Re: CA Greenspan
If the Dems don't figure out the energy crisis, they will go the way of Jimmy Carter. Just after I put down the overemphasis on politics, I will add that Davis makes Clinton look like a leftist radical. Michael Perelman What if neither party can figure out a viable solution to the energy crisis, since the crisis is rooted not just in deregulation but also in gas price rises, water shortages, etc., as well as soaring demands (the so-called "new economy" is energy-dependent!)? Yoshie
Re: Re: Buck Fush
Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2001 21:17:05 -0500 From: Yoshie Furuhashi [EMAIL PROTECTED] Yes, family planning is important. The question is who runs family planning programs. I don't like the idea of "international family planning organizations" running them. I'd rather see Indian women's movement or Indian leftist movement (like the CP) running them. The same goes for women of any other poor nation. Right on. I have in Zimbabwe, many times, witnessed the ludicrous, outrageous sight of US AID flunkees (with local hires, at about $2/day) wandering out to rural (peasant) areas to push family planning in isolated villages as a discrete, once-off primary healthcare intervention. Meanwhile other US AID flunkees were pushing structural adjustment in Zim, whose effects on the health budget were devastating. So utilisation rates in once-vibrant rural clinics fell dramatically as central budgets declined and futile cost-recovery began. As a result, visits by those well-resourced int'l NGOs--driven by Malthusian conviction--were the only healthcare interventions experienced by most villagers. But because it was funded by US AID, the family planning cadres never did anything to promote PHC and instead just carried on with their once-off, disconnected interventions, effectively setting up a parallel system while the state withered away. (Unfortunately, the ban on abortion advocacy won't change matters, as it also existed under the Reagan Administration, when this problem became noticeable.) The new line from more advanced progressive technical folk based in Harare, indeed, is to cancel debt and also cancel aid. I bet it'll catch on as a general line of (Jubilee 2000-type) argumentation...
RE: Re: CA Greenspan
If the Dems don't figure out the energy crisis, they will go the way of Jimmy Carter. Just after I put down the overemphasis on politics, I will add that Davis makes Clinton look like a leftist radical. Michael Perelman What if neither party can figure out a viable solution to the energy crisis, since the crisis is rooted not just in deregulation but also in gas price rises, water shortages, etc., as well as soaring demands (the so-called "new economy" is energy-dependent!)? Yoshie *** Reification. There can be no energy shortage on this planet. We are witnessing the social construction of scarcity that is the hallmark of greed, stupidity, power blah blah blah blah capitalism. The "shortage of energy" is the symptom, not the cause. I hope Michael is right. Once again, we can blame the lawyers and law firms that pushed state legislatures to "de-regulate" on behalf of their clients; I used to work at a firm made a killing off doing the hoodwinking, they made a bundle from '88-90 when I left. Now they'll be making a killing just like David Shemano says. Ain't racketeering grand. Ian Ian
Re: Re: Fwd: faith based services
What about Catholic Workers? (Who really do provide social services.) --jks h, Along with Scientology, how would the bushies react to Wiccan members demanding a desk in the white house? inquiring minds want to know. maggie coleman Jim Devine wrote: To: "Editors, Los Angeles TIMES" [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: faith based services To the editors of the L.A. TIMES: I wonder about President Bush's advocacy of taxpayer-subsidized provision of services (such as drug rehabilitation) by religious organizations. How will he and his conservative Christian friends respond when the Scientology Church, a legally-recognized religious organization, steps up to volunteer? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
Darth Vader meets the new 'military fiscalism'
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/nation/nationalsecurity/A58813-2001Jan28.html Space Is Playing Field For Newest War Game Air Force Exercise Shows Shift in Focus By Thomas E. Ricks Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, January 29, 2001; Page A01 SCHRIEVER AIR FORCE BASE, Colo. -- Last week, the possibility of war in space moved from pure science fiction created in Hollywood to realistic planning done here by the Air Force. Spurred by the increased reliance of the U.S. military and the U.S. economy on satellites, and facing a new secretary of defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld, who is more focused on space than his predecessors were, the Air Force's Space Warfare Center here staged the military's first major war game to focus on space as the primary theater of operations, rather than just a supporting arena for combat on earth. The scenario was growing tension between the United States and China in 2017. "We never really play space," Maj. Gen. William R. Looney III said. "The purpose of this game was to focus on how we really would act in space." The unprecedented game, involving 250 participants playing for five days on an isolated, super-secure base on the high plains east of Colorado Springs, was the most visible manifestation of a little-noticed but major shift in the armed forces over the last decade. The Gulf War showed the U.S. military for the first time how important space could be to its combat operations -- for communications, for the transmission of imagery and even for using global positioning satellites to tell ground troops where they are. The end of the Cold War allowed many satellites to be shifted from being used primarily for monitoring Soviet nuclear facilities to supporting the field operations of the U.S. military. But military thinkers began to worry that this new reliance on space was creating new vulnerabilities. Suddenly, one of the best ways to disrupt a U.S. offensive against Iraq, for example, appeared to be jamming the satellites on which the Americans relied or blowing up the ground station back in the United States that controlled the satellites transmitting targeting data. In response, the Air Force over the last year focused more on space -- not just how to operate there, but how to protect operations and attack others in space. It established a new "space operations directorate" at Air Force headquarters, started a new Space Warfare School and activated two new units: the 76th Space Control Squadron, whose name is really a euphemism for fighting in space, and the 527th Space Aggressor Squadron, whose mission is to probe the U.S. military for new vulnerabilities. All those steps come as Rumsfeld, who just finished leading a congressional commission on space and national security issues, takes over the top job at the Pentagon. Among other things, his commission's report hinted that if the Air Force doesn't get more serious about space, the Pentagon should consider establishing a new "Space Corps." So, perhaps to show that it is giving space its due, the Air Force held its first space war game here, and even invited reporters inside for a few hours. The players worked in a huge building behind two sets of security checkpoints, the second of which features two motion detectors, four surveillance cameras and a double-fenced gate with a "vehicle entrapment area." Yet officials were notably jumpy about discussing specifics with the reporters they brought in. "We're doing something a little unprecedented, bringing press into the middle of a classified war game," said Col. Robert E. Ryals, deputy commander of the Space Warfare Center here. The U.S. military has a long tradition of conducting war games, not so much to predict whether a war will occur, but to figure out how to use new weapons, how to best organize the military and how political considerations might shape the conduct of war. After World War II, Adm. Chester W. Nimitz commented that the war in the Pacific had been gamed so frequently at the Naval War College during the 1930s that "nothing that happened during the war was a surprise -- absolutely nothing except the kamikaze tactics towards the end of the war. We had not visualized these." Last week's space war game was set in 2017, with country "Red" massing its forces for a possible attack on its small neighbor, "Brown," which then asked "Blue" for help. Officials described "Red" only as a "near-peer competitor," but participants said Red was China and Blue was the United States. When asked directly about this, Lt. Col. Donald Miles, an Air Force spokesman, said, "We don't talk about countries." Going with the conventional wisdom in the U.S. military, the game assumed that the heavens will be full of weapons by 2017. Both Red and Blue possessed microsatellites that can maneuver against other satellites, blocking their view, jamming their transmissions or even frying their electronics with radiation. Both also had ground-based lasers that could
RE: Re: Rumsfeld falsifies Rational Choice
this is also a problem with "revealed preference theory." by the way, might not Rumsfeld expect to gain in many other ways--new and strengthened contacts, memoirs, etc.? jeff wrote: Note, however, the circularity of the argument as I've stated it. Mr. Rumsfeld behaved as he did because of his utility function and we know what his utility function is because of his behavior. Such circularity is a potential pitfall in many rational choice arguments, including those from the Austrian economics camp that hold that the only way we know what people's preferences are is to observe their behavior in a market setting. Generally, I and other social scientists would argue that it is fallacious to infer preferences from observed behavior. Problems like these should cause us to raise the question of whether many rational choice arguments can be properly falsified at all, even in principle. If not, they clearly cannot be considered "scientific theories" in the good old reliable positivist sense. REFERENCES Simon, Herbert A. "Human Nature in Politics: The Dialogue of Psychology with Political Science." The American Political Science Review 79, No. 2. (June 1985): 293-304. -- Jeffrey L. Beatty Doctoral Student Department of Political Science The Ohio State University 2140 Derby Hall 154 North Oval Mall Columbus, Ohio 43210 (o) 614/292-2880 (h) 614/688-0567 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] __ If you fear making anyone mad, then you ultimately probe for the lowest common denominator of human achievement-- President Jimmy Carter
Chrysler crisis
A screeching halt: DC slams on brakes after strong 5-year run January 30, 2001 BY JEFFREY MCCRACKEN DETROIT FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER That loud sound coming from Auburn Hills on Monday morning was the auto industry's hard landing. With the announcement Monday that it is eliminating 26,000 jobs or 20 percent of the workforce at its Chrysler Group, DaimlerChrysler AG signaled loud and clear the industry's 5-year run of record sales and surging profits is over. The industry appears to be lurching downward, faster than anyone anticipated. The Chrysler Group's announcement was the eighth-largest one-day job slashing in the last decade. A 1991 move by General Motors Corp. to cut 74,000 jobs was the largest. "We've all got two cars, a new home," said Ken Lewenza, president of Canadian Auto Workers Local 444 in Windsor, where two plants will be affected. About 5,200 Canadian workers are facing the loss of their jobs. "That's why I think this is going to be painful for our members -- because it came on so fast. It's not like the late '70s and '80s, where it seemed like we were dying a slow death." The impact of this slowdown -- foreshadowed by late-summer incentive wars, lower-than-expected earnings in the third quarter, plant idlings in November and December and GM's early-December announcement that it will kill its Oldsmobile division and eliminate 6,600 white-collar jobs company-wide -- will be far-reaching. The job and production cuts will hurt not only Chrysler employees, but also the automaker's 900 parts suppliers and their employees, who face layoffs because of reduced volumes. And it will trickle down to all the businesses and charities that have benefited from the auto-driven economic boom in southeast Michigan. One thing many are wondering about with Monday's announcement: Is Chrysler once again playing the role of the industry's canary in the coal mine, the automaker that traditionally has led the U.S. auto industry into a downturn? According to Chrysler officials, the Chrysler Group's expected $1.75-billion loss the second half of 2000 (results are expected in late February) is symbolic of the industry's overall malaise. But one Ford executive, at least, begs to differ. "Hey, please don't put us in the same toilet bowl as everyone else," Ford Vice President of Public Affairs Jason Vines told the Free Press recently. "We think we're going to have a great year. We're looking forward to it." The truth, say experts, is a little of both. "To some extent the whole industry is deteriorating, but the problems are even more severe at Chrysler. It's really amazing how bad and how fast things got there," said David Cole, an industry analyst for more than 30 years. "These downturns are never pretty, and right now the industry is as unstable as I've seen." Cole and other auto experts point to increased competition from foreign automakers and falling new-vehicle prices as serious threats to Detroit's automakers. Still, they are surprised at how quickly the industry fell from the top of the mountain. Five years of increased sales, including last year's all-time record of 17.4 million vehicles, camouflaged a lot of weaknesses at the domestic automakers. Without U.S. sales of high-profit vehicles to protect them, U.S. automakers' steadily eroding market share is glaringly apparent. "The U.S. automakers have been sheltered these last few years by record volumes and high profits on their trucks. Now the volume is going away, and foreign automakers like Honda and Toyota are seizing the truck market. What worries us with Ford and GM is that they aren't making money outside North America, and now that market is slipping. They can't go elsewhere for their profits," said Scott Sprinzen, an auto analyst for Standard Poor's Corp., a Wall Street credit-ratings agency. Cole agreed: "There are still too many manufacturers and too much capacity. In the past they could cover for this with higher prices, but people won't pay higher prices anymore. To me, the whole structure is unstable right now." Buzz Hargrove, president of the Canadian Auto Workers, said in a news conference Monday the cuts are a shock to his workers, who heard nothing but praise and optimism from DaimlerChrysler Chairman Juergen Schrempp at a meeting in August and then in October with former Chief Executive Officer James Holden. "There was no way we could have recognized this would have happened," Hargrove said. "This is a tragic situation for Chrysler workers who have no control over their situation." About 5,200 CAW members will lose their jobs by the end of next year. Reorganization expected The announcement of massive job layoffs at the Chrysler Group had been expected since early December, when new Chrysler Chief Executive Dieter Zetsche told reporters of a coming reorganization plan. The numbers, revealed Monday in a news conference, were larger than
Re: Re: Korean news
Brad, there is an important discussion here, but I shan't participate in it if you can't keep it clean and depersonalized. I owe you an apology for not doing likewise myself, and it is offered here. Now, let's get down to business. I should like to see evidence that the CIA, etc. expected tow in the Cold War by fostering reform communism. I am surprised to see your assurance about this, because I have not seen this idea in any of the research I have encountered on the subject. Indeed, I don't think that in the 60s there was thinking about "winning" the cold war in the dramatic sense that it was won in the 1990s. "Containment" was more the idea. That is consistent with the West trying to take advantage of divisions amongs its enemes, and vice versa, when these were recognized. I do not advocate EP Thompson's ideas about "exterminism" or that the Cold WAr was a shadow play, a agreement between the bosses of each side to scare its own population. I agree that it was a real conflict. I don't think it was about rival visions of utopia. I think the West was far more ideological than the East in fighting the Cold War. The ideological steam had been let out of the USSR by the 1960s--certainly by the start of the Brezhnev era, probably earlier. I think the USSR's fireign policy is best understood in straight great power politics terms. The US had a lot more ideological utopianism than the USSR did. I don't think that is what drove the US, however, although it determined specific actions at variuos times. I think the US was driven to "contain" communism because it wished to reclaim as much of the world as possible for marketization and foreign investrment. Given its support of savage quasi-fascist dictatorships and its repeated overthrow of democratically elected leftist governments, the utopia of democratica capitalism was obviouslt a lot less important to it than were business interests. --jks I can read: you apparently cannot remember what you wrote. Pathetic. It is not the case that LBJ saw "no advantage in letting reform communism develop." In fact, LBJ saw great advantage in letting reform communism develop. If you went to the CIA or the NEC in the 1960s and asked people how they expected to win the Cold War, the answer would have been "reform communism."They expected the countries on the other side of the Iron Curtain to move over time toward more decentralized economies--imitation of the more successful Yugoslavian and Hungarian models. And over time they expected the countries on the other side of the Iron Curtain to move toward more democratic politics--at least within the party. So they expected Poland, Hungary, and Russia after a decade of reform communism to look a lot like Sweden: an economy with a large role for the market (albeit with strong "planning" elements), and politics that was effectively democratic (albeit probably with a very limited (though open) franchise). In that case, the Cold War would have been over: there would be no point in having a Cold War with a country that was close in politico-economic structure to Palme's Sweden or Brandt's West Germany. This is an important point in this context because of this view--I'm not certain whether it is a vulgarization of E.P. Thompson's view or whether E.P. Thompson was himself vulgar--that the Cold War was a shadow play: that both Russia and America were much less concerned with struggling against each other than with maintaining control over their respective empires. This view is false: both Russian and American leaders took their multi-level struggle with the other very seriously, seriously enough to disrupt and destroy attempts at detente. One of the most interesting things to come out of the Cold War International History Project is the negotiations over Angola in the mid-1970s. When Kissinger protests that the Soviet Union has no interests at stake in Angola, that it benefits a great deal from economic links with America, and that Soviet support of the MPLA in Angola will anger Congress enough to destroy detente, the Soviets reply: "Tough. The Cubans are our socialist brothers, and they wish to support our socialist brothers in the MPLA. We cannot sacrifice their interests for our own material advantage." To deny that the Cold War was overwhelmingly about *ideology*--different roads to utopia--is to commit an error of historical judgment as bad as denying that Naziism was overwhelmingly about the mass murder of the populations of Eastern Europe and their demographic replacement by Germans... Brad DeLong _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
