You don't think those two things have any effect on the economy?

Sure they have an effect but are they economic policies? If you want to take the approach that everything is an economic policy I guess we could do that, but I think it's a bit limiting.

I guess also, what's the goal of economic policy? Does your economy matter much if you can't defend it, for example? If you have no industrial base does that matter?

Under sequential administrations all the way up and until at least the end of Mr. Obama's second term we had, broadly speaking, the same economic policy and we lost a lot of jobs under that regime, lost manufacturing capabilities, and more. People were really unhappy with that scheme which was supported by both Republican and Democratic administrations. Maybe we should examine our policies even if there are temporary changes that are unfavorable. Should we be long-term oriented or short-term oriented?

It's a very complicated topic of course, but I think just "grr mad at Trump" is not only immature but just wrong and leads to no meaningful analysis of what our economic policies have been, the results, and what changes may produce.

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amanaplanacanal 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Immigration is clearly economic policy. It was partially justified on immigrants taking American's jobs.

The war isn't strictly economic policy, but everybody could see it would have a bad effect on the economy, which is why everybody else was smart enough not to do it.

	▲	ericmay 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Immigration is clearly economic policy. Sure but it's not strictly an economic policy. If you want to just talk about the economics of immigration I'd be happy to discuss that. I think there are pros and cons to many different approaches. > The war isn't strictly economic policy, but everybody could see it would have a bad effect on the economy, which is why everybody else was smart enough not to do it. Similarly Europe and the United States could have been economically smart and unsanctioned Russian gas and let them take over Ukraine. Sometimes economic policy is trumped by other considerations.