You guys notice how conservatives are becoming more and more anti-trade? I just had some “conservative” girl shout me down on twitter over free trade. She was kinda good looking so I figured I would take the time to teach her some basic economics but she wasn’t having any of it.
@ChrisPacia When you protect your country’s well being it is patriotism not protectionism. In r case tho, it is survivalism! #tcot#p2
@ChrisPacia U can try to baffle me w/ bullshit but NAFTA has been the single worst thing that has ever happened 2 America.#tcot
@ChrisPacia U R a perfect example of a saying I heard today…Colleges make some of the best idiots. Ur are so wrong on EVERY level but I’m trying to save my country from educated idiots like yourself and I don’t have time to debate you on something that is so obvious only an idiot wouldn’t see it. BTW, I was a systems analyst/programmer and my husband an engineer and yet we both lost our jobs because of the loss of manufacturing in this country. Until you lose YOUR job (if you’ve every had one), you won’t understand anyway so like I said earlier, have a wonderful life…any further discussions would b a waste of both our times b/c I know you’re full of shit whether you know it or would ever accept it. That’s the problem when you get all your answers out of a book…it just doesn’t work. That’s exactly what obama is trying to do and failing miserably. And the sad thing about it is when it doesn’t work, these educated idiots look at it and decide they did something wrong so the TRY IT AGAIN!
And the worst part is a bunch of other conservatives jumped in to shout me down as well. WTF is wrong with them?
Belief that casuitry is superior to a skeptical look for proof that something actually happened
Cheap jab about other person not having a job
Comment relating you to the other party’s man, even though Obama has been protectionist (see Chinese tyres)
And here lies the difference between conservatives and, well, normal people. Yes, educated people often have a distorted view of everything, but that doesn’t mean the uneducated don’t. All humans are prone to different kinds of confirmation bias. And then the “look around, it’s so obvious” argument, even though people have been losing jobs and factories shutting down for hundreds of years, and even though America was creating most of its jobs under decades of trade deficits. We all also know how conservatives pride themselves on their lack of manners, as you can see from various comments on the paragraph.
But the last statement on the “unfalsifiability” of educated wonks is correct - look at those who say there wasn’t enough of a stimulus.
If you want to be mean, and turn everybody off, as I am sometimes inclined, you simply point out that nationalism is the new racism. It doesn’t matter where someone is born any more than their skin colour. Never gotten a refutation to this
Tell her that NAFTA was a treaty, meaning that it was government-managed trade. Also, tell her that patriotism is when a government allows its citizens the liberty to trade as they please, rather than the protection of groups/businesses.
Paul Samuelson, through the power of high school algebra and college calculus, said, “With these equations, all the debunked mercantilist arguments become once again valid.”
Yes, he actually said that, and Krugman quoted him, even though Krugman used to be a free trader.
