In fact, growth in all of these countries slowed in the years after 1997 when they switched from running trade deficits to surpluses. The slowdown was less in Vietnam than in the other countries of the region, but even Vietnam had slower growth in the period touted by Popper than in the years from 1991 to 1997. In other words, the idea that manufacturing workers in the US had to take a hit to allow people in the developing world to escape poverty is absurd on its face.
This argument is even more pernicious in the context of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the trade deal currently on the agenda. The trade barriers to imports from the countries in the pact are already low, so the TPP would actually do little to open US markets further to these countries. On the other hand, a major thrust of the pact is to strengthen and lengthen patent and copyright protections.
These forms of protectionism will have poor people in the developing countries in the pact paying more money for prescription drugs, fertilizer, and software than they would otherwise. This protectionism will make them poorer and increase poverty. It will also make it difficult for people in poor countries to have access to life-saving drugs.
Of course the TPP will increase the profits of companies like Pfizer, Merck, and Microsoft. This could explain the huge efforts to promote the TPP among the public. Certainly this push cannot be explained by a concern for the poor in the developing world.
One of the most amazing things in this election cycle is that Gary Johnson is taking more votes away from Hillary Clinton than from Donald Trump. This makes no sense. I can see Republicans who don’t want to be associated with Donald Trump getting on the Johnson Train. But how can liberal people?
But he’s libertarian-ish, so he must be good on issues of crime, right? Not really. As governor of New Mexico, he vetoed a bill that granted early release of prisoners because of overcrowding. He’s for the death penalty, even though he is big on talking about sentencing disparities and DNA exoneration. You know: he likes to come off as a liberal guy, but when it comes to policy he is — Oh, what is the name for it?! — a Republican.
I frequently read stories that should have been spiked because they don’t really say much of anything. The problem is that after spending days or weeks reporting something, no reporter wants to leave empty-handed. So they write something, even if it’s little more than narrative or innuendo. Editors should be more aggressive about killing stuff like this.
Frank and I were talking yesterday. He expressed his annoyance with what has become a standard liberal disclaimer. Before attacking Trump, the writer will note that “Clinton is a flawed candidate.” He was specifically referring to an article by Jonathan Chait, 
It is time to come to the weirdest race I have written about so far: California District 49 (CA-49). The incumbent is a guy who has been arrested multiple times for something other than protesting. Who then ran a business selling those annoying car alarms. This included the Viper car alarm, which he provided the voice for. He insulted the likely next president to her face. And he has done 
This year, Darrell Issa has a competitor who just might 
Do you remember 11 September 2002? It was the first year that we got to remember 9/11. Ah, it was a good time. By that point, we had only lost 
I don’t want to talk about libertarians, but I was running errands and happened upon this “debate” between Anthony Furey and Sam Seder that was on Majority Report about two years ago. It wasn’t really a debate. Seder mostly lets libertarians talk and tries to get them to be clear about what they think. So the vast majority of the time was spent with Anthony Furey doing the libertarian two-step. This is when they talk theory when the issue is practical, and practical when the issue is theory.
So last night was the NBC‘s 
David Brooks has a new reason to be disappointed in Obamacare. The problem is not so much that the new law has done bad things — he concedes that it has insured 20 million people — but that it was sold on a false basis. It is mostly helping poor people obtain insurance, he observes sadly, rather than overturning the entire system. “[T]his is not bad. But we’d have had a very different debate if we knew the law was going to be a discrete government effort to subsidize health care for more poor people,” writes Brooks in his column today. “For one thing, Democrats would have probably paid a much smaller political price if their effort wasn’t billed as an extravagant government grab to take over the nation’s health care system.” This is a great point. Why, exactly, did the Democrats decide to advertise their plan as an extravagant government grab to take over the nation’s health-care system? That turns out to have been a really poor choice!
Now on to the bribing. Because she has released all of this information, we can go through and see if she has any record of using sketchy ways of handling business. And guess what? She doesn’t have that record. She complies with the rules even when she gets suggestions to not do so. (I’m looking at you 
On September 3, 1991, a chicken factory in Hamlet, North Carolina caught fire thanks to nonexistent safety procedures, killing 25 workers and injuring another 55. This was the largest workplace disaster in North Carolina history. This entirely avoidable accident was reminiscent of workplace disasters of the past, with open employer contempt for safety regulations and the lives of their workers.