BLS Daily Report
BLS DAILY REPORT, MONDAY, JANUARY 29, 2001 During the economic boom times of the 1990s, the private service-producing sector accounted for 90 percent of all job growth and boosted its share of total employment to about 80 percent, according to an analysis by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. At the same time that service industries -- especially those related to high-tech fields -- prospered, the manufacturing sector continued its employment decline. ... "Rapid technological transformation helped prolong the longest economic expansion on record and helped create a substantial number of employment opportunities in services," BLS economists Julie Hatch and Angela Clinton wrote in the December issue of BLS's Monthly Labor Review. Payroll employment outside of agriculture expanded by nearly 21 million workers or by 19.4 percent during the 1990s, BLS data show. ... (Daily Labor Report, page A8; reprint, page E-1). The Wall Street Journal's feature "Tracking the Economy" (page A10) shows the Thomson Global Forecast as predicting that the unemployment rate for January, to be released Friday, as 4.1 percent, in comparison with the December figure of 4.0 percent. Orders for durable goods rose 2.2 percent in December, boosted by a 14.6 percent surge in orders for airplanes and other transportation products. But orders for industrial machinery and metal products were down, as were shipments (Washington Post, Jan. 27, page E2; New York Times, Jan. 27, page B2)_As the Federal Reserve prepares for this week's meeting of its interest rate setting committee, the latest durable goods report offers a sobering reminder of the doleful state of the nation's manufacturing sector. A surge of commercial jet orders pulled overall durable goods orders up last month, but that disguised a much broader decline. ... (Wall Street Journal, page A2). For an economy struggling with a drop in factory orders, sagging consumer confidence, high energy prices, and a tattered stock market, the climate is adding another hurdle: an extra-cold winter nationwide. Unusually cold weather and winter storms halt construction, keep workers and shoppers at home rather than at their jobs or in stores, and disrupt shipping of goods. In numerous ways, the weather affects consumption and production -- in other words, both halves of the economy. Housing starts, for example, were up a slender 0.3 percent in December, compared with December 1999, despite the fact that last month's mortgage rates were nearly a full percentage point lower. ... (Wall Street Journal, page A2). Two arms of the National Academy of Sciences -- the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine -- found that, when teenagers work more than 20 hours a week, it often leads to lower grades, higher alcohol use, and too little time with their parents and families. Influenced by such studies, lawmakers in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Alabama, and other states have pushed in recent years to tighten laws regulating how many hours teenagers can work and how late they can work. ... A newly released study by the Department of Labor shows that 58 percent of American 16-year-olds hold jobs sometime during the school year, not including informal work like baby-sitting, while another study shows that on-third of high-school juniors work 20 or more hours each week. ... A new study by the International Labor Organization showed that American teenagers work far more than teenagers in most other countries. ... (New York Times, page A1). Contracting grows in popularity as an option for out-of-work techies, says The Washington Post (Jan. 28, page L1). "I have not seen any evidence that it's harder for a contractor to get work now than before," says the author of "The Contract Employee's Handbook," described as an idiosyncratic guide to project work. "Now they're being picked up by companies with more conservative business plans." Supporters say contracting provides the freedom to work at home, or at least to change your environment every few months -- a welcome switch for techies who are easily bored or leery of office politics. It also gives a person exposure to different technologies and management styles. ... Plus, for workers with top-line skills, billing by the hour can be more lucrative than a regular full-time job, according to a salary survey released last year by Dice.com, a Web site that tracks technology pay and posts full-time and contract jobs. But, those who have taken the leap warn that freelancing has its own faults. It seems to work best for people with a commend of the newest programming languages and a tolerance for long hours. ... application/ms-tnef
Canada, NAFTA and energy
[from an FTAA list] http://www.nationalpost.com/ It's the NAFTA, stupid Linda McQuaig National Post Ever since Mike Harris redefined the expression "common sense" to mean the underfunding of every service the public wants and needs, there's been a difficulty using that term in a meaningful way. But I heard one example of a true "common sense" approach recently when the CBC radio program This Morning ran clips of ordinary people trying to make sense of the huge run-up in energy prices. One Alberta woman said she didn't understand why she should have to pay so much for natural gas when the stuff is produced right in her own province. Now that is a common-sense question, crying out for a common-sense answer. Unfortunately, This Morning had lined up two economists to respond. The economists, a private consultant and an analyst at an industry-sponsored research institute in Calgary, were quick to make things sound complicated and somehow related to unstoppable global economic forces. In fact, the reason Albertans can't have reasonable energy prices has nothing to do with the complexity of energy production or the global economy, and everything to do with politics. Specifically, right now, it has to do with the fact that Canada signed NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement), and NAFTA prohibits Canada from offering lower energy prices to Canadian consumers than it does to consumers in the United States. So as energy prices have shot up recently in the United States, Canadians have been obliged to pay those higher energy prices too. NAFTA (specifically, section 605) also prevents Canada from reducing energy supplies to the United States, unless it reduces them by a proportionate amount in Canada. In other words, Canada is not allowed to favour Canadians -- including Albertans -- when it comes to access to our own resources. In terms of price and supply, those resources might as well be located in the United States. Now, I would imagine that if this had been clearly stated by the economists interviewed on This Morning, the Alberta woman -- not to mention tens of thousands of Canadians listening -- would have asked themselves common-sense questions like: Why would our government sign such a stupid deal? Why would Ottawa agree to a treaty that makes it illegal for us to properly defend our own interests in the crucial area of energy policy? Ottawa wasn't always so willing to offer up its citizens to the whims of the marketplace. Things were very different in the 1960s and '70s. Back then, the United States was keenly trying to win guaranteed access to Canada's energy resources. But the Trudeau government resisted and, in 1980, introduced the National Energy Policy, with the aim of doing the opposite -- ensuring Canadians would have preferential access to their own energy. The plan was designed to protect Canadian consumers from surging energy prices, and to ensure Canadian oil and gas reserves would be available well into the future for Canadian economic development. Alberta strongly resented Ottawa's encroachment into the energy field. The province's fierce resistance forced Ottawa to back down. Ottawa's final capitulation came when the Mulroney Tories signed NAFTA, giving up any future possibility of having an energy policy that favoured Canadians. The Americans had finally achieved their their long-cherished dream of guaranteed access to Canadian energy resources; indeed, achieving that was one of the main reasons they were interested in NAFTA in the first place. In prairie populist lore, the story is typically presented with Alberta as the tough guy, kicking sand in the face of Ottawa. And it's true that Alberta is all muscle and brawn against Ottawa. But all that macho firmness, oddly enough, turns to jelly, when Alberta deals with the oil companies. In recent years, the Alberta government has proved astonishingly pliant and submissive with the energy industry -- even by previous Alberta standards. Former premier Peter Lougheed drove a much tougher bargain, forcing the industry to pay substantial royalties that were then used to invest in the economic infrastructure of the province. Since then, the regimes of Don Getty and Ralph Klein have allowed royalty rates to decline significantly. Even so, Alberta's finances have been fine. That's because it doesn't take a rocket scientist or even a particularly competent government to balance a budget when you're sitting on massive reserves of one of the most valuable commodities in the world. Even oil sheiks who spend most of their time managing their harems can also look like sound fiscal managers. What's interesting is to imagine how much better things could have been for Albertans if their recent governments had driven a harder bargain with the energy companies. The Parkland Institute, a think-tank affiliated with the University of Alberta, has shown that if Alberta had simply collected royalties at the same rate the Lougheed government
Re: Re: CA Greenspan
Michael Perelman wrote: the overemphasis on politics Eh? Is this some neoclassical virus that's got a hold of you Michael? How can anyone consider economics "progressively" apart from politics? Even something as vulgar as the business cycle is political. Doug
Re: Re: CA Greenspan
The repugs are in a distint minority. They have no reason to get their hands dirty with a solution. Although deregulation was bipartisan, the Dems took the lead. On Tue, Jan 30, 2001 at 04:29:57AM -0500, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: If the Dems don't figure out the energy crisis, they will go the way of Jimmy Carter. Just after I put down the overemphasis on politics, I will add that Davis makes Clinton look like a leftist radical. Michael Perelman What if neither party can figure out a viable solution to the energy crisis, since the crisis is rooted not just in deregulation but also in gas price rises, water shortages, etc., as well as soaring demands (the so-called "new economy" is energy-dependent!)? Yoshie -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Re: CA Greenspan
I don't pretend that their is a delinking, but there is a tendency on this list to emphasize politics, concentrating on particular people, especially in discussing issues outside of the U.S. But then, the neoclassical virus may be affecting me without my knowledge. On Tue, Jan 30, 2001 at 11:13:51AM -0500, Doug Henwood wrote: Michael Perelman wrote: the overemphasis on politics Eh? Is this some neoclassical virus that's got a hold of you Michael? How can anyone consider economics "progressively" apart from politics? Even something as vulgar as the business cycle is political. Doug -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Canada, NAFTA and energy
An excellent article. I am always amazed the National Post, a staunch right-wing rag owned by left-hater Conrad Black, permits columns such as this by a hard-hitting popular left wing writer. Albertans are also asking themselves these days why they are required to pay about 800,000 to defend their erstwhile treasurer Stockwell Day, now leader of federal right=wing Alliance party in a law-suit resulting from his inability to keep his foot out of his mouth. Action is being taken to have the payments declared illegal and to attempt to have Day reimburse the province. Cheers, Ken Hanly - Original Message - From: Lisa Ian Murray [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2001 10:08 AM Subject: [PEN-L:7522] Canada, NAFTA and energy [from an FTAA list] http://www.nationalpost.com/ It's the NAFTA, stupid Linda McQuaig National Post
IMF, WORLD BANK CRY UNCLE ON MOZAMBICAN CASHEW, SUGAR
- Original Message - From: Robert Weissman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2001 11:22 AM Subject: [stop-imf] Mozambique raw cashew ban - winning battle with IFIs MOZAMBIQUE WINS LONG BATTLES OVER CASHEW NUTS AND SUGAR MOZAMBIQUE BANS RAW CASHEW EXPORTS AFTER IMF ALLOWS CASHEW AND SUGAR PROTECTION article and clippings by Joseph Hanlon [EMAIL PROTECTED]30.01.01 Mozambique has banned the export of unprocessed cashew nuts, ending a five-year battle with the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Meanwhile, the IMF has allowed Mozambique to protect its expanding sugar industry; IMF directors overrode opposition from their own staff. Allowing Mozambique to protect its two most important agro-industries is a remarkable reversal by the international financial institutions. It results from intense pressure from the Mozambican government, trade unions and business, taken up by international campaign groups. Cashew became a symbol of mindless trade liberalisation when in 1995 the World Bank forced Mozambique to allow the unrestricted export of unprocessed cashew nuts to India. The World Bank argued that peasant producers would gain higher prices from the free market. But it did not happen -- as a monopoly buyer, India pushed down the price; transfer pricing also lowered the price paid to Mozambique; and traders within Mozambique pocketed larger margins. So the peasants lost out, while nearly 10,000 industrial workers (half women) became unemployed. For five years Mozambique has campaigned against the ban. Finally, on 18 December the IMF Executive Board agreed a policy under which some cashew factories will be closed, but the rest will be protected. The protection is two-fold, an 18 percent export duty on unprocessed cashew nuts, plus the local industry given the right of first refusal -- to purchase nuts before they are exported. In light of this, the government banned the export of raw cashew nuts in mid-January. Clippings reproduced below set out the recent events. The long history of the cashew saga was published last year in "Review of African Political Economy" no 83, pages 29-45. The article is also on the web, at www.jubilee2000uk.org/policy_papers/roape100400.ht ml Meanwhile, the IMF Executive Board rejected a demand from its own staff, and agreed that Mozambique can protect its sugar industry, which is now being rehabilitated with major foreign investment. IMF staff had argued that since Mozambique could import sugar cheaper than producing it, it should allow duty-free import of sugar. Investors had demanded protection and were backed by the government. On 18 December, the IMF board agreed with the government and not its own staff. Cashew and sugar are both about similar issues: Mozambique wants to create and protect tens of thousands of industrial jobs (cashew and sugar are the country's two largest industries). On the other hand, the international financial institutions (IFIs) argue that free trade and globalisation will bring more long-term benefit, outweighing the cost and disruption of massive unemployment. The IFIs believed they could impose their policies, but the international outcry over cashew made them rethink, and accept that they had to listen more closely to elected national government. CLIPPINGS Below are press articles and reports on cashew and sugar Cashew export ban -- AIM (English) and Metical (Portuguese) Recent IMF statements on cashew and sugar IMF policy articles -- AIM and Metical Job losses in cashew -- AIM, Metical and NotMoc Export earnings down due to cashew price fall -- Metical EXPORT BAN - 94101E FINALLY, RAW CASHEW EXPORTS BANNED Maputo, 26 Jan (AIM) - The Mozambican authorities have slapped an embargo on the export of raw cashew nuts to India, reports Friday's issue of the independent newsheet "Metical". For years the local cashew processing industry has been demanding a total ban on raw nut exports, arguing that the exporters compete unfairly with the industry, and deprive it of its raw materials. Liberalisation of the trade in cashews was one of the conditions imposed by the World Bank in 1995, in exchange for access to soft loans. The government was forced to dismantle protection for the processing industry, much of which had only recently been privatised. When it became evident that liberalisation was killing off the processing industry, the government, with a reluctant World Bank go-ahead, in 1999 raised the surtax on raw nut exports from 14 to 18 per cent. The industry said this was insufficient to save the factories, and demanded the total prohibition of raw nut exports. The industrialists have been proved right: currently the great majority of cashew processing plants are closed, and over 8,500 workers have lost their jobs. The sudden embargoing of raw nut exports does not mean, however, that the government is
Downturn revives old fears in Michigan
Downturn revives old fears in state
By Gordon Trowbridge / The Detroit News
Michigan is officially back in the layoff business.
