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Comment by clivestaples | Hacker News Reader

Likely I'm very naive. But here goes... It seems that taxpayers fund a lot of research. This research is very valuable and lucrative. It finds its way into the hands of those who know how to profit from it. The taxpayer is again screwed paying exorbitant prices for said breakthroughs. Insulin is one area of interest to me and it very much seems to be the case in the diabetes world.

This was how NAFTA was sold. Move car manufacturing to Mexico and they will enjoy better living wages while we get more affordable cars. Except that I don't recall cars produced in Mexico ever getting more affordable. I'm sure corporate profits were great. Should probably look into this someday and see if my perception is correct.

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I think a conversation about what the taxpayer should get back from university research funding is a good question, I personally don't like privatization of medical breakthroughs discovered with public money.

However, I am cautious to extend that argument to this situation. This is an attempt to use federal funding as a backdoor around the 1st amendment (from what I can tell). I'm not going to extend this administration any leeway when their bull in a china shop policies inadvertently break something I don't like. I don't want to improve taxpayer funding of research by losing the 1st amendment.

> Except that I don't recall cars produced in Mexico ever getting more affordable.

According to this site[0], new car prices were about 6% higher at the end of NAFTA in 2020 compared with at the start of NAFTA in 1994. Considering inflation on other things was on average much higher and also that more recent cars are significantly safer, more performant, and fuel-efficient—i.e. more provide more value—it does look like cars did effectively get cheaper.

[0] https://www.in2013dollars.com/New-cars/price-inflation

Keep in mind labor is something like 10%-15% of the cost of a new car so even if you cut that down by 80%, including transport, and ignored recouping capital cost to actually move the production lines then you'd still need to move the production in less than 2 years to actually see the price decrease rather than "not move up as fast" at 3% car price inflation of the early 90s. Interestingly there was a dip in the price increase rate of cars at the end of the 90s https://www.in2013dollars.com/New-cars/price-inflation but it's too large to have been reasonably attributable to this trade change.

Between 1935 and today car price inflation is at 2.41% per year while general inflation is 3.56%. You may have not noticed. Since free trade it's been less than 2%.

You may not have noticed but it happened.

Much like outbreaks that never turn into pandemics, no one remembers the efficiency measures that prevent price increases.

Part of nafta was to slow the increasing costs of production, not lower them.

When looking over time it definitely worked in many regards. Things didn't get as expensive as they would have otherwise.

I don't think your concept her is bad at all.

But I also don't think your concept has anything to do with the situation at Harvard.

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