How to tell if you are a modern progressive

Progressives are also missing something else. If they are looking for a free trade villain for Detroit, for example, it’s not Mexico, Japan, or China, but the open-shop/union-unfriendly states of the South. The workers there have basically been-free riding on the UAW for decades, and seem very happy to keep doing so. But no progressive politician (or conservative, for that matter) is going to make that an issue, because they want to win votes in the South. You’d think, at the very least, the Mexican government would be screaming that at Trump, Sanders and Clinton.

If I invite friends over to my house for a party, am I ceding ownership of my house to them?

Well, in some Progressive urban areas, if you let them stay at your house for to many nights, they do gain some resident rights should you try to make them leave.

But job “ownership” stems from the Marxist idea that the worker is the one adding all the value. Marxism ignores all the “old labor” that is in the capital. What are capital goods but the product of transformations by labor in an earlier period.

I often push my students to explain why borders matter by asking about trade between states, and even between municipalities. It’s easy to get them to agree those borders don’t matter, but really hard to get them to give up on the idea that national borders matter…but at least I can make them struggle to come up with an explanation why.

My favorite answer is some variation on “the Michigan auto worker ought to be less upset that a fellow American down in Mississippi got his job than that some furriner in Mexico got it.”

This is why the idea that trade goes to places where wages are rising, not where wages are low, is so important, and why the distinction between new capital and existing capital is so important. The progressives I know would find your argument here to be unpersuasive, because they see low wages as a competitive advantage. And, filtered through a worldview that believes economic outcomes are dominated by power relationships, so that low incomes beget low incomes (because they make you powerless), this basically ends up leading them to believe that corporations prefer poor institutions, because it allows them to take advantage of the locals’ powerlessness. They end up seeing the poor local institutions themselves as a competitive advantage.
Since existing capital in those places certainly does tend to take advantage of local workers through those poor institutions, it is easy enough to presume that these erroneous points of view are verified by the evidence.

I’ll bite. I don’t favor a minimum wage but I can argue it. I don’t favor trade restrictions but I can argue for them. It should be noted that not just progressives are anti trade – Trump supporters are as well (and my father, a lifelong Republican, is also anti trade).

1) Economics assumes that gains from trade can be shared with the “losers.” People will lose jobs in a trade agreement. The assumption is that some of the gains are shared with the losers. If this is not happening, then those that lose out are doing the optimal strategy – being against free trade. The fix for this is subsidized job training, relocation assistance, etc that greases the wheels of the economy.

2) A minimum wage argument is that low skilled employers have market power. If you take a minimum wage McJob you more or less give up your ability to take on other jobs – because they schedule you at their whim and can cut or add hours with only a week’s notice. Sure, you can not accept the deal – but if you are low skilled with no ability to relocate you are pretty much stuck with those jobs.

The truth is that when someone can’t support themselves it is Americans, not Mexicans, that must bear the brunt of negative externalities. I favor EITC and transfer payments to ensure no one is poor enough to start robbing everyone (and have going to prison be an incentive to a better life).

I consider myself some flavor of modern-day progressive, and I don’t believe either statement. I think it’s just wrong to model a job as a thing that can be moved or stolen. It’d be like stealing a marriage–it doesn’t even parse.

I believe any change in trade policy can cause disruptions that in turn cause short-term unemployment for some individuals. I also believe there could be people who lose out long-term: their next jobs pay lower. I don’t know how much that actually has happened for previous rounds of trade liberalization, but I would like to know.

Sounds like a strawman to me.

Progressives are hard on saturists. They did protest Boeing moving jobs to South Carolina:
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2011/04/unbelievable-obama-nlrb-forces-boeing-to-build-plant-in-washington-not-south-carolina/

I guess I’m a progressive by default. I don’t believe in the minimum wage, I fully support free trade, but I just can’t vote for anyone who doesn’t support equal protection under the law for the LBGT community.

It just seems like equality under the law for all Americans trumps the (unfortunate) economic stupidity of the left.

A key distinction here is between manufacturing and services. I’d expect most workers impacted by the minimum wage in California will be service workers with the type of jobs you can’t outsource (e.g. barista).

OTOH, when people talk about foreign competition they’re generally talking about manufacturing jobs, which provide a more direct source of competition. I would not be surprised if disparities in the minimum wage between states induced companies to employ more workers in the lower wage states.