After nearly a decade of turbocharged profits and fat paychecks, Monday's
announcement of massive job cuts at DaimlerChrysler reacquainted workers from
Michigan's giant assembly lines to its small tool shops with the specter of the
unemployment line.
Daniel Mears / The Detroit News
At least 1,000 jobs will be cut at Daimler Chrysler's Jefferson North Assembly plant
in Detroit as the company eliminates the third shift production by mid-March,
officials said.
"Layoffs have always been in the back of my mind," said Clyde Jones, a line worker
for Budd Co., a Detroit auto supplier. "Now they're in the forefront."
For workers like Jones, already laid off once and facing another cut in February
from his job making parts for Ford trucks, each announcement of job losses brings the
threat a bit closer. But analysts said Monday that falling from the peak of automotive
acceleration to a slower pace need not spark fear of a return to the state's dark
economic past.
Economist David Sowerby predicted we'll all look back one day at Monday's news as
"not unlike an inconvenient Michigan pothole.
"We've begun to decelerate," said Sowerby, a portfolio manager and economist at
Loomis Sayles Co. "That doesn't mean we're going to immediately downshift into
reverse."
Certainly, the announcement Monday was no surprise to those who follow the car
industry. '
In recent weeks, General Motors Corp. has announced plant shutdowns, parts makers
Delphi Automotive and Visteon said they would temporarily lay off 10,300 workers, and
DaimlerChrysler management had made clear that with financial losses mounting, the
question was when, not if, jobs would be shed.
Ripple effect starts
But until Monday, the concern hadn't been nearly so acute in places like Macomb
County's San Marino Club, where Nancy Maiani and her co-workers spent the morning
remembering recessions past.
"I'm worried," said Maiani, a Sterling Heights grandmother who was born in Michigan
in 1938 and has lived every auto-industry slowdown since. "The economy was going
great. Now it just seems like it's one thing after another. It looks bad."
It doesn't look a whole lot better from Dave Hadelman's desk. Hadelman is
vice-president of operations for Big Buck Brewery Steakhouse, where
DaimlerChrysler's nearby headquarters tower dominates the view from the parking lot.
"We've already seen a slowdown in our sales in the last 12 weeks," Hadelman said as
the lunch crowd filed in, many wearing badges carrying the names of auto companies and
their suppliers. "It's definitely a concern."
How far the effects ripple out beyond Auburn Hills is less clear. But a number of
factors indicate that no one should brush off their recession jokes ("Last one left in
Michigan, turn out the lights") anytime soon.
Doug Rothwell, head of the Michigan Economic Development Corp., the state's jobs
agency, said the layoffs won't change state forecasts for a slowdown in economic
growth and a slight increase in unemployment this year. "If it has to happen, this is
one of the better times it could happen," he said.
A low unemployment rate means the economy can better absorb the workers cut at
DaimlerChrysler and other auto companies. Efforts to diversify Michigan's economy with
high-tech additions haven't been a raging success, but have made a difference. State
and local governments have used a decade's worth of higher tax revenues to boost
rainy-day funds, making it easier to weather a downturn without raising taxes.
Alan Lessig / The Detroit News
David Hadelman, a vice-president at Big Buck Brewery Steakhouse in Auburn Hills, is
concerned about the slowdown at nearby DaimlerChrysler headquarters.
Union contracts help
And union contracts crafted with retirements in mind make layoffs like Monday's
entirely different from those of the '70s and '80s.
While DaimlerChrysler is trimming 26,000 jobs, it has that many workers and more
who are eligible for existing early-retirement packages, said Diane Swonk, chief
economist for BankOne in Chicago. Many could choose to leave, then look for other good
jobs.
"With unemployment so low, that's an important economic shock absorber," Swonk
said. "Even with recent layoffs, there's a lot of opportunity for these workers to try
other things."
Sowerby, the Loomis economist, forecast that the slowdown now under way would push
Michigan's unemployment rate no higher than 6 percent, up from less than 4 percent
today. Six-percent joblessness, he points out, was as good as it got in the recession
of the late '80s. "It would bring us to the (high point) of the last time we went
through a similar episode."
Todd McInturf / The Detroit News
An ominous sign is posted outside DaimlerChrysler's Trunk Plant at
Re: Re: Bush vs. Smith
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 01/27/01 11:00AM At 07:48 AM 01/27/2001 -0600, you wrote: Bush is an appointee of the Supreme Court, he wasn't elected. I mean, that is the definition of appointee, isn't it? maggie coleman what does one call someone who got in office via a _coup_? ( A ursurper
The future of Islamic Banking
full story at: http://www.businesswithoutborders.com/may/page10.htm P R O J E C T F I N A N C E High Finance Without Interest Financial Institutions That Follow Islamic Religious Precepts Are Growing Worldwide By Jean Parvin Bordewich Abdulkader Steven Thomas, CEO of the Islamic Investment Banking Unit at the United Bank of Kuwait PLC in London, knows exactly the moment Islamic banking came into its own in the West. It was about five years ago, when the Middle East manager of a major New York bank was urging his employer to acquire a bank in Bahrain. The banks executives in New York resisted, skeptical that there was much growth potential in the Islamic market. The discussion grew heated. During a break, the manager followed his boss into the mens room. There he took out a black magic marker and scrawled on the mirror: "7242MA." "Theres your answer!" he declared. The cryptic graffito meant, Thomas explains, that the prototypical Islamic banking customer is 42 years old, earns at least US$72,000 a year and has an M.A. degree from a western university. "Our customer is no longer the stereotypical aging Middle Eastern man," Thomas says. "It could be a man or a woman. And it doesnt matter whether he or she lives in Iowa, Jakarta, London or Riyadh. Our typical customer is a member of the younger generation of educated and highly compensated young Islamic professionals." These younger Muslims, says Thomas, are often more committed to following Islamic law than their parents. "However, no one is noodling out how to help these Muslims prepare for their hajj or their childrens education or their retirement," he says. "And there is only limited help for them in acquiring their homes." Thomas estimates that about one-third of the worlds 1 billion Muslims attempt to follow Islamic principles in their financial dealings. There are no reliable estimates of the size of the Islamic banking market or its rate of growth, but Thomass experience provides some insights. The Islamic Investment Banking Units assets under management rose from zero in 1991 to about US$1 billion in 2000. Among the hottest markets are the United States and United Kingdom, both countries in which Islam is the fastest-growing religion. IIBU services include equipment leasing, trade finance, property acquisition, Real Estate Investment Trusts and other business and personal financial transactions. In March, IIBU closed on a contract that financed US$62 million of telephone equipment switches for one of its business clients in the Middle East. Two years ago, the Unit established Al-Manzil Islamic Financial Services NA in New York, headed by Acting CEO Abdul Hakim Dyer. Its initial focus is real estate services, such as financing for homes, mosques and schools. A handful of Western and international banks have Islamic banking units. One of the largest is Citibank, whose Citi Islamic Investment Bank, chartered in Bahrain, is capitalized at US$20 million. In February 1999, the Dow Jones Islamic global market index was launched. It was so successful that seven Islamic indexes are now available, focusing on industry sectors such as U.S. technology or geographic areas such as Canada and Asia. They track about 650 stocks acceptable to Muslimscompanies that do not deal in tobacco, gambling, alcohol or pork for instanceout of the 3,000 in the Dow Jones global index. The Islamic index companies also must clear financial hurdles dictated by Islamic scholars and based directly on the Quran. Ratios of debt to assets and accounts receivable to assets, as well as non-operating interest income, are scrutinized carefully. An Islamic stock index was initiated on the London stock exchange in November 1999. "The Dow Jones index has had very substantial impact," says Thomas. "It has caused a broader universe of financial people to take our products seriously; it has raised consumer consciousness among Muslims; and it has helped Islamic business owners see that these Islamic issues arent barriers. It will create a new spurt of growth." PROJECT FINANCE DEMAND One market that has caught the attention of Islamic bankers is large-scale project finance. The need for investment in modern infrastructure in Islamic countries is huge. In 1996, Islamic countries represented US$32.8 billion, or about 20 percent of the total global infrastructure spending. Most Islamic countries do not insist that financing for such projects meets the requirements of Islamic law, and only recently have Islamic financial vehicles been developed that could handle such complex projects. Now, says Thomas, "new techniques allow for longer-term profiles and a greater capacity to finance infrastructure and industrial projects, as well as to draw non-Islamic investors into the investments." The new techniques include securitization, accrual and tiering. Under Islamic law, there is no objection to the sale or transfer of equipment
Re: RE: Re: Rumsfeld falsifies Rational Choice
Forstater, Mathew wrote: this is also a problem with "revealed preference theory." by the way, might not Rumsfeld expect to gain in many other ways--new and strengthened contacts, memoirs, etc.? jeff wrote: Note, however, the circularity of the argument as I've stated it. Mr. Rumsfeld behaved as he did because of his utility function and we know what his utility function is because of his behavior. Such circularity is a potential pitfall in many rational choice arguments, including those from the Austrian economics camp that hold that the only way we know what people's preferences are is to observe their behavior in a market setting. Generally, I and other social scientists would argue that it is fallacious to infer preferences from observed behavior. FWIW: this is probably well known to the members of this list, but just in case: amartya sen has a paper titled "rational fools", published in "beyond self- -interest" (editor: jane mansbridge), that discusses exactly these ideas. (i have read similar thoughts from earlier writers, but this particular article came to mind upon reading the above messages). --ravi -- man is said to be a rational animal. i do not know why he has not been defined as an affective or feeling animal. more often i have seen a cat reason than laugh or weep. perhaps it weeps or laughs inwardly - but then perhaps, also inwardly, the crab resolves equations of the 2nd degree. -- alasdair macintyre.
