Good Economics for Hard Time

From Blinkist

• Economists can help us solve the world’s gravest problems – but they first have to gain our trust.
• Politicians mislead voters with lies about immigration.
• Immigration helps to boost the local economy and provides new opportunities for native workers.
• Goods move freely in global trade agreements, but people and money don’t.
• Trade agreements can harm local workers, but protectionist tariffs won’t solve the problem.
• The fight against climate change can’t be separated from the fight against economic inequality.
• AI is evolving to take over more complex human tasks, negatively affecting the job market
• Economic inequality long preceded intelligent robots.
• Proper taxing can help to solve economic inequality.
• There is no one-size-fits-all way to alleviate poverty, but foregrounding the dignity of the poor is essential.
• To fix the political polarization and prejudice eroding democracy, we have to listen to each other.
• Final summary

from 豆瓣 左其盛
作者们的重要观点如下：

1：移民：

1.1：大规模的低技术移民不会对移民输入地的工资和就业产生负面影响，原因是移民会在当地消费，导致当地工作岗位增加，大部分移民没法去跟本地人竞争，做的是本地人不愿意做的工作；

1.2：技术移民的引入会提高本地居民的福利，但是会导致本地同行的就业前景恶化；

1.3：除非发生天灾人祸，大部分穷人宁愿呆在家里而不是去移民，这是人性中普遍的损失厌恶的习性导致的，毕竟去移民可能面临比较大的风险；

1.4：美国和法国的移民史，都是移民初期被排斥后期逐步融入社会；

2：贸易：

2.1：1991年印度急剧降低关税后，经济没有崩溃，也没有高速起飞；

2.2：跟大部分经济学家的预测相反，贸易开放后，发展中国家和发达国家的的不平等程度都加重了；

2.3：贸易让不平等加剧的原因，是许多发展中国家的生产资料（包括人、资本、土地等）都有粘性，不会轻易流动；发达国家的底层工人也有粘性，不太愿意离开家乡去往更发达地区；

2.4：贸易导致的失败者远高于于施托尔珀-萨缪尔森理论给出的数量；

3：经济增长：

3.1：持续的经济增长不是常态；

3.2：经济为什么增长，为什么陷入困境，如何让发达国家保持增长，如何让穷国经济实现增长，经济学家们都不知道；

3.3：主要经济发展要素的特征接近的国家，最终的经济发展会趋同；

3.4：减税并不能促进经济增长，长期来看，里根、布什的减税，克林顿的增税，都对经济增长没有影响；

3.5：对高收入人群减税不一定能促进经济增长，但是对最高收入10%以外的人群减税，可以显著增加就业和收入；

4：全球变暖：

4.1：为了应对全球变暖，大致每年需要花费全球GDP的1%；也许技术进步解决不了根本问题，人们需要适度降级消费比如开更清洁的更小的汽车甚至不开车；

4.2：碳税是应对全球变暖最合理的办法；

4.3：富国的富裕人口适度为穷国的环保升级买单，是相对合理的方案；

5：贫富分化：

5.1：工业革命在爆发后的70年内导致了工人阶级收入下降生活变差；20世纪80年代以来机器人抢走了越来越多的中等技能职位；这种机器取代人工的趋势目前看无法阻挡，会从富国蔓延到世界；

