And comparative advantage can itself be worked out by basic logic just from the words in the phrase.

It’s a logic question so simple that it answers itself.

To make sure I’m understanding this, the answer is that if a country has a comparative advantage at making something (i.e., they are better at making it) they will sell more, right?

That would be “absolute”advantage. Comparative advantage is why it could make sense even for a country that’s better at making many things (or everything!) to import some of them from countries that are “worse”, if there are relative differences in how *much* better for different things.

This also isn’t an example of comparative advantage, despite what the words sound like: bsky.app/profile/maga...

Ok, I'm reading more. I guess that's an example of absolute advantage.

Yeah, I find this frustrating because imo trade is great and trade deficits are fine—but 80% of the people dunking are confusing absolute with comparative advantage (& the latter is genuinely counterintuitive for a lot of people).

Comparative advantage, now that I'm trying to wrap my head around it, is far too subtle to be argued over in the discourse on social media, TV, etc.

Example: We can't grow vanilla beans in the US so we import from Madagascar. It's as simple as that.

that’s right. if a country has a competitive advantage in the product of fine textiles such that they are a major exporter and a wealthier country is a major purchaser, that will shape trade deficits as much or more than tariffs or other duties

But what causes a country to have an actual "competitive advantage in the product of fine textiles," besides poverty?

Lots of people genuinely don't understand comparative advantage. We need something like Schoolhouse Rock for basic economics. And run it on Fox News.

But lots of people aren’t a Harvard and Williams educated chief economist at American Compass, a conservative think tank. This explains a lot. He should be shamed into dust.

Huge “If” for these folks

I've never heard the term, but understand it from the context and can figure out a correct response.

And the fact that it exists and explains some trade deficits entirely is stunningly obvious.,e.g.,vanilla from Madagascar.

Yeah. People should produce what they are best at and import what they are worse at. It’s why trade is good. It increases efficiency for everyone.

it is blowing my mind that this confuses cass. i didn’t think much of the guy to begin with but whoa.

Why does my barber's greater skill at barbering mean that I will give him more money than he pays me?

I am just assuming he's attempting to try to appeal to trump's base by being so 'simple' because he is just an everyman and why make it so complicated, and relating this by referencing a sketch that was on SNL 30 years ago. He really thinks it's comforting that he's clueless in his position?

*goes to look up the definition of comparative advantage.* ... ... Unholy shit I think I can answer this question and I'm just a demon drawing spicy pictures!

He could’ve simply googled his last sentence instead of posting it on social media and he would’ve gotten his answer and we wouldn’t have known how goddamn ignorant he was.

Well he did get the caveman part right.. So Cass is recognizing their behind but still trying to be ahead?

He should sit down and drink a cup of coffee while eating a banana and think really hard about it.

Imagine being intelligent at all. And not knowing something. And not just googling and going to Wikipedia to get a quick overview. And then posting something like this. And you employed as the chief economist of anything.

"Try starting a coffee plantation in the US, now scale it up to serve 300M daily." That's it in a nutshell.

It the same simple old story of countries that have the resources versus the countries that don't.

Can't wait for new vanilla bean plantation startups. /s

He stands head and shoulders over most of Trump's cabinet.

Oh I have one! Comparative advantage is when other people have informed, interesting points of view and he doesn't, so he should get off a public platform.

I added Alt text and I'll delete my other comment. The point is still that Oren Cass looks stupid even with this response:

These people always claim we're the tough crowd why they are the intellectual zambonis sane-making mass theft and economic destruction.

It's not the comparative advantage, it's the concept of a trade deficit that they don't understand. That's why they think tariffs are somehow "redressing" a wrong.

I do think a lot of this is driven by the, frankly weird to an outsider, American obsession with meaningless faux-economic metrics like trade deficit, jobs report etc.

It’s the choice to make a public declaration of basic ignorance haughtily condescending that’s getting me. Options included looking it up and genuinely asking. Another was to say nothing.

😅

Google is free, but this guy wants to make some dumb “caveman” joke. Wtf?

Caveman lawyer was an SNL bit from the 90s

Well at least Geico now has a new commercial it can run from the series of “So easy a caveman can do it” Sub in “even Oren Cass can do it!”

'a public declaration of basic ignorance' is all too common for some reason.

The connection between arrogance and willful ignorance is one of those things that seems baffling until you recognize they're two expressions of the same defect.

I’m seriously starting to question the Ivy League’s so-called rigorous curriculum

One of the things the COVID pandemic in 2020 did to influence me was demonstrate that certain public intellectuals/pundits don't have even a clever high schooler's understanding of science. I was not optimistic going in, and this was still eye-poppingly shocking and dispiriting to me.

Same! (although I would replace “certain” with “most”) I was disappointed with how often people I gave credit for intelligence and awareness of their limitations just blew it. My takeaway was that paying people to have an opinion on whatever happens to be going on in the world is a bad model.

Already, we seem to be getting a 2.0 version of this as our self-inflicted economic calamity ramps up.

The alarming thing I’ve learned since 2016 is just how stupid many of our public intellectuals/leaders are. I never expected them to all be geniuses but the percentage which are not just a little dull but are outright dumb is way higher than I would’ve guessed if you’d asked me in the Obama years

among the many examples, somebody the other day was like, "you pay your dentist lots of money and he never pays you, should you put a tarriff on him?"

We’re seeing the script flipped from Wealthy Countries take advantage of Poorer Countries for exploitative wages to make cheap goods To Poor countries take advantage of wealthy countries by providing cheap goods In real time, because being poor is an advantage now, apparently?

Lucky duckies!

Exactly!! It's so stupid and immoral.

Funny that.

The fancy degree didn’t come with basic readings from Smith and Ricardo I guess

and here i am, the woke idiot with the copies of the wealth of nation and on the principles of political economy and taxation on my bookshelf

It’s almost like folks like us had to do the work weird how that is

Cren Oass

lmao

that's a Star Wars name you can't fool me

I think you could figure it out just by the definition of the individual words themselves.

or if you know what the words “comparative” and “advantage” mean i hadn’t heard this specific economics term and yet i immediately grasped what it would be bc english is just slick that way if i have a climate good for cocoa and you don’t, bam. or if you have lots of money and i don’t. right?

Interestingly this is not what comparative advantage means.

🎶Put em both together and what do you get? A big ol trade deficit (and that's fine!)

I mean I didn't, but 30 seconds on Wikipedia fixed that. (It even has a nice simple example from the guy that developed the theory ... in 1817 (side-eye to Cass, is he being disingenuous or just stupid?))

The idea of comparative advantages in Economics teaches us that just because we can do something, doesn't mean we should.

Even if you don't know what it is, you could understand what it is by knowing what a trade deficit is and what a tariff isn't! He's basically asking "how could there be a trade deficit in a free market?".

Trump himself owns a version of this – any two countries, in an imaginary pure platonic state, have an equal trade balance, because equal = "fair". When the balance slips to one side or the other, it is unequal, and therefore unfair. If unfair, then there is a do-er of unfairness. My head hurts.

You know??

Dear god, I thought he was being sarcastic

Lots of folks confidently piling on don’t understand comparative advantage.

my freshman hs students get this…we have a comparative advantage in making airplanes-Asia in shoes-we trade to consider opportunity costs-it can’t be any simpler

A fifth grader could reason it out