Re: Darth Vader meets the new 'military fiscalism'
Carl Grossman has been sounding the alarm on this for years, but few people seem to have been interested. I don't recall seeing him in print outside of the Progressive. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
Re: Re: Re: Buck Fush
Michael, Yes, Kerala does a very good job of educating its young girls. There is a new quite good book about Kerala called, _Kerala: The Development Experience_ edited by Govind Payatal, London: Zed Books, 2000. The big negative, as has been noted on this list before, is that Kerala has had quite slow per capita GDP growth leading to a lot of outmigration. The state is now the recipient of considerable inflows of income from its well-educated populace working abroad. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Monday, January 29, 2001 8:55 PM Subject: [PEN-L:7497] Re: Re: Buck Fush Doesn't kerala do a better job of educating young girls? Isn't that very important? But then, I have read about family planning being important for empowering women vis a vis their husbands. On Mon, Jan 29, 2001 at 08:49:44PM -0500, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: Maggie says: I think what we need to do is support pro-CHOICE, which is not the same as pro-abortion, though abortion is a very important part of choice. Well, the question is, though, if the "international family planning organizations" have had a measurable impact of expanding women's choices in poor nations. I don't think Kerala has a lower birth rate than the rest of India because the former has more "international family planning organizations" than the latter. Charity never solves any problem, even if it's truly charitable (and it often isn't). Yoshie -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Al-Ahram Weekly On-line
Al-Ahram Weekly On-line
25 - 31 January 2001
Issue No.518
Progressing towards the abyss
Address to the first World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil
By Noam Chomsky
After World War II, integration of the international economy
("globalisation") has been increasing. By the late 20th century, it had
reversed the decline of the inter-war period, reaching the level prior to
World War I by gross measures - for example, volume of trade relative to
the size of the global economy. But the picture is considerably more
complex.
Post-war integration passed through two phases: (1) the Bretton Woods
period until the early 1970s; (2) the period since, after the dismantling
of the Bretton Woods system of regulated exchange rates and controls on
movement of capital. It is phase two that is usually called
"globalisation." Phase two is associated with so-called "neoliberal
policies": structural adjustment and "reform" along the lines of the
"Washington consensus" for much of the Third World, and since 1990, others
such as India and the "transition economies" of Eastern Europe; and a
version of the same policies in the more advanced industrial societies
themselves, most notably the US and UK.
The two phases have been strikingly different. For good reasons, many
economists refer to phase one as the "golden age" of industrial state
capitalism, and phase two -- the "globalisation period" -- as the "leaden
age," with significant deterioration of standard macroeconomic measures
worldwide (rate of growth, productivity, capital investment, and so on),
and increasing inequality. In the world's richest country, where most of
the workforce wages have stagnated or declined, working hours have
dramatically increased, and benefits and support systems have been
reduced. Through the "golden age," social indicators closely tracked GDP;
since the mid-1970s, they have steadily declined to the same level as 40
years ago, according to the most recent detailed academic study.
Contemporary globalisation is described as expansion of "free trade," but
that is misleading. A large part of "trade" is in fact centrally-managed,
through intra-firm transfers, outsourcing and other means. Furthermore,
there is a strong tendency towards oligopoly and strategic alliances among
firms throughout the economy, along with extensive reliance on the state
sector to socialise risk and cost, a key feature of the US economy
throughout this period. The international "free trade" agreements involve
an intricate combination of liberalisation and protectionism, in many
crucial cases (particularly pharmaceuticals) allowing megacorporations to
gain huge profits by monopolistic pricing of drugs that were developed
with substantial contribution of the public sector.
The enormous explosion of short-term speculative capital transfers in
phase two sharply restricts planning options for governments, and so
restricts popular sovereignty insofar as the political system is
democratic. The constitution of "trade" is far different from the
pre-World War I period. A large part now consists of manufacturing flows
to the rich countries, much of it intra-firm.
These options, along with the mere threat to transfer production, are
another powerful weapon against working people and functioning democracy.
The emerging system is one of "corporate mercantilism," with decisions
over social, economic and political life increasingly in the hands of
unaccountable private concentrations of power, which are "the tools and
tyrants of government," in James Madison's memorable phrase, warning of
the threats to democracy he perceived two centuries ago.
Not surprisingly, the phase two effects have led to substantial protests
and public opposition, which have taken many forms throughout the world.
The World Social Forum offers opportunities of unparalleled importance to
bring together popular forces from many varied constituencies, from the
richer and poor countries alike, to develop constructive alternatives that
will defend the overwhelming majority of the world's population from the
attack on their fundamental human rights, and to move on to break down
illegitimate power concentrations and extend the domains of justice and
freedom.
Related stories:
A manifesto for resistance 18 - 24 January 2001
Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
Re: Re: Re: Rumsfeld falsifies Rational Choice
Hey, the last Repug Defsec was Dick Cheney. Besides the cheating coup, the other thing that pissed me off the most in the election was how Cheney got away in the VP debate with declaring that the millions he was making as CEO of that defense contractor he ran (forget which one right now) had "nothing to do with the government." Gag. No, Rumsfeld is not making too big of a sacrifice. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Monday, January 29, 2001 10:55 PM Subject: [PEN-L:7504] Re: Re: Rumsfeld falsifies Rational Choice At 09:40 PM 01/29/2001 -0500, you wrote: January 29, 2001 Single-Page Format Rumsfeld to Pay Big Price to Avoid Conflicts By STEVEN LEE MYERS WASHINGTON, Jan. 28 As he returns to the Pentagon for a second tour as secretary of defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld is being required to divest himself of an array of stocks, partnerships and other holdings at what one of his financial advisers called "a significant loss." Well, Rumsfeld's behavior isn't consistent with at least a simple-minded economistic version of rational choice theory--i.e., one that says people are always motivated by the desire to maximize their economic gains. I don't think Rumsfeld [my old congresscritter, BTW] is going to suffer at all. It seems like a good time to sell stocks (if only to switch to a highly diversified portfolio in a blind trust), while he'll be well supported by his GOP friends. He'll be able to make lotzabux on the speaker's platform, the way Colin Powell has. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Crucial component of early Bush tax cut
The Washington Times January 30, 2001 Crucial component of early Bush tax cut By Donald Devine If George W. Bush does not succeed economically, he will face a hostile Congress and will be another one-term president. With Alan Greenspan on board, there will be a tax cut. But Mr. Bush is leery to unleash the best tool for spurring growth - a capital gains tax cut. A participant at a private meeting quietly told me why. Then candidate Bush explained that he saw former Senate Democratic Leader George Mitchell ruin his own father on the issue for "giving a tax break to the rich," and he was not going to let that happen to him. Good political instincts. But things have changed. One, Democrats in Congress do not want to be blamed for a recession. More importantly, almost half of the population now own stock directly or through pensions. As recently as the senior President Bush's tenure, it was only one-third. Most importantly, many more pay capital gains taxes. When Democrats use the term "rich" it is something like the meaning of "is." If an uncle sells a business or a retired grandmother sells long-held stocks for retirement, the slick count the funds received from the sale as "income" in that year. So your poor grandmother is counted as earning the entire amount of the sale of an asset she may have accumulated for years and may spend over many more. But to the class-warfare school she is "rich" for that year. If income is defined as income earned other than from investments - as it should - more than 50 percent of capital gains go to lower- and middle-class individuals. The typical household declaring a capital gain had income from other sources of only $58,729 - not bad, but not rich. Another 27 percent were elderly or blind - with incomes averaging $43,637 per year. In a declining market, this large group will make themselves heard - as they did on the "death tax" last year - especially if someone helps organize this potentially potent constituency. Candidate George W. Bush got it right. Federal taxes are too high, consuming 20.5 percent of economic output in 1998, the highest peacetime level ever. His across-the-board cut will reduce this heavy load and increase demand. But a study by William W. Beach and John S. Barry of the Heritage Foundation should give pause. A statistical test of various means to spur the economy found that the effects of the other remedies disappear without a cut in the capital-gains tax. In 1995, the United States had the highest capital gains rate in the world. Even after the reduction from 28 to 20 percent - under President Clinton, it should be noted - it is still among the world's highest. There is a lower rate for certain small firms - as a recognition that they have created all of the net new jobs in the economy - but only a few qualify under stringent standards. Capital-gains cuts can have dramatic effect. DRI/McGraw Hill found that about 25 percent of the increased value of the stock market in 1997-8 was due to the lowering of the rate the year before. Steven Moore and John Silva of the Cato Institute estimated that an incredible $7.5 trillion exists as unrealized capital gains that are "locked-up" to avoid taxation. Elimination of capital gains would free that whole amount and lead to an astounding recovery, which economists Gary and Aldona Robbins estimate as a $300 billion increase in output and 877,000 new jobs. Such growth leaders as Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan, as well as dynamic Belgium and the Netherlands, have no gains tax at all. True, it is not politically possible to eliminate the capital-gains tax, no matter how much good it would do. What is possible is indexing the capital-gains rate to inflation. Former Federal Reserve Board Governor Wayne Angell found the real inflation tax on Nasdaq stocks from 1972 to 1992 was an incredible 68 percent. Australia and the United Kingdom, with nominal capital-gains rates of 48 percent and 40 percent, had actual rates lower than the United States. A Congressional Budget Office study found that, excluding inflation, there would have been no capital gains at all in 1981 for those with an adjusted income below $100,000. Yet, they paid enormous taxes on paper profits, what Mr. Angell calls "the tax on phantom gains." It is simple justice only to tax real gains. That is a fairness argument that can be won politically. And, if the rates were indexed in the United States, the amount of capital unleashed for job creation would be phenomenal. But it must be done early if it is to help by the next election. A capital gains cut is not only politically possible today, it is politically imperative for tomorrow. *Donald Devine, former director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, is a columnist and a Washington-based policy consultant. --- *Do you know a good conservative who would like to receive the ACU-INFONET Updates? If so, why not forward the attached message to
Re: Re: Re: Fwd: faith based services
At 03:21 PM 1/30/01 +, you wrote: What about Catholic Workers? (Who really do provide social services.) --jks Scientology seems to provide social services, such as drug treatment. But the recipients usually join the "church" and then max out their credit cards to donate to the followers of the late L. Ron Hubbard, so that they join the ranks of modern debt peonage. They bust their butts trying to satisfy the higher-ups (who are organized in a Navy-style hierarchy). BTW, converts such as John Travolta and Tom Cruise are treated differently. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Re: Buck Fush
I might add that a good proportion of Malaylis who work abroad are not highly educated, especially many Muslims from Kerala working in the Middle East. OTOH Malaylis are on the average better educated than most other Indian ethnic groups. One could hypothesize that the low growth in Kerala has been precisely due to those political forces (the CPM and the general left politics) that promoted a more a egalitarian development. But also note the lack of direct British rule in the region and the matrilineal society that is part of the southern region as important historical factors, in addition to the not so great agriculture (limited land with the beautiful western ghats (banks), tropical forests, and a long coastline. Cheers, Anthony Anthony P. D'Costa Associate Professor Ph: (253) 692-4462 Comparative International Development Fax: (253) 692-5718 University of WashingtonBox Number: 358436 1900 Commerce Street Tacoma, WA 98402, USA xxx On Tue, 30 Jan 2001, J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. wrote: Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 12:59:23 -0500 From: "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:7533] Re: Re: Re: Buck Fush Michael, Yes, Kerala does a very good job of educating its young girls. There is a new quite good book about Kerala called, _Kerala: The Development Experience_ edited by Govind Payatal, London: Zed Books, 2000. The big negative, as has been noted on this list before, is that Kerala has had quite slow per capita GDP growth leading to a lot of outmigration. The state is now the recipient of considerable inflows of income from its well-educated populace working abroad. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Monday, January 29, 2001 8:55 PM Subject: [PEN-L:7497] Re: Re: Buck Fush Doesn't kerala do a better job of educating young girls? Isn't that very important? But then, I have read about family planning being important for empowering women vis a vis their husbands. On Mon, Jan 29, 2001 at 08:49:44PM -0500, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: Maggie says: I think what we need to do is support pro-CHOICE, which is not the same as pro-abortion, though abortion is a very important part of choice. Well, the question is, though, if the "international family planning organizations" have had a measurable impact of expanding women's choices in poor nations. I don't think Kerala has a lower birth rate than the rest of India because the former has more "international family planning organizations" than the latter. Charity never solves any problem, even if it's truly charitable (and it often isn't). Yoshie -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Keralan growth
[was: Re: [PEN-L:7538] Re: Re: Re: Re: Buck Fush] Barkley wrote: The big negative, as has been noted on this list before, is that Kerala has had quite slow per capita GDP growth leading to a lot of outmigration. also, doesn't per capita GDP growth in essence measure only growth of market-oriented production and would thus miss the growth of goods and services that aren't distributed through markets? Aren't measures of literacy, life expectancy, etc. better measures of what we on pen-l value than is GDP? Isn't that why heterodox economists have developed alternative "progress indicators" to replace GDP as measures of success? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Re: Fwd: faith based services
A professor at a Jesuit school compares Catholicism to Scientology . . . . ? --jks At 03:21 PM 1/30/01 +, you wrote: What about Catholic Workers? (Who really do provide social services.) --jks Scientology seems to provide social services, such as drug treatment. But the recipients usually join the "church" and then max out their credit cards to donate to the followers of the late L. Ron Hubbard, so that they join the ranks of modern debt peonage. They bust their butts trying to satisfy the higher-ups (who are organized in a Navy-style hierarchy). BTW, converts such as John Travolta and Tom Cruise are treated differently. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
Re: Keralan growth
Jim Devine wrote: Barkley wrote: The big negative, as has been noted on this list before, is that Kerala has had quite slow per capita GDP growth leading to a lot of outmigration. also, doesn't per capita GDP growth in essence measure only growth of market-oriented production and would thus miss the growth of goods and services that aren't distributed through markets? Aren't measures of literacy, life expectancy, etc. better measures of what we on pen-l value than is GDP? Isn't that why heterodox economists have developed alternative "progress indicators" to replace GDP as measures of success? True, but as a Kerala native who left to work for the UN once told me, if you combine high levels of social development with low levels of economic development, you get people with high but frustrated expectations, which they express by leaving. Something similar happened in Eastern Europe and the FSU, too, I'd say. Doug
new economy
Challenge Magazine has a new article in the January issue "Did the 1990s Inaugurate a New Economy?" by Harold G. Vatter and John F. Walker largely comparing the 1920s and the 1990s, a subject near and dear to the heart of Jim Devine. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Keralan growth
Jim Devine wrote: Barkley wrote: The big negative, as has been noted on this list before, is that Kerala has had quite slow per capita GDP growth leading to a lot of outmigration. also, doesn't per capita GDP growth in essence measure only growth of market-oriented production and would thus miss the growth of goods and services that aren't distributed through markets? Aren't measures of literacy, life expectancy, etc. better measures of what we on pen-l value than is GDP? Isn't that why heterodox economists have developed alternative "progress indicators" to replace GDP as measures of success? --- Doug Henwood beat me to the keyboard, but assuming (and if my assumption is wrong I withdraw the question) a closer correlation between outmigration and slow GDP growth as opposed to outmigration and lack of "alternative progress indicators" (to the extent they can be isolated from GDP growth), what would be your conclusion? Is there any better way to judge what people actually value other than to observe migrations? David Shemano
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Fwd: faith based services
Isn't in in Count Zero that William Gibson imagines that the protagonist's--Bobby?--mother is a Scientologist, very religious? --jks Justin wrote: A professor at a Jesuit school compares Catholicism to Scientology . . . . ? --jks I was just explaining what's wrong with Scientology, in case someone didn't know. But to actually makes such a comparison: I predict that when Scientology is as old as Catholicism, it will be as "normal" and as respectable, applying fraudulent methods as rarely as Catholicism does. When it's been around as long as Mormonism, it will be as normal and respectable as that religion, applying fraudulent methods as rarely as the Mormons do. If they get beyond the initial cult phase, religions usually mellow out with time, under the influence of reasonable people inside and external legal forces. (Note that I am not apologizing for the Catholics or the Mormons. I can tell you stories...) BTW, the Catholic Worker movement is much better than the Catholic hierarchy, though it tends to be quite shrill. In response to my missive about the contradiction between the conservative Christian advocacy of government funding for religion-based services and the possibility that the Scientology church might want to get involved, Justin wrote: What about Catholic Workers? (Who really do provide social services.) --jks I responded: Scientology seems to provide social services, such as drug treatment. But the recipients usually join the "church" and then max out their credit cards to donate to the followers of the late L. Ron Hubbard, so that they join the ranks of modern debt peonage. They bust their butts trying to satisfy the higher-ups (who are organized in a Navy-style hierarchy). BTW, converts such as John Travolta and Tom Cruise are treated differently. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
Kerala (was Buck Fush)
Darity, in a piece in the National Urban League's State of Black America 1999,
points out that Kerala's Ezhava caste ("who were once not to be touched or even
seen by upper caste Hindus") "have displayed remarkable upward mobility in
recent years" as a result of quotas and preference systems. Some of the
preferences were introduced in 1950, as part of a national program, but others
were instituted much earlier, around a century ago, while still under British
rule. Noting that Kerala is one of the most socially progressive regions in
India, Darity says there are lessons to be learned from the experience that
could inform supporters of affirmative action in the U.S. and elsewhere. One is
that it may take 3 to 4 generations for affirmative action to have a pronounced
effect. Another is that affirmative action in the U.S. has been much too
cautious and limited. Some younger Ezhavas now say they no longer need the
preference system. Apparently he has written about this elsewhere, possibly in
the Southern Economic Journal, 1998.