5.2：里根经济学的涓滴理论被证明是错的，1980年以来的经济增长果实，大部分被富人摘取，穷人收获很少；里根撒切尔执政以来英美的贫富分化加剧了；

5.3：英美的收入不平等显著高于欧洲国家，部分原因是英美金融发达，吸收了更多的资本和优秀人才；

5.4：针对超高收入的高边际所得税率，是限制最高收入不平等现象激增的极其明智的做法，不会损伤任何人的工作态度；

5.5：针对高收入人群的财富税，是降低不平等的好方法；富人们可能最终会为了真正的繁荣而接受，也可能被动接受；

5.6：因此，当增长停滞，或无法使普通人受益时，就需要找到替罪羊。在美国尤其如此，但欧洲的情况差不多。最自然的指责对象是移民和贸易；

5.7：美国政府想要帮助更多的失业工人，就需要向富豪和中产征更多的税；

5.8：经济学家和许多政策制定者喜欢丹麦的弹性保障制度。这个制度赋予劳动力市场完全的灵活性。企业可以很轻易地解雇员工，而这些失业者会得到丰厚的失业补贴；

5.9：欧洲补贴农业留住青山绿水的做法，可以扩展到其他领域，让失业者获得有尊严的工作；

6：偏见：

6.1：互联网让美国人更不容易接受不同观点、更排斥黑人；在学校保持多样化能缓解这类偏见；

6.2：美国的选民也越来越偏激，有效的方法是深入探讨跟选民自身利益相关的话题而不讨论党派；

• migration
  • Trump's argument: “People want more money and therefore will all go wherever wages are highest (supply goes up). As the demand curve for labor slopes down, the rise in the labor supply will lower wages for everyone. ”
  • ^ wrong. “First, wage differences between countries (or locations, more generally) actually have relatively little to do with whether or not people migrate. ”“Second, there is no credible evidence that even relatively large inflows of low-skilled migrants hurt the local population, including members of the local population most like the migrants in terms of skills.”
  • who are the immigrants? “Those trying to get out of such places probably don’t face the grinding extreme poverty the average Liberian or Mozambique resident faces. It is more that they find life intolerable because of the collapse of everyday normality”“fewer people left in bad years because they could not afford the trip out. ”“They were running from the mouth of the shark. And when that happens, it is almost impossible to stop them, because in their minds there is no home to return to.”
    • “Who migrates typically depends on the barriers migrants have to overcome. ”“a lot of them bring exceptional talents—skills, ambition, patience, and stamina—that help them become job creators, or raise children who will be job creators. ”
    • “So one very big problem with the supply-demand analysis applied to immigration is that an influx of migrants increases the demand for labor at the same time it increases the supply of laborers. This is one reason why wages do not go down when there are more migrants. ”
    • “This logic says that the wage the firm must pay to get workers to work typically has to be high enough that being fired actually hurts. This is what economists call the efficiency wage. As a result, the wage difference between what firms pay their established workers and what they would need to pay a newcomer may not be very large, because they cannot risk the consequences of paying a newcomer too little.”
    • “the immigration of skilled workers is more of a mixed bag from the point of view of its impact on the domestic population. It helps low-skilled natives, who benefit from cheaper services (most doctors who serve the poorest corners of the United States are migrants from the developing world) at the cost of worsening the labor market prospects of the domestic population with similar skills (nurses, doctors, engineers, and college teachers).”
    • “why so many people prefer not to try?”“One possible reason is they overestimate the risks. ”“ a single death of someone from a particular district (a small area) in Nepal significantly reduces migration flows from that district to the country where the death happened”
    • “Migration, after all, is leaving the familiar to embrace the unknown, and the unknown is more than just a list of different potential outcomes with associated probabilities”“Most people don’t like dealing with the unknown unknowns, and will go to great lengths to avoid making decisions in cases where they do not know the exact contours of the problem.”
    • “ loss aversion makes us extremely worried about any risk, even small, that is a consequence of our active choice. Migration, unless everyone else is doing it, is one of these active choices, and a big one; it is easy to imagine many will be chary of trying.”
    • “The fear of failure is a substantial disincentive for embarking on a risky adventure.”“It takes an ability to dream (Albert, Esther’s grandfather, was seeking adventure rather than escaping from a bad situation), or a substantial dose of overconfidence, to overcome this tendency to persist with the status quo. This is perhaps why migrants, at least those not pushed out by desperation, tend to be not the richest or the most educated, but those who have some special drive, which is why we find so many successful entrepreneurs among them.”
    • “America as a model of what a free society could be. For him, restlessness was one of the things that made America special: people moved all the time, both across sectors and across occupations.”
    • “encouraging migration, both internal and external, should indeed be a policy priority, but that the right way to do it should be not by forcing people or distorting economic incentives, as has been done in the past, but by removing some of the key obstacles.”