what dark matter is? Or whether string theory has been largely successful? Would they all have given the same explanation for the photoelectric effect before Einstein? Do you think all mathematicians use the same exact models when they try to model phenomena? You don’t think we have different models that work better in some contexts than others, and have disagreements about what are the most important features to capture when using our models? Are you for real? 

Also while your first sentence talked about Soviet physics, since you later bring up biology it’s worth mentioning Lamarckism as an example of ideology infecting science. 

Anyway I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that you object to every field of inquiry whose conclusions have implications you don’t like. 

Edited April 23 by Jon C

[Jon C]

6 hours ago, tadmjones said:

So aside from missing the Great Recession of 09 , they’re practically scientific.(which is of course just what a dumbass would say)

Some economists did predict it. It’s not their fault insufficient numbers of people believed them. 

[tadmjones]

21 minutes ago, Jon C said:

Some economists did predict it. It’s not their fault insufficient numbers of people believed them. 

The group that was the example was the group that basically missed it, even though they track dwelling supply and financing for demand for dwellings.

But of course past performance isn’t indicative of future retur.. 

Edited April 23 by tadmjones