Also, didn't Franke and Chasin (authors of Seeds of Famine) write a book about
Kerala?
Re: Re: Keralan growth
I wrote: also, doesn't per capita GDP growth in essence measure only growth of market-oriented production and would thus miss the growth of goods and services that aren't distributed through markets? Aren't measures of literacy, life expectancy, etc. better measures of what we on pen-l value than is GDP? Isn't that why heterodox economists have developed alternative "progress indicators" to replace GDP as measures of success? Doug writes: True, but as a Kerala native who left to work for the UN once told me, if you combine high levels of social development with low levels of economic development, you get people with high but frustrated expectations, which they express by leaving. Something similar happened in Eastern Europe and the FSU, too, I'd say. to quibble, shouldn't we separate "economic development" from "growth of per capita GDP"? I guess what you're saying is that if development is serving the collective but doesn't promote individual monetary prosperity (which is measured by GDP-type measures), that some individuals will be frustrated and leave. I'd agree that this is a problem, but don't lots of educated folks leave _all_ parts of India, i.e., including those that haven't had Kerala-type development? (Some startlingly large percentage of U.S. medical doctors come from India.) Is there any reason to believe that people abandon Kerala more than they do other places in India? inquiring minds want to know, Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Fwd: faith based services
Justin wrote: A professor at a Jesuit school compares Catholicism to Scientology . . . . ? --jks I was just explaining what's wrong with Scientology, in case someone didn't know. But to actually makes such a comparison: I predict that when Scientology is as old as Catholicism, it will be as "normal" and as respectable, applying fraudulent methods as rarely as Catholicism does. When it's been around as long as Mormonism, it will be as normal and respectable as that religion, applying fraudulent methods as rarely as the Mormons do. If they get beyond the initial cult phase, religions usually mellow out with time, under the influence of reasonable people inside and external legal forces. (Note that I am not apologizing for the Catholics or the Mormons. I can tell you stories...) BTW, the Catholic Worker movement is much better than the Catholic hierarchy, though it tends to be quite shrill. In response to my missive about the contradiction between the conservative Christian advocacy of government funding for religion-based services and the possibility that the Scientology church might want to get involved, Justin wrote: What about Catholic Workers? (Who really do provide social services.) --jks I responded: Scientology seems to provide social services, such as drug treatment. But the recipients usually join the "church" and then max out their credit cards to donate to the followers of the late L. Ron Hubbard, so that they join the ranks of modern debt peonage. They bust their butts trying to satisfy the higher-ups (who are organized in a Navy-style hierarchy). BTW, converts such as John Travolta and Tom Cruise are treated differently. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Fwd: faith based services
At 07:36 PM 1/30/01 +, you wrote: Isn't in in Count Zero that William Gibson imagines that the protagonist's--Bobby?--mother is a Scientologist, very religious? --jks I haven't read that. But in the sci-fi book I've been thinking about writing, a Scientologist is running for President, causing the country to go through the same brouhaha that it did when Kennedy ran in 1960, i.e., questioning the candidate's loyalty to the country vs. his church, etc. If anyone wants that idea, he or she can have it, since I'll never get around to writing my novel. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Keralan growth
Jim Devine wrote:
to quibble, shouldn't we separate "economic development" from "growth of
per capita GDP"? I guess what you're saying is that if development is
serving the collective but doesn't promote individual monetary
prosperity (which is measured by GDP-type measures), that some
individuals will be frustrated and leave. I'd agree that this is a
problem, but don't lots of educated folks leave _all_ parts of India,
i.e., including those that haven't had Kerala-type development? (Some
startlingly large percentage of U.S. medical doctors come from India.)
Is there any reason to believe that people abandon Kerala more than they
do other places in India?
while i do not have accurate statistics, below are some observations:
someone pointed out that a large part of the migration out of kerala is
often to the middle east for unskilled labour. this is a fairly transient
effect, with many of the people returning to kerala and other parts of
india.
my anecdotal experience suggests that keralites do tend to leave the
state more than some of the other regional populations in india. again,
this can be attributed to a complex set of reasons, and the data varies
by period. gujaratis (the people from the western state of gujarat)
have a high migration rate also, and i would guess this is related to
their involvement in business ventures. punjabis (northwest) also are
a large percentage (some of the earliest california farmers where
immigrants from punjab). recently, tamilians and andhra pradeshis
("andhravadus"), have exploited the need for technically skilled works
(particularly for the IT boom) and the availability of a large number
of engineering schools in the region (southeast india) to find jobs in
the US, and their numbers have increased significantly. all of this,
to me, reflects the general sense of frustation in india (not in parts
of it) *coupled* with the unequal availability of means of immigration
across regions, and not a general causal connection between regional
economic systems and the rate of exodus. some understanding might be
gained by studying the socio-cultural issues surrounding migration and
its effect (such as to understand the contrast between large migration
of unskilled labour from kerala to the middle east and the much lesser
number of those leaving say eastern indian states such as assam or
bihar).
given the large population of india, its familiarity with the english
language, etc., it is able to supply a large number of technical
professionals to western nations and australia.
--ravi
--
man is said to be a rational animal. i do not know why he has not been defined
as an affective or feeling animal. more often i have seen a cat reason than
laugh or weep. perhaps it weeps or laughs inwardly - but then perhaps, also
inwardly, the crab resolves equations of the 2nd degree. -- alasdair macintyre.
Re: RE: Keralan growth
At 11:31 AM 1/30/01 -0800, you wrote: Is there any better way to judge what people actually value other than to observe migrations? unfortunately, migrations also reflect the relative ease of border crossing, the relative perceived attractiveness of the country moved to, along with such matters as U.S. foreign policy. The U.S., for example, has a program that actively seeks out Cuban athletes and convinces them to defect. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Keralan growth
Jim Devine wrote: to quibble, shouldn't we separate "economic development" from "growth of per capita GDP"? I guess what you're saying is that if development is serving the collective but doesn't promote individual monetary prosperity (which is measured by GDP-type measures), that some individuals will be frustrated and leave. I'd agree that this is a problem, but don't lots of educated folks leave _all_ parts of India, i.e., including those that haven't had Kerala-type development? (Some startlingly large percentage of U.S. medical doctors come from India.) Is there any reason to believe that people abandon Kerala more than they do other places in India? That's what this guy told me. I don't have any numbers, though. I was separating human or social development from economic development, which in this case is pretty similar to per cap GDP. So, high levels of literacy and good physical health, which often means good knowledge of the outside world and some means to get there. Doug
RE: Re: RE: Keralan growth
Jim Devine wrote: At 11:31 AM 1/30/01 -0800, you wrote: Is there any better way to judge what people actually value other than to observe migrations? unfortunately, migrations also reflect the relative ease of border crossing, the relative perceived attractiveness of the country moved to, along with such matters as U.S. foreign policy. The U.S., for example, has a program that actively seeks out Cuban athletes and convinces them to defect. Sure, specific migrations are unique and complicated. But are you taking the position that you cannot examine migrations in a macro sense and obtain valuable information regarding what people desire and value? David Shemano
blowing off steam
I just glanced at a journal of political economy article in condemning mandates. Mandates are bad, except you want to force schools to get standardized tests. Local control is good, except when inconveniences corporations. Then it has to be overruled. Individuals know what is best, but then Virginia legislates that people must sleep in their bedrooms. How do get away with such hypocrisy? And who figures out the names of their political campaigns -- paycheck protection, death taxes, and the like? -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Keralan growth
Actually I would agree with Jim Devine that economic and social development are closely linked and best measured by the kinds of indicators gathered by the UN with its physical quality of life indexes, etc. Economic growth is what is measured by per capita GDP, and certainly having a high income allows people to purchase things that they might not be able to have otherwise, and the desire for such things can stimulate outmigration. Unfortunately, I do not have all data sources on this here in my office. But, it should be noted that in comparison with other states of India, education has been relatively egalitarian and literacy is very widespread. The doctors, engineers, etc. that one sees in the US from other states are generally from upper castes and have had elite educations that are not available to most people, with the adult literacy rate in most of India remaining very high. OTOH, relatively "unskilled" laborers from Kerala have sufficient educations to be able to do many things in other countries and to have the awareness and the ability to get out and do them. I originally brought the issue up because Keralans themselves consider their low level of economic growth to be a problem and to see the outmigration from Kerala to be a manifestation of it. Otherwise, things look pretty good in Kerala, especially in comparison with most of the rest of India, although some argue that Sri Lanka has a comparable record, spoiled by the ongoing war there. Here are some stats from several sources. Uttar Pradesh is the largest state in India, over 100 million population, in the north central area, and not the poorest either. Country/state birth rate infant mortality adult female literacy % (per 1000) (per 1000 births) India29 7139 Uttar Pradesh 36 98 25 Kerala 18 17 86 Pakistan 40 95 25 Bangladesh 31 75 27 Sri Lanka 21 14 88 China19 32 75 S. Korea 16 9 96 Some good sources for info and data on the states of India include Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen, _India: Economic Development and Social Opportunity_. Oxford and Dehli: Oxford University Press, 1995. Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen, eds. _Indian Development: Selected Regional Perspectives_. Oxford and Dehli: Oxford University Press, 1996. Another source on Kerala is B.A. Prakash, _Kerala's Economy: Performance, Problems and Prospects_. New Dehli: Sage, 1994. Finally, a good book on the role of gender is Bina Agarwal, _ A Field of One's Own: Gender and Land Rights in South Asia_. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. BTW, I agree with those who stress that some of the developments in Kerala reflect earlier social and historical aspects and trends. But, there were clear political decisions that were made, especially in the 1950s against much outside opposition and criticism, that brought about what we see today. Barkley Rosser
Re: Re: Re: Keralan growth
The outmigration of Malaylis is higher than most other ethnic communities. What I am saying that Keralites leave Kerala and work in other parts of India more than say migrate abroad. For example, school teachers, petty officers in government/corporations, nurses (also in the US/Middle East), etc. Certainly economic conditions at home (Kerala) has a bearing on this, including education. At some level the causes are the same: more education, less opportunities, so outmigrate (destination of your choice). Yashwant Sinha, the Indian finance minister said in Davos, in the context of global inequality, that 38% of doctors in the US are of Indian orgin and 34% of NASA scientists (I can't verify this, but the numbers are high). As to Doug's point: the degree of frustration correlates with higher level of education (a la the UN official). But such frustration need not be expressed by migration by lower income groups since their education levels are also lower. And this is pretty much the case with the rest of India, nothing particular about Kerala itself. Cheers, Anthony Anthony P. D'Costa Associate Professor Ph: (253) 692-4462 Comparative International Development Fax: (253) 692-5718 University of WashingtonBox Number: 358436 1900 Commerce Street Tacoma, WA 98402, USA xxx On Tue, 30 Jan 2001, Jim Devine wrote: Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 11:26:12 -0800 From: Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:7543] Re: Re: Keralan growth I wrote: also, doesn't per capita GDP growth in essence measure only growth of market-oriented production and would thus miss the growth of goods and services that aren't distributed through markets? Aren't measures of literacy, life expectancy, etc. better measures of what we on pen-l value than is GDP? Isn't that why heterodox economists have developed alternative "progress indicators" to replace GDP as measures of success? Doug writes: True, but as a Kerala native who left to work for the UN once told me, if you combine high levels of social development with low levels of economic development, you get people with high but frustrated expectations, which they express by leaving. Something similar happened in Eastern Europe and the FSU, too, I'd say. to quibble, shouldn't we separate "economic development" from "growth of per capita GDP"? I guess what you're saying is that if development is serving the collective but doesn't promote individual monetary prosperity (which is measured by GDP-type measures), that some individuals will be frustrated and leave. I'd agree that this is a problem, but don't lots of educated folks leave _all_ parts of India, i.e., including those that haven't had Kerala-type development? (Some startlingly large percentage of U.S. medical doctors come from India.) Is there any reason to believe that people abandon Kerala more than they do other places in India? inquiring minds want to know, Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Keralan growth
