Comment by mercurial | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mercurial | Hacker News Reader

In a blog post entitled "Why Is It So Acceptable to Lie to Promote Trade Deals?," the economist Dean Baker wrote: "Implying that a deal that raises GDP by 0.4 or 0.5 percent 13 years out [in 2027] means "job-creating opportunities for workers on both continents" is just dishonest. The increment to annual growth is on the order of 0.03 percentage points. Good luck finding that in the data."

And that's the best case scenario. With studies which appear to ignore any downside of the trade agreement.

Another choice morsel:

According to CEO's analysis of the leaked document: "as soon as a new regulation is in the pipeline, businesses should be informed through an annual report, and be involved". Specifically, governments wishing to bring in new regulations have to offer companies that may be affected by legislation or regulation an opportunity to provide input, with the rider that this input “shall be taken into account” when finalising the proposal."

Consumers, on the other hand, can just get stuffed, no privileged access for NGOs.

Not to mention the ISDS mechanism, which is pure madness. What democratic government would want to be subject to secret tribunals, especially considering the litigation-happy nature of US business culture? A system which, apparently, is already used to strong-arm Canada into watering down legislation which would endanger US corporate profits...

>Consumers, on the other hand //

How about just people, the demos, the supposed central element of a democracy.

Thank you! I'm not anti-capitalist, but I find utterly insidious the way that "consumer" has become the standard term used to refer to people.

In Canada, certain demagogues have started to use the word "taxpayers" instead of "citizens".

There is a difference between a taxpayer and a citizen. Taxpayers includes people who are non-citizens, and even non-resident.

And some citizens are not taxpayers...

Neither term is sufficient with respect to the other.

Actually, in most of the countries of the World, less than 50% of the population are taxpayers.

Isn't that what I was saying? Just because someone does not (currently) they should not lose their rights as citizens.

Don't forget the sales tax. Pretty hard to avoid that.

True. But even if one were totally self-sufficient one would still be a citizen with the rights of a citizen.

That's not always a good argument to use

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mitt-romney-says-corp...

It depends in what context you look at it. If we are talking economics, using "consumers" to talk about an economic agent in a transaction is not demeaning. But in the general case, I agree with you.

The people are not important, only owners of Capital are important. It is more important that they have control, then we actually do anything for the people. The people are preferably reduced to third world conditions you know where you have a very rich elite and a bunch of poor peasants that look up to them for guidance. They want to turn their countries into this.

I know it's not a very charitable response, but that's simply ridiculous. The world is not run by mustache twirling villains who get sustenance from the tears of "the people."

> The world is not run by mustache twirling villains who get sustenance from the tears of "the people."

Actually, yes, about half of it is. Cuba, China, North Korea, Viet Nam, almost all the Middle East, two thirds of Africa, Russia, ...

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index for an overview

There are mustache twirling villains and then there are just your garden variety sorts that run the "free" world. They usually direct their violence towards the people of the part of the world run by mustache twirling villains. And use the rest of their power to strip freedom and independence from the people of their own countries... so that the world can be ruled by a single conglomerate of garden variety villains who think that they know what's best for everyone... but if you look at their track record, it's less than spectacular. You know because as the market shows centralization is not a good thing. The world should be a bazaar not a cathedral.

.4% divided by 13 is .03%

What am I missing? That's not hard to find, that's a rewording of the same number.

He means, it would be impossible to see a 0.03% increase in GDP or attribute it to the deal.

Yes, and GDP increase per year would be the commonly-accepted standard: they should have said 0.03% (which anyone would recognise as a rounding error).

They've quoted 0.4% to make it sound better than it is. This is a standard psychological trick.

Strictly speaking the calculation is the 13th root of 1.04

I will give you a million dollars!

(In an amount of $1 per year over a million years.)

How you frame a number can count for a lot.

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