![reddit international relations books reddit international relations books](https://i1.wp.com/www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/fp_20200320_caravan.jpg)
If you benefit from something but could better spend your time doing something else, that thing could still have a net cost. >Here’s the thing about costs in economics, you can’t just look at the monetary cost of a thing, you need to look at opportunity costs. Clearly something is at play that’s more substantial than absolute advantage, but what. American workers have the technology and resources to be able to make most things better than almost everyone else, so why don’t they? The easy answer is that it’s cheaper to make in other countries, but that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, wouldn’t the extra productivity of American workers be worth the wage premium. The US has an absolute advantage over other countries in most things for instance.
![reddit international relations books reddit international relations books](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51eW8dNd7IL.jpg)
Absolute advantage simply means you can make more of something at a lower cost. This is what people would usually think drives which goods a country would manufacture or import. >Before we get into comparative advantage, it’s useful to talk about absolute advantage.
#REDDIT INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS BOOKS FREE#
It’s the thing that when I learned it, I suddenly had an interest in economics, it’s pretty hard to deny it once you realize how it works and knowing about it makes free trade much more appealing. Comparative advantage is at the heart of most of what this sub suggests in terms of trade policy. This won’t be as long as some of the more broad posts I’ve made here but it’s also very important. I mentioned it as one of the principles of this post. This probably means it’s pretty fucking important to learn about. >Economist Paul Samuelson once said that comparative advantage is the most important principle in the social sciences that is both true and non-trivial (i.e. Content Warning: Math (I mean it’s just high school algebra but if you really have a phobia of numbers, I can’t really help you)