Sure, specific migrations are unique and complicated. But are you taking the position that you cannot examine migrations in a macro sense and obtain valuable information regarding what people desire and value? David Shemano * The Times of India Thursday, 6 April 2000 `Kerala economy too dependent on expatriates' THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Calling emigration from Kerala and the remittances from expatriates the most "productive industry" in an otherwise dreary scenario in Kerala, a study has called for a firm policy to help the state make the most of the migrants' contributions. "A stage has now been reached in Kerala, so dependent on migration, that any sudden break in this trend could be disastrous for the economic and social life in the state," says the study by the Centre for Development Studies here. Titled 'Migration in Kerala, India: Dimensions, Determinants and Consequences' and conducted by K.C. Zachariah, E.T. Mathew and S. Irudyarajan, the study points out that the total remittances by the nearly two million Keralites employed abroad in 1998 was about Rs 40 billion. This was about 10 per cent of the state's gross domestic product (GDP) and three times more than what Kerala received by way of budget support from the Centre, it notes. The migration "industry" also sustains nearly eight million Keralites solely dependent on remittances from their relatives abroad. The study says immediate development of policies and follow-up action are needed to cope with the ongoing structural changes in the economy of the Gulf countries. It suggests a short-term and a long-term approach to meet increasing competition for employment from within the Gulf region and from South and Southeast Asian countries. Short-term measures such as improvement of the skills of prospective migrant workers are a must, the study says. Long-term measures could include restructuring the present educational system in the state to cater to the needs not only of the Middle East market but also Singapore, Malaysia and the U.S. A statewide survey reveals that more than 16 per cent of emigrants have studied only up to the primary school level or even less. Irudyarajan says just by increasing the educational levels of emigrants, remittances to Kerala could increase three-fold. "Remittance by emigrants with less educational qualifications was Rs 14,000 per year while the average remittance by a graduate emigrant was Rs 47,000 per year," he said. "This point could be further proved by the fact that nearly 51 per cent of emigrants were Muslims and Muslims from the state have the lowest literacy rates." The study stresses the need to start self-financing educational institutions using remittances in the educationally backward districts of north Kerala. It also points to an urgent need for policies to rehabilitate returning migrants, whose numbers have been swelling over the years. In 1998 there were 739,000 return migrants and in the current year their number is expected to reach 1.25 million. By 2002, the number of return migrants is expected to touch 1.75 million. The study says the average age of these return migrants is 34 and 30 per cent of them have only up to primary school education or even less. It notes that 38 per cent of the return migrants became self-employed after their return and 26 per cent of them were working as labourers in the non-agricultural sector. "It is here that the government should come forward with schemes for these people to take up self-employment. The government should see that a proper work atmosphere is created," says the study. (India Abroad News Service) http://www.timesofindia.com/060400/06indi14.htm * * Hindu Business Line Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications on indiaserver.com Friday, April 07, 2000 In Kerala, return migration gathers speed Our Bureau THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, April 6 MIGRATION in large numbers, long considered an unconventional developmental concept in Kerala parlance and the most productive `industry' engaging nearly two million people in direct employment and supporting seven to eight million of their family members in the State, is facing a crisis. Emigration and out-migration are on a declining mode, return emigration has picked up steam and remittances have been reduced to a trickle over a period of time, according to a working paper titled ``Consequences of migration on Kerala's economy and society'', second in the series on ``Migration in Kerala State, India: Dimensions, Determinants and Consequences'', and co-authored by Mr. K.C. Zacharias, Mr. E.T. Mathew, Honorary Fellows, and Dr. S. Irudaya Rajan, Associate Fellow, Centre of Developmental Studies (CDS), Thiruvananthapuram. The crux of the problem lies in the Keralite worker's inability to compete with expatriates from other South and South East Asian countries as also with the burgeoning pool of local talent. The solution
Re: RE: Re: RE: Keralan growth
I believe it was David who asked: Is there any better way to judge what people actually value other than to observe migrations? I answered: unfortunately, migrations also reflect the relative ease of border crossing, the relative perceived attractiveness of the country moved to, along with such matters as U.S. foreign policy. The U.S., for example, has a program that actively seeks out Cuban athletes and convinces them to defect. David ripostes: Sure, specific migrations are unique and complicated. But are you taking the position that you cannot examine migrations in a macro sense and obtain valuable information regarding what people desire and value? No, I'm not taking that position. Rather, we can't take migrations as the _only_ evidence of "what people desire and value." A deeper analysis is needed than just looking at the fact of migration. Among other things, people have mixed feelings on these matters. A "macro" analysis seems to be a superficial analysis, further, because to some extent migrations can be a result of panic (the bandwagon effect), which is sometimes encouraged by partisan interests. (One example is when a large number of people fled Vietnam at the end of the war and TIME magazine said they were "voting with their feet," arguing that this was _prima facie_ evidence that the US war had been just, including all the dumping of napalm, etc., on areas that weren't controlled by the US or ARVN troops or their allies (the ROK, etc.) which in fact contributed to the exile along with all the other factors (including the ROK troops). I wonder if their analysis was the same concerning the significant percentage of the colonists who fled what's now the U.S. toward the end of the Revolutionary War.) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Keralan growth
Actually, what is needed is a way to get growth going in Kerala so that people do not need to migrate (and also to accommodate those returning), but while still maintaining the desirable social aspects of the Keralan economy. Two aspects suggest themselves. One is that Kerala may be able to go the route of high tech development that the state of Karnata has been pursuing, especially in the city of Bangalore. Such a path would not involve endangering the beautiful environment of Kerala, and with its relatively strong educational base, even if this is not so strong in northern Kerala, there is a strong possibility of this. The other, which Michael Perelman might not like to hear, would be reduce the strength of the license- permit-raj system in Kerala, in short deregulation of rules restricting the starting of small businesses. It is a truism that India has far too many pointless regulations of business. We are not talking about the kind of regulation that one had in California for the electric utilities, but much more pervasive regulations involving extreme restrictions on entry, imports of inputs, and on and on. There has been a tendency to reduce these in India in general, although they continue to remain among the strictest in the world. It is widely reported that such restrictions are much stricter and more pervasive in Kerala than elsewhere in India, another legacy of the political past. In short, I think that there is plenty of room to remove or reduce some of the more onerous such regulations that would probably allow more economic growth, but not create serious social consequences. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Yoshie Furuhashi [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tuesday, January 30, 2001 4:53 PM Subject: [PEN-L:7556] Re: Keralan growth Sure, specific migrations are unique and complicated. But are you taking the position that you cannot examine migrations in a macro sense and obtain valuable information regarding what people desire and value? David Shemano * The Times of India Thursday, 6 April 2000 `Kerala economy too dependent on expatriates' THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Calling emigration from Kerala and the remittances from expatriates the most "productive industry" in an otherwise dreary scenario in Kerala, a study has called for a firm policy to help the state make the most of the migrants' contributions. "A stage has now been reached in Kerala, so dependent on migration, that any sudden break in this trend could be disastrous for the economic and social life in the state," says the study by the Centre for Development Studies here. Titled 'Migration in Kerala, India: Dimensions, Determinants and Consequences' and conducted by K.C. Zachariah, E.T. Mathew and S. Irudyarajan, the study points out that the total remittances by the nearly two million Keralites employed abroad in 1998 was about Rs 40 billion. This was about 10 per cent of the state's gross domestic product (GDP) and three times more than what Kerala received by way of budget support from the Centre, it notes. The migration "industry" also sustains nearly eight million Keralites solely dependent on remittances from their relatives abroad. The study says immediate development of policies and follow-up action are needed to cope with the ongoing structural changes in the economy of the Gulf countries. It suggests a short-term and a long-term approach to meet increasing competition for employment from within the Gulf region and from South and Southeast Asian countries. Short-term measures such as improvement of the skills of prospective migrant workers are a must, the study says. Long-term measures could include restructuring the present educational system in the state to cater to the needs not only of the Middle East market but also Singapore, Malaysia and the U.S. A statewide survey reveals that more than 16 per cent of emigrants have studied only up to the primary school level or even less. Irudyarajan says just by increasing the educational levels of emigrants, remittances to Kerala could increase three-fold. "Remittance by emigrants with less educational qualifications was Rs 14,000 per year while the average remittance by a graduate emigrant was Rs 47,000 per year," he said. "This point could be further proved by the fact that nearly 51 per cent of emigrants were Muslims and Muslims from the state have the lowest literacy rates." The study stresses the need to start self-financing educational institutions using remittances in the educationally backward districts of north Kerala. It also points to an urgent need for policies to rehabilitate returning migrants, whose numbers have been swelling over the years. In 1998 there were 739,000 return migrants and in the current year their number is expected to reach 1.25 million. By 2002, the number of return migrants is expected to touch 1.75 million. The study says the average age of these return migrants
Re: Re: Re: Re: Keralan growth
I don't know if 34 percent is too high, but in many rural parts of the country there are huge numbers of Indian doctors; some Filipinos also. On Tue, Jan 30, 2001 at 01:52:23PM -0800, Anthony DCosta wrote: The outmigration of Malaylis is higher than most other ethnic communities. What I am saying that Keralites leave Kerala and work in other parts of India more than say migrate abroad. For example, school teachers, petty officers in government/corporations, nurses (also in the US/Middle East), etc. Certainly economic conditions at home (Kerala) has a bearing on this, including education. At some level the causes are the same: more education, less opportunities, so outmigrate (destination of your choice). Yashwant Sinha, the Indian finance minister said in Davos, in the context of global inequality, that 38% of doctors in the US are of Indian orgin and 34% of NASA scientists (I can't verify this, but the numbers are high). As to Doug's point: the degree of frustration correlates with higher level of education (a la the UN official). But such frustration need not be expressed by migration by lower income groups since their education levels are also lower. And this is pretty much the case with the rest of India, nothing particular about Kerala itself. Cheers, Anthony Anthony P. D'Costa Associate Professor Ph: (253) 692-4462 Comparative International Development Fax: (253) 692-5718 University of Washington Box Number: 358436 1900 Commerce Street Tacoma, WA 98402, USA xxx On Tue, 30 Jan 2001, Jim Devine wrote: Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 11:26:12 -0800 From: Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:7543] Re: Re: Keralan growth I wrote: also, doesn't per capita GDP growth in essence measure only growth of market-oriented production and would thus miss the growth of goods and services that aren't distributed through markets? Aren't measures of literacy, life expectancy, etc. better measures of what we on pen-l value than is GDP? Isn't that why heterodox economists have developed alternative "progress indicators" to replace GDP as measures of success? Doug writes: True, but as a Kerala native who left to work for the UN once told me, if you combine high levels of social development with low levels of economic development, you get people with high but frustrated expectations, which they express by leaving. Something similar happened in Eastern Europe and the FSU, too, I'd say. to quibble, shouldn't we separate "economic development" from "growth of per capita GDP"? I guess what you're saying is that if development is serving the collective but doesn't promote individual monetary prosperity (which is measured by GDP-type measures), that some individuals will be frustrated and leave. I'd agree that this is a problem, but don't lots of educated folks leave _all_ parts of India, i.e., including those that haven't had Kerala-type development? (Some startlingly large percentage of U.S. medical doctors come from India.) Is there any reason to believe that people abandon Kerala more than they do other places in India? inquiring minds want to know, Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: CA Greenspan
Michael Perelman says: The repugs are in a distint minority. They have no reason to get their hands dirty with a solution. Although deregulation was bipartisan, the Dems took the lead. Then, this will be a good chance to see if lefties in California stand up to the Dems, offering a different solution than the Dems', or at least sabotaging the Dems'. Yoshie
Re: Re: Re: Korean news
Indeed, I don't think that in the 60s there was thinking about "winning" the cold war in the dramatic sense that it was won in the 1990s. "Containment" was more the idea... My grandfather Earl DeLong was one of Helms's spearcarriers in the 1950s. He says--and Helms says--that containment was the policy because of a general belief that there would come a softening of rule in the Soviet Union--a recognition of the benefits of economic decentralization, less autocracy in politics, the restoration of within-the-party democracy and so forth--and that with the softening of rule in the Soviet Union there would be less reason to fear it and less reason for it to fear us. Their view was that "rollback" was likely to be a disaster: that it might well kill us all if it led to the use of nuclear weapons on a large scale, and that it would certainly retard any softening of forms of rule within the Soviet Union... The US had a lot more ideological utopianism than the USSR did. I see an equivalence here up until the 1980s. Khrushchev and his people were absolutely certain that they were the wave of the future, and the road to utopia. For the first half of the Brezhnev era I think that the same was true, at least as far as Soviet foreign policy was concerned. The Soviet Union may have become a status-quo power as far as Europe was concerned, but its foreign ministry was definitely interested in promoting world revolution throughout the 1970s. The Soviet Union went into Afghanistan, after all, for relatively pure motives: to defend socialism against barbarism. (And from today's perspective it is hard to argue that they were wrong.) I don't know when the loss of faith in their system on the part of the nomenklatura took place... Brad DeLong
Re: Re: CA Greenspan
Only people associated with Nader, and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors have spoken up. Sen. John Burton might turn out ok. He has been giving mixed signals. But then Gene knows far more than any of us about this. The SF Bay Guardian has a full time reporter working on the issue as well. Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: Michael Perelman says: The repugs are in a distint minority. They have no reason to get their hands dirty with a solution. Although deregulation was bipartisan, the Dems took the lead. Then, this will be a good chance to see if lefties in California stand up to the Dems, offering a different solution than the Dems', or at least sabotaging the Dems'. Yoshie -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Re: CA Greenspan
