A paraphrase can make all the difference

Sometimes paraphrasing is the most useful thing you can do. For instance, putting tariffs on imports to your country is the same thing as imposing sanctions on your own country. (That point is from this 2018 Reason article.) Let’s start calling them “sanctions” instead of “tariffs,” and see how we feel about them.

Why Americans shouldn't feel that bad about Apple outsourcing to China

In response to the New York Times article on Apple employing Chinese workers to manufacture iPhones and other products, The New Republic's Jonathan Cohn talked to some economists to get their reactions. One of them, Gary Burtless of the Brookings Institution, had this to say. That whole post is worth reading, but here's his conclusion:

The Times reporters persuaded me that east Asia in general, and China in particular, offer an abundance [of] hard-working people with decent skills willing to accept demanding, poorly paid, and boring jobs. The jobs are acceptable to millions of Chinese, including workers with good technical skills, because the other career alternatives open to them are no better, and possibly much worse, than those in manufacturing. The plain fact is that, for the great majority of 17-to-30 year-old Americans, there are better, or at least less risky, alternatives to a manufacturing career.

America needs to have so much more shopping . . .

. . . that we're resorting to imported shoppers.

The Political Compass ideology quiz

You can take the quiz here to find out where they place you on economic and social issues.

Based on my scores, I seem to be a moderate libertarian.

Libertarianism is often seen as an extreme ideology, so is "moderate libertarian" an oxymoron? Not according to Tyler Cowen. Writing in 2007, he said that libertarian policies have increased America's economic growth, but added:

The more wealth we have, the more government we can afford. Furthermore, the better government operates, the more government people will demand. That is the fundamental paradox of libertarianism. Many initial victories bring later defeats.

I am not so worried about this paradox of libertarianism. Overall libertarians should embrace these developments. We should embrace a world with growing wealth, growing positive liberty, and yes, growing government. We don’t have to favor the growth in government per se, but we do need to recognize that sometimes it is a package deal.

In short, libertarianism has the seeds of its own destruction.

As with all these kinds of quizzes, I take issue with the premise of some of the questions. The first one is whether you agree with this statement:

If economic globalisation is inevitable, it should primarily serve humanity rather than the interests of trans-national corporations.

This seems designed to prompt you to think in zero-sum terms about benefitting either "trans-national corporations" or "humanity." I wish there had been an option that would have allowed me to take the position that globalization should benefit both trans-national corporations and humanity at the same time. But the quiz nudges you toward answering that "humanity" should take precedence over "corporations." (The quiz writers should read the section in chapter 1 of Thomas Sowell's Economic Facts and Fallacies about the "zero-sum fallacy" and the chapter on free trade in Tim Harford's The Undercover Economist.)

Also, the quiz results are supposedly about your political views, but several of the social questions don't refer to any role of government. For instance, you could believe that discipline is the most important value to instill in children, and that society has gone too far in allowing people to express sexuality in public (which the quiz would count as "authoritarian" positions), while taking a libertarian position that government should stay out of these issues. You can have a moral objection to the painted nude woman in Times Square the other day without thinking the police should have arrested her. The quiz is supposed to test whether you do have authoritarian political views, but the quiz seems to make an authoritarian assumption that you'll want the government to enforce your morals.

The more we eat the protein-rich non-grain quinoa, the less Bolivians eat it ... or drink it.

I love quinoa. It's as useful as rice, but much more nutritious. Here's my own rough recipe for quinoa with carrots and parsnips, which I often make. And just glancing through the first link, I'd like to try the butternut squash and black bean wrap, quinoa primavera,  quinoa burgers, acorn stuffed with quinoa . . .

But the New York Times reports:

[D]emand for quinoa (pronounced KEE-no-ah) is soaring in rich countries, as American and European consumers discover the “lost crop” of the Incas. The surge has helped raise farmers’ incomes here in one of the hemisphere’s poorest countries. But there has been a notable trade-off: Fewer Bolivians can now afford it, hastening their embrace of cheaper, processed foods and raising fears of malnutrition in a country that has long struggled with it. . . .

While malnutrition on a national level has fallen over the past few years thanks to aggressive social welfare programs, . . . studies showed that chronic malnutrition in children had climbed in quinoa-growing areas . . . in recent years. . . .

“I adore quinoa, but I can’t afford it anymore,” said Micaela Huanca, 50, a street vendor in El Alto, a city of slums above the capital, La Paz. “I look at it in the markets and walk away.” . . .

At supermarkets here, a 1,000-gram bag of quinoa, just over two pounds, costs the equivalent of $4.85, compared with $1.20 for a bag of noodles the same weight and $1 for a bag of white rice. . . .

This is disturbing. A few things, though:

1. Bolivians are already working on solutions:

President [Evo] Morales said this month that he planned to make more than $10 million in loans available to organic quinoa producers, and health officials are incorporating the plant into a packet of foods supplied to thousands of pregnant and nursing women each month.

2. The Times is clearly fascinated by talking about how rich countries' voracious (albeit healthy) appetite is hurting Bolivians. This skews the reporting. Oh, the Times does mention that we're also enriching Bolivians farmers by buying so much quinoa. But this point just gets a sentence or two; it isn't amplified with statistics or anecdotes or color photographs. The observation that rich countries are helping a poor country by buying its exports doesn't make for a fascinating New York Times article.

3. Buried 15 paragraphs into the piece, we discover that the reporters aren't just talking about Bolivians choosing to use white rice or noodles instead of quinoa when they cook dinner. The article says that "changing food preferences" might "play a role." How so? Well, a government official explains:

"[I]f you give the kids toasted quinoa flour, they don’t want it; they want white bread . . . . If you give them boiled water, sugar and quinoa flour mixed into a drink, they prefer Coca-Cola."

So, kids prefer drinking Coke to drinking quinoa! I'm not sure anything would have stopped that from happening in the modern world.



(Both photos are from SweetOnVeg, which has a website, Facebook page, and Twitter feed.)