Michael Perelman says: The repugs are in a distint minority. They have no reason to get their hands dirty with a solution. Although deregulation was bipartisan, the Dems took the lead. Then, this will be a good chance to see if lefties in California stand up to the Dems, offering a different solution than the Dems', or at least sabotaging the Dems'. Yoshie They need to find some good lawyers that aren't hooked into the Dems state party machinery; no easy task. The CA bar association directory perhaps Ian
Re: Re: Re: Korean news
I see an equivalence here up until the 1980s. Khrushchev and his people were absolutely certain that they were the wave of the future, and the road to utopia. For the first half of the Brezhnev era I think that the same was true, at least as far as Soviet foreign policy was concerned. The Soviet Union may have become a status-quo power as far as Europe was concerned, but its foreign ministry was definitely interested in promoting world revolution throughout the 1970s. The Soviet Union went into Afghanistan, after all, for relatively pure motives: to defend socialism against barbarism. (And from today's perspective it is hard to argue that they were wrong.) I don't know when the loss of faith in their system on the part of the nomenklatura took place... Brad DeLong ** Chernobyl was the proverbial straw according to a friend of mine that was over there 89-91. Ian
Re: RE: Re: CA Greenspan
I've been kind of amazed at the lack of aggressive legal action on the part of So Cal Ed, PGE, the governor, etc., against the FERC. By law, FERC must set rates that are "Just and reasonable." In its Order on Nov 1st, 2000, on the Calif situation, FERC said the rates were NOT just and reasonable. It also said it wouldn't do anything about that. Seemed to me, and seems to me, a promising law suit. But I'm not a lawyer. Gene Coyle Lisa Ian Murray wrote: Michael Perelman says: The repugs are in a distint minority. They have no reason to get their hands dirty with a solution. Although deregulation was bipartisan, the Dems took the lead. Then, this will be a good chance to see if lefties in California stand up to the Dems, offering a different solution than the Dems', or at least sabotaging the Dems'. Yoshie They need to find some good lawyers that aren't hooked into the Dems state party machinery; no easy task. The CA bar association directory perhaps Ian
Re: Re: Fwd: faith based services
At 08:16 PM 1/29/01 -0600, Maggie Coleman wrote: h, Along with Scientology, how would the bushies react to Wiccan members demanding a desk in the white house? inquiring minds want to know. maggie coleman I'm being tongue-in-cheek with this suggestion, but I have wondered what would happen if some Wiccan covens wanted money for, oh, running a crisis center for women. While, to my knowledge, Wicca is not much involved in social services, something like a crisis center would certainly be consistent with Wiccan beliefs. Might be the quickest way in the world to sabotage charitable choice! (Laugh). Even it didn't bring the whole enterprise crashing down in flames, it would force the Republicans to either (a) deny funding to groups like the Wiccans and thus admit that the real intention of charitable choice is Christian proselytization or (b) grant funding and face embarrassing questions from their Religious Right constituency about why they're funding witchcraft! If nothing else, it would be worth the price of admission to watch the right-wingers squirm! : ) -- Jeffrey L. Beatty Doctoral Student Department of Political Science The Ohio State University 2140 Derby Hall 154 North Oval Mall Columbus, Ohio 43210 (o) 614/292-2880 (h) 614/688-0567 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] __ If you fear making anyone mad, then you ultimately probe for the lowest common denominator of human achievement-- President Jimmy Carter
Re: RE: Re: CA Greenspan
The National Lawyers Guild is the place to start looking. --jks Michael Perelman says: The repugs are in a distint minority. They have no reason to get their hands dirty with a solution. Although deregulation was bipartisan, the Dems took the lead. Then, this will be a good chance to see if lefties in California stand up to the Dems, offering a different solution than the Dems', or at least sabotaging the Dems'. Yoshie They need to find some good lawyers that aren't hooked into the Dems state party machinery; no easy task. The CA bar association directory perhaps Ian _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
Amazon woes
[Closing the facility that's organizing; how convenient] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/Digital/Update/2001-01/amazon310101.shtml Amazon cuts hundreds of jobs after $90m loss By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles 31 January 2001 The leading online retailer Amazon.com announced yesterday it was cutting 15 per cent of its workforce further proof that nobody is immune from the dot.com meltdown. The company said it was closing a distribution centre in Georgia and a customer service centre in Seattle, its home base, as part of an effort to reach profitability before the end of the year. It also planned to operate another distribution centre, also in Seattle, on a seasonal basis rather than full-time.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Korean news
Brad, I was a sort of Sovietologist when there was such a thing, and my speciality in that area was Soviet and US foreign policy, the Cold War. Which doesn't make me right, but I have looked into this stuff, including reading endless reams of CIA and DoD assessments, God help me. Now you are quite right that "rollback" was off the table among sane folk from about the time the Soviets got the bomb, but containment didn't mean "victory." _Nobody_ expected the hoped-for moderation that age might bring the USSR to lead to collapse. When Andrei Almarik published a book in, I think it was 1979, entitled, Will the Soviet Union Survive till 1984?, the question was taken as a joke, especilaly when the author died before then. The collapse of the USSR was a total surprise to everone in the biz, especially to the CIA, which had consistently overestimated Soviet economic and military capabilities. "Containment" meant what it said, keep the Soviets where they were, make them be nicer and more compliant. There was never any expectation among any groups of cold warriors to defeat Soviet communsim by fostering reform communism. In all my reading, I never encountered this goal. Of course the US govt was happy to foster divisions where it could. However, that did not mean it looked favorably upon any kind of communism, including Dubcek or even Titoism, although it was not above bugging the Soviets by helping Tito out a bit. You say, further, that Soviets were ideologically optimistic and triumphalist through at least the Khrushchev era, maybe through the 1960s. Ian would extend that through 1986. I think this is not true. K did believe that "we will bury you," but he was quite clear that he was a great fan of peaceful coexistence, and the triumph of communism would come through proof of its economic superiority--not military force. Moreover, while K may have been optimistic, the end of the thaw, the ideological loosening after the death of Stalin and K's ascension, roughly the period of 1953-56, with the suppression of the Hungarian revolution, killed a lot of the optimism for the Gorbachev generation of refiorm Communists. Mylnar's book, which speaks for that generation, makes that clear. Gorby's contemporaries thought that communism could be saved--but they thought it had to be saved. It was not triumphant. I think your reading of erratic and inconsistent Soviet support for national liberation movements as evidence of aggressive triumphalsim is incorrect. The Soviets gace up on exporting revolution in 1920, with the failure of the Polish expedition. Stalin's policy was socialism in one country. Khrushchev's was that plus peaceful coexistence. After the mid 20's, you can get a lot further in predicting Soviet foreign policy using a straight line national interest calculation than an ideological one. Sure, the USSR supported some national liberation movements--that is one of the few half-way decent things it did. But it never did that when it didn't seem that this would not further great power goals. Its policy was defensive, e.g., in establshing and Eastern European buffer zone after WWII. Afghanistan was not about defending socialism, but about preventing a US-backed Islamic insurgency on its borders and near the Muslim republics. The Soviets had been quite happy with the non-communist kingdom that the communists there replaced, because it was inoffensive. I don't say Soviet foreign policy was peachy keen--that is not my point. I am not a fan of great power politics. My point is jsut that the Soviets were not wild-eyed promoters of global revolution at the point of the bayonet--and hadn't been since before the USSR technically existed (it didn't in 1920). The US, in contrast, has been much more fiercely ideological. It has conducted wars that had no basis in a rational calculus of national interest, such as Vietnam, even at great cost; in the name of "freedom" (to invest. It has attacked and subverted harmless social democrats in Central and South AMerica, imposing brutal dictatorships as bulwarks against "communism," meaning the notion that the government might reflect the interest of the local people to some extent, even if that might not allow investors unfettered sway. So I don't think the two were comparable in this regard. The US has alwys been what the authors of one study called "sentimental imperialists," willing to "save the world for democracy," or anyway free enterprise. It has been able to afford such sentimentality. The Soviets never could. --jks I see an equivalence here up until the 1980s. Khrushchev and his people were absolutely certain that they were the wave of the future, and the road to utopia. For the first half of the Brezhnev era I think that the same was true, at least as far as Soviet foreign policy was concerned. The Soviet Union may have become a status-quo power as far as Europe was concerned, but its foreign ministry was
Re: Re: Re: Fwd: faith based services
Here in Chico, a local Waldorf education group wanted to start a charter school, but "Jeffrey L. Beatty" wrote: At 08:16 PM 1/29/01 -0600, Maggie Coleman wrote: h, Along with Scientology, how would the bushies react to Wiccan members demanding a desk in the white house? inquiring minds want to know. maggie coleman I'm being tongue-in-cheek with this suggestion, but I have wondered what would happen if some Wiccan covens wanted money for, oh, running a crisis center for women. While, to my knowledge, Wicca is not much involved in social services, something like a crisis center would certainly be consistent with Wiccan beliefs. Might be the quickest way in the world to sabotage charitable choice! (Laugh). Even it didn't bring the whole enterprise crashing down in flames, it would force the Republicans to either (a) deny funding to groups like the Wiccans and thus admit that the real intention of charitable choice is Christian proselytization or (b) grant funding and face embarrassing questions from their Religious Right constituency about why they're funding witchcraft! If nothing else, it would be worth the price of admission to watch the right-wingers squirm! : ) -- Jeffrey L. Beatty Doctoral Student Department of Political Science The Ohio State University 2140 Derby Hall 154 North Oval Mall Columbus, Ohio 43210 (o) 614/292-2880 (h) 614/688-0567 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] __ If you fear making anyone mad, then you ultimately probe for the lowest common denominator of human achievement-- President Jimmy Carter -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
On California Energy
A former student puts out extraordinary weekly paper. He does everything, reporting selling ads and doing layouts -- at the same time as he comes up with much more in-depth stories than local paper. This one concerns the Democrat who lead the charge for deregulation. The Attack of the Killer Utilities Adventures in Power Deregulation-Part 1 First in a series. by Tim Bousquet The 1976 film, The Attack of the Killer Tomatoes is sometimes regarded as one of the worst movies ever made, and as such, has acquired the status of a cult film. But the camp dimension of the film was manufactured, admit its creators, John DeBello, Steve Peace and Costa Dillon. It was just an idea that came up, Dillon told Joe Stein of the San Diego Union Tribune, that we could make a spoof of horror films, like Attack of the Giant Kumquats or Killer Tomatoes. It seemed like something we could play off of a lot. It seemed so silly, the title being so ridiculous, that it led to a lot of ideas. The three creators of Tomatoes were then film students at UC Davis, and the film was initially just a concept for a class project. After graduation, however, they formed Four Square Productions, a San Diego-based company that specializes in recruiting and highlight films for college football programs, and Attack of the Killer Tomatoes was re-created as a full-length feature film. Not a major or even a semimajor studio would attempt or consider doing something like that because it was so strange, said DeBello. If youre small, youve got to have a hook. So we said, Lets do a takeoff on the worst movies ever made, the Japanese thrillers with the scientists talking out of sync and the whole bit. We took the kitchen sink and threw everything in it. The film was shot in and around San Diego, with DeBello directing, Peace playing a major role and Dillon doing a little bit of everything, according to Stein. Peaces character spends about half an hour dragging a parachute around, and the climax of the film had him in aviator garb and with a drawn sword, leading a charge out of San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium to stomp on an advancing army of the fruits. It probably took a year and a half for people to figure out what it was, DeBello said. At first, no one really understood what we were trying to do. Once the right people saw it - the hip audience - it became very popular on college campuses, and it has continued to do very well in videocassette sales. The film has now grossed some $15 million. ** Attack of the Killer Tomatoes was not just a successful film, however, but also the springboard for successful careers of its creators. DeBello is now President of Four Square, which has gone on to become a major corporation with $4.5 million in annual sales. Peace is Four Squares Chief Executive Officer, and has had a successful political career, first as an Assemblyman from San Diego and Imperial Counties, and now as a State Senator from the same area. Costa Dillon, thanks to a recommendation from Peace, went on to become an assistant to then-Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, a position he parlayed into being appointed as Chief Interpreter of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, and most recently as the Superintendent of the Fire Island National Seashore. Steve Peace, star of The Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, was also the principal architect of utility deregulation. ** Steve Peace, was a self-described fan of Ronald Reagan as a teen-ager, but was elected as a Democratic Assemblyman from El Cajon in 1982. He was generally supportive of the Democratic leadership in Sacramento, but he abandoned ship on farm issues, siding with the large farming corporations of the Imperial Valley. Most of the (Democratic) leadership sides with Cesar Chavez, but Steve has worked closely with us and is an excellent assemblyman. Hes got a political talent for keeping everybody happy, and he doesnt dance to Willies (Brown) tune, Mike Wallman, manager of the Imperial County Farm Bureau, told the San Diego Union-Tribune. Referring to Killer Tomatoes, Wallman added that Steve has learned a lot about tomatoes since he began representing Imperial County farmers. In 1985, Peace, then in the Assembly, was involved in a row with State Senator Afred Alquist, a fellow Democrat from San Jose. The source of the conflict appears to date to Alquists attempt to put a nuclear waste dump in Peaces largely desert district, but politicians from both side of the aisle credited Peaces annoying personality with aggravating the situation (Many of Peaces colleagues consider him immature and obnoxious commented the California Political Almanac). Peace called Alquist, then 77 years old, a senile old pedophile, to which Alquist responded by calling Peace a 14-karat asshole and suggested he seek psychiatric help. Peace has been involved in other controversies also. In 1984 Southwestern Community College District trustee G. Gordon
Give to God what is Caesar's?
Bush has announced that he wants to create a new deduction that would allow everybody to get a deduction for gifts to "faith based charities." I posted the following on Kuro5hin.org, which draws a lot of college age and younger folks. First, let me give a factual description of what's going on. Then I'll analyze it. Gifts to any charity, faith-based or not, are already deductible from federal income taxes in the USA. These charities are often called "501(c)(3)'s" after the law that regulates them. Assume a 28% tax rate. That means if you earned $50,000, and contributed $5,000 to charity, your income tax is 28% of $45,000 (50,000 minus 5,000). If you hadn't contributed anything to charity, your tax would have been 28% of $50,000. This is a nice break, but it's only available if the taxpayer itemizes his deductions. To itemize your deductions means to list all of them on your tax form. If you don't want to itemize, you can take the "standard deduction." This varies every year, but is about $7,000 this year. As you can see, if our taxpayer had itemized his deductions, he would actually have lost money. He should have taken the standard deduction, so that his taxes would have been 28% of $43,000. People usually itemize only when their deductions add up to be more than the standard deduction. For most taxpayers, this only happens once they buy a house. Most Americans take out a loan (a mortgage) to pay for their first house. They obviously have to pay the loan back. They also have to pay back interest. This interest is deductible. If our taxpayer was a homeowner, paying $9,000 in home mortgage interest this year, he would want to itemize his deductions. After deducting the home mortgage interest payment, he would pay income tax of 28% of $41,000. If he also contributed $5,000 to charity, he would only pay income tax of 28% of $36,000. So what is Bush's plan? It would make certain charitable gifts "above the line deductions." All that means is that you don't have to itemize to get the deduction. You can take the standard deduction plus any faith-based charitable gifts, and deduct all that from your taxes. A quick definition can be found this web site. In other words, poor folks and renters (about 80 million taxpayers) will be encouraged to give more money to faith-based charities. Rich people and middle class homeowners, who already itemize their deductions, will have no extra incentive to give in this way. Of course, poor folks already give money to faith-based charities, and their gifts should be encouraged. But in most cases, the standard deduction will be far and away more than their charitable gifts. To put it concisely, Bush wants the government to indirectly transfer federal tax money to "faith-based charities." In practice, federal money will be diverted to local churches, faith based relief organizations, and Bob Jones University. If you believe that your taxes should be used to support other people's churches, then I guess you'll end up supporting the proposal. If you believe that when the First Amendment says "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. . . ." it means something, then I guess you'll be like me and oppose it. It's important to note that Bush would change the way charitable gifts are treated. If your charitable gift goes to a "faith based" organization, it will be an above-the-line deduction, available to every taxpayer. If your charitable gift goes to a secular organization, like, for example, Big Brothers/Big Sisters, or public television, NPR, or public radio, then you can only take the deduction if you already itemize. There will be zero added incentive to contribute to these non-profit groups. In fact, they will likely lose contributions because people will siphon their money to where they get a tax break. That's not cynicism. It's just simple, hard-headed economics. Who will decide what constitutes a "faith based" charity? There are already many byzantine laws just to decide what a "charity" is (501(c)(3) in tax lingo). I guess we'll probably need a whole bunch of government regulations to decide this. What if someone set up a charity called "Atheists of Faith Feed the Hungry." Would that be "of faith"? Are all religions covered? Would Unitiarian/Universalists qualify? Quakers? What about "Pagan Toys for Tots"? What about a "Zoroastrian Free Anti-HIV Medicine Society "? Would that qualify? How about a "Satanist Animal Protection Association"? What government bureaucrat would decide? It appears that much time will be spent by the IRS in trying to figure out what constitues a "faith." Would the Branch Davidians qualify? Scientologists? What about groups like "Heaven's Gate?" Buddhists? Hindus? How about groups like Hamas? Hamas is accused of supporting terrorism, but they are a faith-based organization that also distributes food and medicine to people. Maybe they should get the deduction, too. Would the
Soviet utopianism
[was: Re: [PEN-L:7564] Re: Re: Re: Korean news]
Brad wrote:
I see an equivalence here up until the 1980s. Khrushchev and his people
were absolutely certain that they were the wave of the future, and the
road to utopia.
but this was quite different from the attitude of the early 1920s or the
late 1910s. By the time K had taken over, the emphasis was on fighting and
winning the battle of competition with the "West" ("we will bury you") just
like Microsoft wanted to bury Netscape, rather than promoting socialism of
the original, democratic, version. The "utopian" emphasis on central
planning -- the big heresy from the orthodox economist's point of view --
was falling apart in the background as the products and processes became
more complicated and hard to produce and as labor reserves and raw material
reserves ran out.
For the first half of the Brezhnev era I think that the same was true, at
least as far as Soviet foreign policy was concerned. The Soviet Union may
have become a status-quo power as far as Europe was concerned, but its
foreign ministry was definitely interested in promoting world revolution
throughout the 1970s.
I don't know where this "world revolution" stuff comes from, except perhaps
from the Cold War's bipolar ideology that all bad things in the US sphere
of influence arise due to the outside agitation of the "Reds" (after all,
capitalism is an inherently harmonious and wonderful system, so it couldn't
be anything that the system did). The USSR had attained the conservative
big power "we need to do everything we can to defend what we've got" mode
in the 1940s, if not earlier, which combined with Stalin's paranoia to form
a bureaucratic defensiveness (which meshed well with the domestic
authoritarian welfare state). (It's important to remember that Stalin
abandoned the last revolutionary and socialist principles by signing the
non-aggression pact with Hitler, though it does make sense in terms of
nationalism.) To the extent that there was "world revolution," it came
_independent of_ or even despite Soviet foreign policy. The revolutions in
China, Cuba, Vietnam, Algeria, etc. did NOT occur because the Soviets
wanted them, though the USSR's foreign ministry supported them with
revolutionary-sounding rhetoric and efforts to use a little bit of foreign
aid to make them fit with the USSR's defensive foreign policy goals and
bureaucratic values. The official line for decades was _not_ the need for
socialism but for the "non-capitalist" road to development, what many
Marxists call "state capitalism" (i.e., state-owned capitalist enterprises
with some welfare-state stuff, as in Algeria for a decade or so after their
revolution).
The Soviet Union went into Afghanistan, after all, for relatively pure
motives: to defend socialism against barbarism. (And from today's
perspective it is hard to argue that they were wrong.)
I see this a defense of civilization, not socialism, unless one accepts the
USSR's own vision of statism-as-socialism. (Of course, one can use the word
"socialism" any way one wants, as Hitler proved.)
I don't know when the loss of faith in their system on the part of the
nomenklatura took place...
they lost faith in socialism in the 1920s (if not earlier), whereas they
lost faith in their bureaucratic system in the early 1980s as the war in
Afghanistan turned into a quagmire and, as Ian pointed out, when Chernobyl
went "phht" (1986).
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Re: Re: Re: Re: Fwd: faith based services
At 07:56 PM 01/30/2001 -0800, you wrote: Here in Chico, a local Waldorf education group wanted to start a charter school, but what's a Waldorf group? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Fwd: faith based services
Education based on the ideas of Rudolf Steiner. On Tue, Jan 30, 2001 at 08:35:34PM -0800, Jim Devine wrote: At 07:56 PM 01/30/2001 -0800, you wrote: Here in Chico, a local Waldorf education group wanted to start a charter school, but what's a Waldorf group? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
recent economic trends
On Michael Perelman's advice, I read the article by the late Harold Vatter and John Walker in the current CHALLENGE, comparing the US economy of the 1920s and the 1990s. (Hey, there's a review of Michael's book I'll have to read, while the article by me that was supposed to appear didn't.) It was a little disappointing, since it was saddled with poor data (an unavoidable problem), a "the data speak for themselves" empiricist view, and too much emphasis on the "did the 1990s represent a 'new' economy?" question. But its conclusion that the big difference between the 1990s and previous decades is the surge of investment in producer durable equipment (especially if one emphasizes the late 1990s) is interesting -- as is their view that that surge is unsustainable without an increase in government's role (which they see as unlikely given current trends). It fits with an overinvestment theory of the sort I've been pushing (see the annotated version of my 1994 paper on the Great Depression on my web-site). The fact that manufacturing was suffering so badly during the last two months of 2000 suggests that the boom of producer durable equipment has peaked and is crashing, as part of the classic accelerator effect. In other news, the current issue of BUSINESS WEEK shows two interesting graphs. One shows a precipitous fall in consumer confidence, which has been reinforced by data revealed today. In another story a couple of weeks ago, analysts were surprised that consumer indebtedness soared despite the slowdown in consumer spending. This seems to be a case of what Bob Pollin calls "necessitous borrowing." If so, and given the data on consumer expectations, we should expect consumer spending to crash. The other BW story shows a surge in refinancing of mortgages. Perhaps instead of responding to the Fed's lower rates via expansion, re-fi is the only way that households will go. If so, St. Alan was too little and too late with his rate cuts, as with his first recession (1990). I expect that the Fed Open Market Committee will cut rates again in the near future (they're meeting), but it won't have much effect. Debt and over-investment sap the positive effects of low interest rates. Maybe Dubya's tax cuts will save the day? or a war? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Re: recent economic trends
The one thing that Walker/Vatter neglected to point out is that the recent investment is not in very durable capital goods, so the depreciation is very high. Thus, net investment is not as high as gross investment figures suggest. The review of my book in Challenge was very flattering. What J. Devine article will be appearing. They are not very good about putting their articles out at the promised time. I have an article that was supposed to appear there in Sept. 2000. It will actually appear in March. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: recent economic trends
At 09:20 PM 01/30/2001 -0800, you wrote: The one thing that Walker/Vatter neglected to point out is that the recent investment is not in very durable capital goods, so the depreciation is very high. Thus, net investment is not as high as gross investment figures suggest. that's true. The review of my book in Challenge was very flattering. except that the author suggested you were a conspiracy theorist. What J. Devine article will be appearing. it's on the "cost of living" inflation rate, something that first appeared in rudimentary form in pen-l a couple of years ago. The basic idea is that if you include non-market aspects of the cost of living as part of a measure of average prices (the actual price of buying the use-values measured by real GDP), then the inflation rate has been higher than even as measured by the old, non-bowdlerized, version of the CPI. Of course, it's not a kind of inflation that's relevant to monetary policy, but it's relevant to our real living standards. BTW, what kind of educational ideas did Rudolf Steiner have? socialist ones? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
